Attending Dallas Fan Days is always a highlight for me every year. I am a huge fan of “Star Wars: The Clone Wars,” and each year a group of the voice actors from the show make their way to Dallas for the event. Up until a couple of years ago, it was called “Star Wars Fan Days,” but to branch out the convention was opened up to other fanbases as well.
This year’s “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” cast attendees included Tom Kane (Yoda, the show announcer, Admiral Yularen), Ashley Eckstein (Ahsoka Tano), Stephen Stanton (Tarkin, Mas Amedda, Brother Viscus), and Meredith Salenger (Barriss Offee, Che Amanwe, Ione Marcy). They spoke about the show in great detail, and you could feel the intense love the actors have for the series.
Do you do group recordings for “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” or just work one at a time?
Ashley Eckstein: We’re actually fortunate that we get to do it as a group. Tom, on the other hand, gets to join us every now and then. From the very beginning, they stressed group sessions. I’m very grateful they did because we have a lot of dialogue in our show. I think the relationships are very important. I don’t think we could have established those tight bonds and relationships if we weren’t in the same room acting together. It’s much more relationship-oriented if you can look at the person and actually do a real scene with someone. You’re not just hearing it through headphones. You can actually look at and fight with them.
Meredith Salenger: A really good example would be when we have those scenes with Ahsoka and Barriss literally facing death and deciding to sacrifice their lives to save the rest. That was a very emotional scene and I think that had we read them separately, it wouldn’t have come across the same.
Tom Kane: I just don’t physically live in L.A. anymore. It’s not possible for me to go there and record the show. In my case, it really hasn’t presented any problems. My characters don’t interact that much with the other people in the scenes. Yoda tells people what to do or he’s dropping a witticism or mysticism out to somebody. There’s very little back and forth dialogue with Yoda. The same is true with Admiral Yularen. He’s an admiral and ordering people around. There’s not a whole lot of emotional interplay with Yularen because he’s the boss.
Stephen Stanton: The great thing about when Tom’s not there is sometimes [supervising director] Dave Filoni asks us to try our hand at bad Yoda impressions. That gets somewhat interesting sometimes.
Tom Kane: Yeah, they’re always looking for back-ups.
Are there any other big Yoda episodes coming up this season?
Tom Kane: I believe this season there are a couple that are more Yoda heavy than we have seen recently. I know next season there is a fairly important story arc that involves Yoda. We’re not even sure how far this thing is going. We were originally told there were a hundred episodes. We passed that a month ago in terms of recording. I think we’ll be doing this show for many years to come.
For more articles by Eric Shirey, check out:
Actor Clancy Brown Talks About Voicing Savage Opress for ‘Star Wars: The Clone Wars’
‘Star Wars: The Clone Wars’ Sound Designer/Voice Actor Talks About ‘Nomad Droids’
Supervising Director Dave Filoni Tells Us What to Expect from Season 4 of ‘Star Wars: The Clone Wars’
Eric Shirey is the founder and editor of Rondo Award nominated movie news websites MovieGeekFeed.com and TheSpectralRealm.com. His work has been featured on Yahoo! Movies, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! TV, Associated Content from Yahoo!, DC Comics, StarWars.com, KISSOnline.com, and other national entertainment websites. Eric has interviewed and worked with actors like Harrison Ford, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Gerard Butler, Brooke Shields, Brendan Fraser, Michelle Monaghan, Martin Sheen, Emilio Estevez, Gene Simmons, Ashley Tisdale, Selena Gomez and many more.