For as long as Star Wars has been around, there are a number of actors who can claim to have played a character for the most amount of time. But some may be surprised to know that most of the actors who can make that claim tend to be voice actors. For example, while Mark Hamill is who most people associate with Luke Skywalker, it turns out voiceover artist Bob Bergen has far more credits as the character, many of which being video games that feature Luke in some form or another. But perhaps one of the most prolific performers in the entirety of Star Wars is Dee Bradley Baker, who has been voicing every clone trooper in most projects since the Clone Wars TV series.
Now, with The Clone Wars having launched its own spinoff, The Bad Batch, Baker has his work cut out for him. In The Clone Wars, the majority of his roles sounded almost identical. They'd have to, considering they're clones, after all. But now, serving as the voice of each member in Clone Force 99 (the titular "Bad Batch"), he gets to differentiate a bit more due to the characters' status as "defective" clones. According to Baker himself, that actually makes things a little more clear.
"The tricky thing for the clones is that the differentiation is much tighter between characters, although it has to be decisive and clear," said Baker when speaking with Collider. "The Bad Batch are actually much further apart from each other, which oddly makes it a little bit easier to jump from character to character to character." Having voiced countless identical characters in the Star Wars franchise up to this point, Baker has developed his ability to differentiate through subtle performance shifts rather than voice and tone. He went on to describe his own mental process when embodying the different characters, and it's strangely poetic. "For me, it feels like I'm jumping from rock to rock on a stream" he continued. "I can see the rock. The writing is clear, and what I jump to is that character. I can see them. I feel like I know them and it actually helps that they're further differentiated vocally, and also in terms of their personality and mood."
The Bad Batch follows the aforementioned Clone Force 99. First introduced in the final season of The Clone Wars, they are a group of clone troopers who developed "defects" that resulted in heightened skills, such as heightened tracking senses in the team's leader, Hunter, and enhanced strength in the rather single-minded Wrecker. Their accidental individuality had the further effect of largely shielding them from Emperor Palpatine's Order 66, which "activated" hidden organic chips in the heads of all clones, forcing them to obey orders without question and hunt down all Jedi. Set just after the order took place, in the wake of Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, the new series follows the team as they try to navigate this strange new world where the democratic Republic has begun to transition into the increasingly fascist Galactic Empire.
The scope of Baker's work is almost unthinkable. Not only does he voice a literal legion of identical characters, but now he gets to be the actual entire main cast of a new series. This, of course, doesn't include young Omega, the first ever female clone. But he's spent years giving his own spin on the voice of New Zealand native Temuera Morrison, who played the clones' original template Jango Fett and currently plays Boba Fett, thought to be the only "unaltered" clone of Jango. So having the opportunity to add a little more of his own flair to the voice with The Bad Batch must feel like a breath of fresh air.
This is only the beginning of the new story, and it looks as though Baker is more than up to the task of taking it all the way. Many fans are surely excited to see where things go from here. But one thing is for certain: it will definitely sound familiar.
Star Wars: The Bad Batch streams new episodes Fridays on Disney Plus.
Source: Collider