Still Monkeying Around: A Talk with Legendary Voice Actor Fred Tatasciore

Fred Tatasciore hasn’t always been Hit-Monkey. Nor, since becoming Hit-Monkey in 2021, has it stopped him from becoming a few other characters as well. What characters has he been, you ask?  He is Lieutenant Shaxs in Star Trek: Lower Decks, Bang in Ask the StoryBots, Superbrain in The Boys Presents: Diabolical, Quinn in Luck, Octoboss and Killcannon in Invincible, and Murphy and Dipply and Archi and Argyle and Mango and Snorton (among others) in Disney’s Eureka! Tatasciore has also voiced characters for Enchanted, Tangled, Phineas and Ferb, Gravity Falls, Family Guy, American Dad!, Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Avatar the Last Airbender, Team America World Police, Kung Fu Panda 2, The Mandalorian, and some half-dozen Marvel properties. In fact, there’s a good chance that if you’ve watched an animated series, seen an animated feature, or played a video game sometime in the last 20 or so years, you’ve enjoyed Tatasciore’s work.

But let’s return to Hit-Monkey. Based on the Marvel comic by Daniel Way and Dalibor Talajić that first appeared in 2010, the series – which stars Leslie Jones, Ally Maki, Olivia Munn, and Jason Sudeikis, in addition to Tatasciore – premiered on Hulu in November, 2021. As the title suggests, the story concerns a simian assassin, specifically a Japanese macaque, who is mentored by the ghost of an American hitman Bryce Fowler (Sudeikis). While the first season focused on the pair’s violent escapades in the Tokyo underworld, Season 2 finds them in New York City, where Monkey struggles against his darker nature as he tries to escape his life of killing, and Fowler attempts to repair the damage he did during his corporeal existence.

For Tatasciore, the role of Monkey turned out to be an unexpectedly challenging and illuminating journey, from the difficulties inherent in playing a nonverbal lead character, to the actor’s gradual discovery that the show was both funnier and deeper than he originally thought. Before delving into the details of his work on the series, we began the interview by ascertaining that the man of a zillion voices, who has just under 1,000 credits on IMDb, wasn’t in any danger of becoming unemployed any time soon.

But first, watch the trailer with Monkey, Fowler, and their Season 2 NYC romp:

Dan Sarto: Is it safe to say that you're as busy now as you ever have been?

Fred Tatasciore: Yes, thank God. I'm so grateful that I get to keep doing this and that they keep bringing me back in. It's a real honor. It really is.

DS: How do you prepare for a role? I realize that the roles are all different, but it seems that some actors do more prep than others. For example, H. John Benjamin, who of course voiced Sterling Archer, told me that he likes to go in cold to maximize the spontaneity.

FT: That's a great question because that's everything. A lot of times I'm doing a non-verbal role – in other words, I’m a dinosaur or a monkey. I want to know what shapes I'm going to be working with and what my intentions are with each sound. I do prep that. But I do understand what Benjamin's saying about spontaneity. If you really know your character well, you can go in and just spin it around and have fun with it. You’ve got to have that. Even if you prep, you have to be fresh going in because you don't want to be married to your idea. You have to be directable.

One animated character is the creation of many people. I'm like a quarter of an animated character. I'm the voice and the soul of this thing, but there's the writer, the designer, the animator, the director. All those elements come into one character. You have to be like clay or an instrument.

When we were finding the monkey's voice, I knew I had to be very specific to a certain monkey and be realistic. The key was how realistic do I go, but also be able to express emotion. We had to find the voice. “Is that too big?” “Yeah, it's too big.” So I would have the feedback from the writers and the directors saying, "Hey, lighten him up here, go over here." In terms of working with everybody, you just got to be able to be like putty. You change, you have an idea, you throw something out there, you try to do it as written.

DS: How much opportunity is there for you to improvise? Is your strategy to get what is written first, and then see where this can go?

FT: Definitely. I always try to give everybody what they want, what they wrote. You want to play their music. But with Hit-Monkey, there's a huge opportunity for improv. They like comedians, they like improv. The writing is tight, but there's enough room for a monkey to be like, "I'm going to do a different sound," and I can change it around. There's a ton of room for improv in the show.

DS: Did it help doing Season 2 to have the first season as a reference?

FT: Yes, absolutely. When I started, I knew Hit-Monkey. I mean, I knew the character, I knew the comics and the graphic novel. I knew what it was all about, but I didn't know the specific story. Also, I was just working on Hit-Monkey, trying to find his voice. He's a wonderful, feeling character who's very human, very sad, kind of a depressive at this point.

The monkey is the straight man, right? I didn't know exactly. I mean, I read the scripts, but I didn't know how funny it was going to be until I saw the show together. Jason Sudeikis just kills it – he's so funny. The quips he makes are laugh-out-loud because it's such a dark scene and then you find yourself laughing. It's like that Pulp Fiction moment, where it's like the worst things are happening and yet you’re laughing.

This show just goes in places you can't believe. By the second season, I was in on the joke a little bit more, even though I didn't change. I just knew what was happening, I knew their relationship better. Then we went deep – we're dealing with hell, ghosts, a talking monkey, and redemption for all of us. There's me having to deal with revenge and someone wanting revenge on me. We're dealing with Bryce's relationship with his daughter and dealing with the devil. And I'm like, "Oh, okay." I didn't know it was going to go this far.

DS: What do you enjoy most about your performance on this show?

FT: I enjoy doing it because I love this job and I just love reading the scripts and going in and trying to express. I love Monkey. I understand him and I just really feel for him. I have so much fun with the experiments of all the voices, and then they throw me some great side characters to do too, which is really fun. The real joy for me lately has been seeing it all come together and seeing how it plays out.

DS: What has been the most difficult part of your work on the show?

FT: It would have to be the beginning. In the beginning, the challenge was, how do I get an exact monkey sound from the recordings – trying to do this very specific thing, without making it sound like I'm trying to do a language and/or making it too cartoony? The temptation was to go way cartoony, because it’s animation. The challenge was trying to keep it real and grounded – expressing emotion through those sounds without sounding threatening, without doing the normal things you might do for an animated animal. The first couple of sessions were really the most challenging.

DS: To end with a more philosophical question: Would you say there's a big difference between doing voices and voice acting?

FT: Oh, sure. That's a very good distinction. Voices are fun. Everybody can kind of do different voices, and that's great. That's just using an instrument. Everyone can play guitar, learn a chord or two, but can you play the song? Can you play it with feeling? Voices are great, but I think the primary thing – especially for someone who’s going into the field – is to remember it's acting first. What are your intentions? Who are you? What do you want? What are you afraid of? Where's this character going? The really simple questions. The voice you put on top of it is the flesh and bone of the soul of the character.

It's always acting, even if you're a monkey.

Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.