'It's-a me!': The voice of Super Mario comes to Dublin

Crashing a voice-acting audition at the very last minute ended up changing Charles Martinet’s life, as he became the voice of a videogames icon in Nintendo’s princess-rescuing plumber Mario — staking a place in millions of childhoods. He speaks with Mike McGrath-Bryan about his fantastic journey

Mon, 11 Jul, 2022 - 21:35

Mike McGrath Bryan

With an academic background that lurches from political philosophy to theatre, and a subsequent acting career that encompassed Shakespeare, Matlock and corporate communications videos, the story of American actor Charles Martinet was already an interesting one before a chance message from a friend led him to crash an audition for voice talent while living in San Francisco in 1992.

Charles Martinet: a career in theatre informed a last-minute decision to audition for Mario in 1992

The role? Mario, the moustachioed plumber who’d already achieved a place in pop culture as the hitherto-mute star of Nintendo’s world-famous video games.

“As I'm walking in the door, the producer is walking out, and I know that because the cameraman is behind him. I asked him, 'can I read for this part?' And he goes "ugh, alright". We go inside, we set the camera back up, he says 'You're an Italian plumber named Mario, he's this video game character. Make up a voice, a video game, anything you want. I don't care. Just keep talking, and that's your audition.'

“Luckily, I had played Petruchio in Taming of the Shrew, so I thought, well, I'll do that character, but make him younger. I didn't know anything about video games, except [ Pac-Man and Space Invaders]. I heard "action", and I just said, 'Hello, I'm a-Mario! Let's make a pizza! You get some sausage, I'm gonna get some spaghetti, we're gonna put spaghetti on your pizza, and then I'm gonna chase you with a pizza! If I catch you with the pizza, you're gonna eat it!'

“[I kept talking until there was] no more tape. 'Thank you. We'll be in touch.' Went back to the beach and I had dinner with my friend, thought nothing of it. That evening, I got a phone call. 'Okay, you're our Mario.' This guy had called Nintendo directly about me — that was 31 years ago.”

"Here we go!" Mario jumped into 3D in 1996's Super Mario 64

For a number of years, Martinet developed the Mario character in tech demonstrations like Mario in Real-Time, an early exercise in motion capture and augmented reality, and software like Mario Teaches Typing — but being presented with the early versions of 1996's Super Mario 64 prompted him to flesh Mario out fully, as the plumber negotiated 3D worlds for the first time.

“It was a tremendous honour and a tremendous joy. In that moment, it was skin-tingling, the environments under construction. Seeing it, you knew this was going to be something, and if Mario is going to do anything, it's going to be joyful: 'hup, hup — yippee!'. You can create through joy, fun, and thrills.

“If Mario's going to be injured from a fall, or something, it's not gonna be at his expense, like, [grunts], it's gonna be silly: 'ow-ow-ow-ow'! Being in that room, working with everybody with a common goal, we wanted this to be really fun. It was just so joyful — like all creative processes can be.”

Mario, Luigi and Wario: some of the residents of the Mushroom Kingdom, as voiced by Charles Martinet

In over 30 years since his initial audition, Martinet has gone on to voice much of the wider Mario cast, including his brother Luigi, and nemeses Wario and Waluigi. Martinet takes the time to consider his body of work — and what keeps him invested: “You play the first Mario game that was ever made, and you play the most recent one — even though Mario Strikers is a much more aggressive game for sound and voice, you'll always recognise it as a Mario game. The responses of the characters, the silliness, the fear, the trepidation, all these things, it hasn't really changed much.

“I still walk up to a microphone, and I still just put out love and joy and fun. You always have a script as an actor, and my belief is to do the script exactly as written one time — 'whoopee!'. And then going from there, it's gotta go up a level — 'WHOOPEE!'.”

Charles Martinet: "If Mario's going to do anything, it's going to be joyful".

A consideration for younger audiences turned out to be an immense piece of forethought — when not at the mic, Martinet travels the world attending conventions and fan events, fostering connections with people who have grown up with Mario and crew — including next month’s Dublin Comic-Con.

“I'm so grateful to the comic-cons: I've met many people who have met, like a Mario met a Princess Peach in costume, and they ended up getting married, then, three or four years later, there's a little baby Mario alongside them at the booth!

“I love Ireland. It's just such a wonderful part of the world — my ambition is still to drive the whole coastline. When I was younger, I wanted to cycle it! (laughs) I can't do that anymore, but it's such a beautiful country.”