Chris Pratt and Charlie Day were asked to change their original voices for The Super Mario Bros Movie because they were “a little New Jersey”.
The pair voice Mario and Luigi in the new film, an animated adaptation of the hit Nintendo game.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, the pair opened up about earlier versions of the character they tested before settling on their chosen voices.
“We tried different things, different voices,” Day explained. “Every now and then they would say, ‘Charlie, maybe a little less Goodfellas in this one’ – I’m like, ‘Alright! I think you’re wrong, but fine’ – until they landed on something they liked.”
“For a minute, I walked in and they were like, ‘That’s a little New Jersey. You’re doing a Tony Soprano thing,’” Pratt added.
Meanwhile, their co-star Keegan-Michael Key spoke this week about his method for achieving the high-pitched shriek of a voice needed to play Toad.
“It’s just like, how are we going to maintain this?” he remembered thinking. “And I’m thinking, I don’t know. Just gallons of Earl Grey tea and really, really tight pants, I guess.”
The Super Mario Bros Movie marks the first adaptation of the game since the critically panned live-action film starring John Leguizamo and Bob Hoskins.
In an interview this week, Seth Rogen, who voices Donkey Kong in the animated film, said that he hopes the new film will finally lay the ghost of the infamous 1993 adaptation to rest.
“It’s one of the worst films ever made,” Rogen said. “I was so disappointed. I think it made me realise that movies, like, could be bad. That never occurred to me until that moment.
“It really bummed me out,” he continued. “It’s nice to vindicate that moment. It’s nice to know that 11-year-olds out there won’t be disappointed in the same way that I was.”
You can read The Independent’s two-star review of The Super Mario Bros Movie here.
The Super Mario Bros Movie is in cinemas now.
