Click here to read IGN's review of the ThunderCats premiere, "The Sword of Omens/Ancient Spirits of Evil!"
IGN had a chance to talk to Richardson about Panthro's delayed intro on the new Cartoon Network reboot. Since we're already two weeks into the new Cats series, we're expecting quite an epic entrance for Panthro. "Yes, it is," Richardson affirmed. "He'll be coming in definitely when the team needs him the most too. They get into a pickle where they can only do so much and it becomes a 'do or die' situation and so, of course, Panthro comes in and saves the day. And I have to say that I saw the rough cut of how it looks and I was very impressed with it so I'm looking forward to seeing it even more now that it's finished. Because his entrance was kick-ass, man. And the Thundertank is lookin' sweet too. This cast is great too. Will Friedle is phenomenal as Lion-O. Emmanuelle Chriqui too. They play their parts extraordinarily well. Everyone's really earning it on this one."
Did Richardson like the original 80's ThunderCats series? "I did enjoy it," he told IGN. "I wasn't really a child though. I think I was in my early 20's. I had a sports injury and I had to be in the hospital for something like 10 days and every day the ThunderCats was on TV and it would show more than once. So I would watch it and it was very cool, man. I got a kick out of it. It was the era of Silverhawks and GI Joe and Galaxy Rangers and Voltron. There were so many different shows but ThunderCats stood out for me."
Click here to read IGN's review of the ThunderCats' second episode, "Ramlak Rising!"
The original Panthro is a lot of ThunderCats fans' favorite character. And Earle Hyman gave him such an iconic voice. Was Richardson trying to do an impersonation of Hyman or was he trying to do his own thing? "At first, I didn't know what they wanted," he said. "Because some people tell you 'we want it to sound like the way this guy did it.' They did that for Flintstones: On the Rocks where I played Barney Rubble and they wanted me to do it the original way Mel Blanc played Barney. And they told me that it had to be exactly that way and I was like 'woah.' So I had to do a lot of homework. But that wasn't the case for Panthro. They just said 'give us what you got.' Because you never know. Just because the original role was played by Earle Hyman you don't know if they're still looking for an African-American actor or not. Producers go different ways. Mark Hamill was The Joker before I was on the old animated series and I had to play him like he did. It was serious shoes to fill but I played him after that. So fortunately I just gave them a kind of deep, authoritative base-y gravitas tough guy. A slight ethnicity flavor was in there too. It seemed to work out and they liked my choice."
Richardson is known for playing a lot of stern, heroic characters, but he's also an expert at making us laugh on shows like Family Guy and The Cleveland Show. "I like the balance," Richardson said. "I like doing both the drama and the comedy. Because art imitates life and things aren't always all roses. So if you're having a bad day you can take a lot of your frustrations out with those serious characters. Like I did with Roadblock for GI Joe where you're fighting and beating up bad guys. But it's good to have it all in the mix. It keeps things different and fresh."
The ThunderCats episode, "Song of the Petalars," airs this Friday, August 12th at 8:30/7:30c on Cartoon Network.
