“I play one of the most famous characters – but my children kept me a secret”

Tom Kenny and Bill Fagerbakke are two of Hollywood’s most famous people thanks to their cult series – which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year and is still going strong – but most fans probably wouldn’t recognize them on the street.

The pair have been on our screens for decades in SpongeBob SquarePants, playing SpongeBob and Patrick Star respectively alongside Rodger Bumpass, Clancy Brown and Mr. Lawrence.

Nickelodeon’s show first hit our screens in July 1999, and more than two decades later, the creators are clearly still having a lot of fun.

The anniversary of the most popular residents of Bikini Bottom in chat with Metro.deBill told us, “If you really stop and think about it, it’s absurd.”

“I’ve been lucky enough to have some really great jobs and then there was this one. It was just fantastic. To be doing something in the industry and not getting tired of it after a while… Patrick still makes me laugh. I read a storyboard and I giggle. I love it, I love playing Patrick. I love working with my colleagues.”

Tom agreed: “25 years is definitely a milestone and for it to still be enjoyable and entertaining – for it to be a milestone and not a millstone around your neck – is a really unusual situation.”

“I think something like this is pretty unheard of, maybe it’s only happened once or twice before, and to have been there when it happened is just overwhelming.”

When the world fell in love with SpongeBob and Patrick in the late 90s, it’s safe to assume that the lives of the voice actors also changed massively.

Tom and his wife Jill Talley – who plays Karen in the series – had their son Mack born two years before the premiere, and their daughter Nora was born in 2003.

Bill’s children Hannah and Carson, whom he has with ex-wife Catherine McClenahan, were seven and five years old respectively when the series began, and he admitted that his eldest daughter actually avoided telling her friends about her father’s job.

“I always appreciated when my daughters were teenagers. One of their friends was never distant with me, I could always just throw in a Patrick line: ‘Are you a Goofy-Goober?’ and boom, I was in and we were having fun. It’s pretty sweet,” he continued.

“I had a really interesting moment with my oldest daughter. When she was 11, she started at a new school. She was there for at least two months and came home one day and I was in the house. She sat down and said, ‘Well, Dad, I haven’t told anyone yet.’ She wanted to get to know the kids in her own way.”

“Yeah, because otherwise you don’t know their motives,” Tom quickly agreed. “It’s not like we ever talked to them and said, ‘Be careful of people who only want to be friends with you because of SpongeBob.’ But they knew instinctively and said, I’ll talk about it when it’s appropriate, but I’m not going to start it.”

“Kids are very interested in that kind of thing. My dad was an accountant, so I never had to worry about it. I remember my son was quite young and he said, ‘Hey dad, some kids at school say you’re famous. Are you famous?’ He was very young.

“I said, ‘First of all, we don’t use the F-word in this house. Tell them I’m not famous, but I do the voice of a famous cartoon. The cartoon I do the voice of is famous. I’m not famous. SpongeBob is famous.’ That rubbed the kids the wrong way a little bit.”

Tom also said that as children, both Mack and Nora became suspicious of anyone who tried to exploit their connection to SpongeBob. This has continued into adulthood, although there is now a certain “distance” from the character.

“It’s funny, both of my kids were always very instinctively suspicious of any kid who just wanted to be friends with them because they heard that daddy was SpongeBob,” he recalls. “My kids were always pretty cautious about who they would tell. In some ways, they still are.”

“When they’re young adults, they’re more proud of it, like, ‘Wow, my dad is part of this thing that all the 20-year-olds I hang out with think, he was a formative part of their lives, he was important to them.’ Now there’s a little more distance.

“It’s weird being a kid and having your dad do something that’s really popular with kids. That was a little hard on my kids.

“SpongeBob SquarePants” first aired on Nickelodeon on July 17, 1999, and the theme song has been stuck in our heads ever since.

It’s hard to believe that we’ve had the gang on our screens for 25 years, with hundreds of episodes over 14 seasons, three spin-off films and a number of awards – including two Daytime Emmy Awards for Tom.

Many famous faces have made a brief visit to SpongeBob’s pineapple-colored abode during this time, and their cameo appearances rivaled those of The Simpsons in terms of star-studded cast – Gene Simmons, Will Ferrell, LeBron James, Pink, Ricky Gervais, Robin Williams, Victoria Beckham, Betty White and Jon Hamm are just a few of the names that have hung out in Bikini Bottom over the years.

Tom has played the legendary yellow sponge for more than two decades now and admitted that there were moments when he realized he had inadvertently slipped into his character’s voice.

“Sometimes you see something and react to it like Spongebob, and other things you react like Tom,” he said. “I slip in and out… SpongeBob and I, it’s like a timeshare. My brain is like a timeshare in Hawaii. SpongeBob is there half the year, I’m there half the year. There’s just this one pineapple, sometimes it’s him and sometimes it’s me. I feel like he and I are two sides of the same coin.”

“I don’t think I sound like SpongeBob, but sometimes people hear something and say, ‘Your voice sounds familiar.’ Then they put two and two together and I’m embarrassed and think, ‘Do I really sound like that?’ Then I try to sound more masculine.

“The thing about being those characters, SpongeBob and Patrick, is that it’s the best calling card ever. Not that we go around saying, ‘Hey, guess which character I’m voicing?’ You don’t go out like that all the time, because that would be terrible, but it really is the best calling card ever.

“Most people like SpongeBob. He’s very popular in the world, even the memes, even when there’s a meme or the late-night talk show host makes a joke, it’s always very loving and not meant to be derogatory.”

“SpongeBob just has a lot of love in the world. SpongeBob and Patrick can literally go anywhere and people like us because SpongeBob and Patrick are so ubiquitous that there are no barriers. Everyone seems to like it.”

Here’s to the next 25 years!

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