Interview: John de Lancie on his MLP:FIM experience
I'm posting this verbatim here because it's worth a read, and when I'll want to reread it, I don't want to search the web for it. It's part of an article by Mike Allen, published yesterday by the Roanoke Times of Roanoke, Virginia, USA. It's a story we've heard from John de Lancie before, of his introduction to the Brony fandom and how his involvement in it began. I'm laughing with glee again as I read it because his story is so full of win. The interview also explores de Lancie's education, Shakespeare background, his Star Trek presence, his experience in theatre, Days of Our Lives, Breaking Bad, all worth reading.
Mike Allen wrote:
How did you find out about the huge fan base for "My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic"?
That was just me doing a job, doing a voice-over job for a cartoon. They said "My Little Pony," but it meant nothing to me. I'd never heard of it before. About three months later I came down to my office, actually where I'm sitting right now, and turned on my computer, and there, I had hundreds of emails in my email my box carrying on about "My Little Pony," and I called up my wife and said, what do you know about "My Little Pony"? And she said, well, you voiced it about three months ago and its a cartoon for little girls. And I said, "Well, I'll tell you something, these are not little girls that are writing me."
That night, a friend of mine came over who produces reality television shows, and he said we should do a documentary. I said, "No way am I touching this. I don't know what this is about. It all sounds a little sordid."
And then I was shooting something up in Vancouver and a bunch of young guys came up to me over the course of about a two week period and they asked for autographs for "My Little Pony" and I said "Why are you watching this? What is the attraction? What is the allure?"
And so they explained it ... As I was listening to them and watching them I began to think that, you know, this is a little bit like the beginnings of kind of a "Star Trek"-type fandom. ... If you consider "Star Trek" to be one of the first of these type of things .. Back in 1965, everybody thought anybody who was interested in science fiction, who would actually get together and wear Spock ears and play with, whatever, phasers or something, was just, really a weirdo. But look at how far we've come since then. Hence the ComicCon and all these enormous venues that are filled with thousands and thousands of people. ... And they're all after the same thing, which is a sense of community.
So I went, "Well, this is very interesting." And then my friend, who had not given up on the idea of making a documentary, wrote me, and he said, I think you should take a look at this. It was a series of news clips from Fox News -- which I'm not a big fan of -- and it was "Bronies, the latest in the degradation ... of culture, which are a bunch of homosexuals who live at home on food stamps and disability so that they can watch cartoons."
I just went, "Okay, damn it, let's make this documentary." These kids who are just perfectly fine ... it's not something that's going to perhaps draw my attention, but it's a show about friendship, for Christ's sake. ... Are we really going to make fun of these people? Are we going to say that we're going be insulting towards them and make them feel bad about themselves? Have we really gotten to that point? Of course, the answer is, yes, we have.
When you see the documentary, I think you'll see that it's really quite fascinating. ... Perhaps you and I wouldn't do that, spend our time watching "My Little Pony." I don't spend my time watching Civil War reenactments, but I'm not going to say that everybody who goes to a Civil War reenactment is a loser of some sort.
We just have to, I think, as a society, just get a little more tolerant of things that perhaps we don't quite understand. Nobody's doing anything bad. They found community through this "My Little Pony" thing, the "Friendship Is Magic" thing. All over the world, they're writing songs, and ... do a lot of animation, all sorts of things, and lots and lots of charity work, and things like that. So I just thought, we need to give them some coverage.
I've had people at the house who know nothing about this stuff, oncologists at a major hospital, and lawyer friends, architecture friends, what have you, and they kept on saying, "You did a show on brownies?" And then they watched it and they were all quite moved by it.
I understand that "Discord," the role you voice for "My Little Pony," is basically the same character as "Q."
Yes. I didn't know this, but ... Lauren Faust said, "I'm writing a character named Discord." She says this to her bosses.
And they say, "Well, what is that character?"
"He's a trickster ... He's like Q on 'Star Trek.'"
And they went, "Oh my God, do you think that we would be able to get John de Lancie to do it?"
And she said, "Well, let me find out."
So that's how they got me. But that was not something that I actually knew. I don't approach things from that point of view. I don't lay a character onto something. This came to me as just the material. Sure, I guess if I had to really think about it there's similarities, but in point of fact I didn't approach it that way in the beginning. Every script has its rhythm and its vibration, [every] character has a certain sensibility to it, and I try to pick up on that and do it the way I think it should be done. In the end, yes, lo and behold, when it was pointed out to me maybe two episodes later [that] this was really intended to be Q, I went, "Oh. Yeah. No, I can see that." But it's not really what I have in mind when I'm playing him.