Bugs Bunny in his current form has existed since 1940, becoming one of the 20th century's most iconic creations. The Looney Tunes star was originally voiced by the legendary Mel Blanc. Following his death in 1989, the roles were taken over in part by Jeff Bergman, who has subsequently played Bugs (and a host of the other iconic Looney Tunes characters) for decades. The importance of carrying on that legacy isn't lost on Bergman as both a fan and a part of the production.
Jeff Bergman sat down with CBR to discuss Looney Legends in Conversation, a series of interviews with Noel Blanc, discussing the history and legacy of classic animation and the impact Mel Blanc and Chuck Jones had on the approach to voice-acting, the great difference between Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, and which surprising Looney Tunes character he thinks is quietly the most complex.
CBR: Hi Jeff! Thanks for taking the time to speak with me -- as someone who grew up with Looney Tunes, this is a really cool experience.
Jeff Bergman: Thanks so much! That's awesome. If you haven't seen it, I did a salute to Warner Bros.' 100 years, so I did 100 days of impersonations. Every day, consistently, consecutively, starting Apr. 4 through July 12th. If you haven't seen that, you can check it out on Instagram and on TikTok. It was really fun, and I got amazing responses.
Which characters got the most surprising responses?
There were three that really surprised the heck out of me. I was the voice of the Hawaiian Punch Puncy in the early 90s. "Hey, how 'bout a nice Hawaiian Punch?!" There was Roger Rabbit... Fred Flintstone. Of course, I did a "Yabba-Dabba-Doo!' I don't know. They were just bonkers over that. You never really know. Is anybody watching? Is anybody listening? There's so much stuff out there, so much content happening. But it was amazing.
I had created an announcer voice for the Boomerang Cartoon Network in the 90s. That was the biggest, overwhelming post of all. It was "This is The Jetsons. The Jetsons will return after these messages on Boomerang from Cartoon Network." I'm telling you, I got 1,000 or more compliments. "My God, you're my childhood. That's you. You're that voice." It's funny because people between 25 and 32, that sweet spot of those kids that came home from school, and that was their cartoon jam.
You've been playing Bugs Bunny for over thirty years now, and you've gotten to play him in a lot of different forms -- even some horror stuff like with Invasion of the Bunny Snatchers.
You remember that one?! You are good. You're stock just went up. You can interview me whenever.
Regardless of what kind of Bugs you're going to be playing with, what do you latch onto when you step into a role like that?
Referencing Mel Blanc. I was fortunate to meet him in 1981 and spend 45 minutes or so with him. That in and of itself is remarkable. That sort of washes over me and has stayed with me for forty-two years now. In July 1989, Mel passed away -- eerily enough on my birthday. Three weeks later, they're casting for Tiny Toons. Spielberg and Amblin and Warner Brothers auditioned 1000s of people. They picked me. We all had to audition on cassette or reel-to-reel. I got Bugs, then Elmer, then Daffy, Foghorn, and then Yosemite Sam, Sylvester, and Tweety.. What I didn't really expect is how different the character would evolve because of different directors. My first director probably would have been Chuck Jones. It was very early on that I met him at this recording studio because he was directing the title sequence of Bugs and Daffy at the beginning of Gremlins 2.
I was very nervous. I mean, here's the guy that created Daffy Duck. He was so organized, so prepared. He knew exactly what he wanted in every single read. What I noticed was he played with a lot of subtlety. It was the man who created these characters and worked with Mel, so I think that impacted and informed his direction so much with me. That was a great training ground. Then meeting Steven Spielberg, "Am I doing okay?" He's just going, "You're doing great. Keep up the good work."
With me, I have a catalog in my head of references. The same things you're watching, whether it was from the Bugs Bunny & Tweety Show, any cartoon, any commercial, anything that's out there, that's part of what's in my head. I have that to reference, which is really a great thing. When I would talk to Chuck Jones or hear from Friz Freleng, to them, these characters were real. They weren't cartoons to them. They were three-dimensional. You look at them and think, "Are these guys playing with the full deck? Do they know what they're saying?" But I ended up getting caught up in it myself. I'll look at something that I've done over the years and it is real. There's this suspension between what's real and what's not real. I liked that. We've all just been part of this world. We keep it alive. We all keep it going.
Actually getting to meet Mel and discuss those characters with Mel -- what surprised you the most about the man behind the voices?
To me, he was a big celebrity. When I met him, I didn't meet him as necessarily the voice of Bugs Bunny, even though that was his big thing. I knew him from the Jack Benny Program. He played the plumber and the postman. I was just gobsmacked when I met him. And he was really nice. He was a regular guy. I mean, one of the things he said to me is, "Don't do impersonations. Whatever you do, don't ever imitate anybody." Oh, my God. Of course, I didn't listen to what he said... "Always create your own voices if you can." It was only a few months after I had met him where I started to hear the Looney Tunes characters in a different way. I never would have imagined eight years later, I'd be playing Bugs on Tiny Toons.
What does it mean to you to carry on that legacy for Mel?
I appreciate it very much. In a way, it enables all of us to hold on to our childhoods. If you hold on to a little bit of your childhood, you stay young, you stay youthful. I just didn't want to let that go. So whether it was Bugs Bunny or Fred Flintstone or Barney Rubble, it didn't matter. It's just a part of keeping that and holding onto that. I have an image of me sitting on the sofa with chocolate milk and cheese doodles on Saturday morning, watching Scooby-Doo, just like everybody else did. Do you really want to let that go? Who wants to live completely in the real world? I can't even imagine that Mel and Chuck and Friz Freleng ever thought in the '40s and '50s and '60s, that 70 or 80 years later, we still would be loving these characters in one incarnation or another. For me, it's not only a career. It's just it's getting to play and have fun.
In regards to Looney Legends in Conversation, that was really a very unexpected thing. I found out just recently that I live eight minutes -- if I make all the traffic lights -- to Mel Blanc's son, Noel Blanc. He is absolutely just a delight, so smart and so funny. We have just become really such good friends. He's kept the greatest, funniest stories. He's such a pleasure to be with. He just really welcomed both my wife and I -- we've all become great friends. It's a part of history that he's still very much connected to, and he has some of the most amazing stories. He's the last and only surviving Blanc. There are no more relatives.
I've asked him questions I don't think anybody has asked him. He's so fascinating -- Jack Benny might as well have been his surrogate Uncle. He was so close to Jack Benny and George Burns. He would sit on Gracie Allen's lap. He met Marilyn Monroe and Rita Hayworth. They would fuss over him as a little kid when Mel would bring him to the studio to record. You name the celebrity, he probably met them. I mean, he lived across the street from Gene Kelly! It's unbelievable the number of Hollywood luminaries and celebrity icons that he has stories of. Hopefully, our proof of concept project will end up being either a film or a short film, a documentary, or a series -- there's so much to tell. We just had to condense it all down to five or six minutes.
What do you think makes characters like Bugs and Daffy so endearing?
Well, you know, Chuck Jones said, "Bugs Bunny is who we all want to aspire to be. Daffy Duck is who we're stuck with." That was his assessment of it. I think there's a lot to be said there. But I think we love Bugs in any incarnation because who doesn't want to be the hero? Who doesn't want to have a superpower? His superpower is that he's witty. He has an intellect. He's wily -- not Wile E. Coyote, but clever and imaginative and always comes out on top. I think we like that.
"It's too dark. I'm a rabbit, all right. Would you like to shoot me now? Or wait until you get home. Oh, shoot him now. Kill them now." Both Daffy and Bugs are very alpha characters in The Looney Tunes Show, which I thought was really interesting. I don't know that I realized that when I was doing it. Yes, Daffy out a little stronger in terms of the jokes. Bugs was always the one that was still really cool, that wasn't trying to be cool. He'd say things to Daffy, like, "You're going to leave the house with that outfit?" I thought that was clever the way the writers played with that. Daffy was like Sam or like Elmer, he was the fall guy. He was the buffoon.
What would you say has been the biggest surprise working on these characters?
Certainly the way the writers have been able to write them so differently. So if we take The Looney Tunes Show, Daffy was a little more of the alpha character, Bugs was a little more of a straight man. Porky was very interesting. I loved how Porky was portrayed on the show because Porky always got dumped on. And he was always Daffy's Fall Guy. So Daffy always took advantage of Porky. I love the fact that you can do so much with those characters. Sam and Elmer were always portrayed the same. Sylvester is the most interesting character because he lives in two universes. Sylvester lives in the universe where he's a dad, and he lives in a universe where he's a pet.
Those two haven't really crossed. I think it'd be fun if they did. I think he's maybe the most interesting character because he's a father to Sylvester Jr., but he's also a pet for Granny... I just love the fact that his character is so vulnerable. I like it when Sylvester is vulnerable, but he's also boastful as well. Like Daffy, that just never goes well. He has a son that's so precocious. That's so bright, yet he loves his father and accepts him for who he is. There's that little scene where they're sitting around the campfire, and Sylvester says, "You're getting to be a big boy now son. There comes a time we must discuss theories of life." "Yes, Father, whatever you wish to know." There's such a charm about the affection that they have for each other. They might be some of my favorite duet characters.
Jeff Bergman can be found on Instagram and TikTok