Ferb, I know what we’re gonna do today! We’re going to have a lengthy conversation with the star ofPhineas & Ferbahead of the brand new revival. After feels like 104 years,Phineas & Ferbis coming back to television after over a decade, and from the looks of things, the revived animated sitcom is here to stay. Disney has picked upDan PovenmireandJeff “Swampy” Marsh’s hugely anticipated rebootfor a whopping total of forty episodes, indicating that this return summer trip to the Tri-State Area is going to be worth the wait. Bringing the show back now makes perfect sense, as despite going off the air in 2015, the original show is still just as popular now as it was when it first debuted in 2007, primarily thanks to being so accessible to audiences in the modern age of streaming.
Along with Povenmire and Marsh, who do voicework on the show as well with Dr. Doofenshmirtz and Major Monogram,almost the entire cast of the original show is returningfor the revival. This includes the voice behind Phineas Flynn-Fletcher himself,Vincent Martella, whose other notable characters include Greg Wulliger onEverybody Hates Chrisand Jason Todd invarious animated Batman projects. Ahead of his glorious return as the lovable and optimistic inventor inPhineas and FerbSeason 5, we had the incredible opportunity to speak with Vincent on his lasting legacy as the show’s title character and what’s in store for fans this season.
Vincent Martella Feels Like Is Eager To Get Back to the Tri-State Area for ‘Phineas and Ferb’
COLLIDER: Since this is a property that you’ve been working with for so long, since you were 13 years old, I believe, what has it been like to return to this series and return to this really, really beloved story with all of these characters that have become ones that have lasted generations for an extremely long time?
VINCENT MARTELLA: Yeah, I’ve been really fortunate to work on a lot of really great stuff in my career voice acting wise and live-action wise, and I love everything that I work on. ButPhineas & Ferbhas by far meant the most to me in my entire career. It has been a massive part of my life. As you said, I started working on the show when I was 13. That’s a very long time to do anything to know anyone, and the fact that I’m 32 now and people my age are showing the show to their kids, it’s such a big part of more than one generation now.
I just feel unbelievably lucky and also proud of the fact that all this work that all these groovy people did has meant enough for so many people that we now get an opportunity to tell more stories, and to tell stories in different ways than we used to do them in the original run of the show. So this means the world to me. It really does, being able to keep playing Phineas. And, I’m excited for how everyone is going to receive the show when we come back this summer.
The show really does have this sort of timeless quality that kind of transcends generations and is why it’s resonated with so many different generations. You also mentioned that coming back around this time around, there are some differences in terms of the story,and I got to imagine the process of making it also might be a little bit different. The world of voice acting, particularly post-pandemic, has changed to where there’s been a lot of voice actors who just do it straight from home. What has the process been like? Has the process differed from when you did it back when you first started the show, or has it been pretty much the same?
MARTELLA: Well, what’s wonderful was that we have maintained a lot of the same voice cast and brought back a lot of writers who were a part of the original run of the show, as well as brought on new writers like my good friendOlivia Olson, who also plays Vanessa on the show and she was Marceline onAdventure Time. She’s one of the new voices in the writers' room as well, who know the show so well and know it so intimately that we’re able to kind of give it a new energy and new life to something. As far as for my job, the biggest difference is, during the original run of the show, we were a storyboarded show first. So we would storyboard the entire episode, and then we moved to script afterward. For anybody who doesn’t know what that ends up looking like for me as a voice actor, a lot of times I would just get a dialog script. It would not be a standard script that you’d normally read for a TV show or for a film. And a lot of times there wouldn’t be action and I wouldn’t know where I was. So a lot of times I read my scripts before I got to the studio, and then they’d bring out this giant book. It had multiple panels on it that were all the storyboards and had the full script. This time around, we are not doing that, because that is a very time-consuming process and very, very difficult to do. So my biggest change to being a voice actor on the show is now I’m getting full scripts, and I’m able to know exactly where I am and know exactly what I’m doing and understand the action a lot better.
The only people who record out of studio right now are people who live in New York, or people who live abroad like the great Richard O’Brien, who plays my father on the show, who wroteRocky Horror Picture Show.He lives in New Zealand. I’ve never met him.The 17 years plus that I’ve worked on the show, I’ve never met him in person, but everyone else records at Disney here in Los Angeles, which is awesome. I much prefer recording in person.
That’s fascinating. It also must just it must be easier to just understand the character more, when you have the full context. It’s amazing how just lone sentence of context can completely change how you read a line or interpret lines.
The New Revival is Keeping the Spirit of ‘Phineas and Ferb’s Musical Core Intact
I got to see a very brief early sneak peek back [forPhineas and Ferb] at D23 last year. Jeff and Dan were there, and they showed up a quick little opening song from the [new season]. It seems like the show is still going to incorporate a very important element of the original series, that being the musical element. What was it like to return to that musical flavor of the series? Because I believe every single episode of the original does have some sort of really, genuinely good musical number.
MARTELLA: Yeah. Well, that’s a credit to our writers and that’s a credit to how good they are. And our music department, that’s been such a big part of the show since the beginning. It’s funny because sometimes people will talk to me about music and like, yeah, I play and sing music as a hobby, but then if I really think about, I’m actually recording some really amazing music that I guess people listen to, and I’m always reminded of that when people do their Spotify wrapped at the end of the year, people will tag me in there. Things like, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s like a song that I sang.’
Getting to record the music is amazing. Like the fact that they let me sing these really, really catchy, fun songs.Summer Belongs to You is my favorite song we’ve ever done.I think that’s our best one. Like, that was so catchy. It’s such a good pop song, and I had to sing that one with Ashley Tisdale, and she’s an incredible singer, right? I’ve recorded quite a few songs for this upcoming season as well as more episodes that we are currently working on. Whenever I get to do them, it’s always a fun treat, because sometimes it’ll literally be like the way that our music works. Sometimes it’ll just be Dan writing with someone like Olivia Olsen, who writes a lot of music on our show as well. And so it’ll just be like a voice memo recording of like, ‘hey, we’re thinking about doing this next week.’
Another thing I love aboutPhineas and Ferbis that it shows a relationship that we don’t often see, and when we do see it, it’s often depicted in a negative connotation, but it’s a great story about two stepbrothers. Feb must be a very interesting scene partner because he only has about one line per episode. What’s it like having to interact with a character that is interacting back with you, but is doing it purely through actions rather than voices?
MARTELLA: Yeah, I’m incredibly used to it at this point. Number one, I’ll start from the beginning of what you said, which is how important it was to Dan and Swampy to show this family, obviously they have a stepfather and a stepmother and stepbrothers and showing that relationship, but never addressing in any type of negative way, never even making it that big of a deal. There’s no big terrible reason that these families came together.They all see each other as their sibling or their brother or their sister.And I think that that was really important to Dan and Swampy, because so many people live that reality.
What’s great about Ferb is that they do so much action with his reactions. Almost like throwback to 1940s cartoons of these silent characters who are telling you so much based on what they’re reacting with to me.
Vincent Martella Wants Phineas and Ferb To Travel to Middle-earth
SoPhineas and Ferbalso have a history of doing some crossover episodes. They’ve done everything fromStar Wars, Marvel, evenShaun of the Deadof all things, which seems really out of left field. I don’t know if you have anything planned for this season, but is there any franchise IP or even just real life person who you’d like to see Phineas and Ferb interact with?
MARTELLA: We could do this over three episodes, butI want to do aLord of the Ringscrossover.I loveLord of the Rings, and that would be so cool. We have enough characters to fill out a fellowship, we have Buford and Baljeet and Isabella and Candace and Jeremy, and Doctor Doofenshmirtz makes a perfect Gollum. Like he is such a perfect Smeagol or Gollum, and I would love for us to do that. Obviously we can’t because Amazon owns the rights to Lord of the Rings now withRings of Power, but that would be one I would love to see. And we have the characters. We have enough pieces.
Yeah. Buford and Baljeet as Legolas and Gimli would be kind of a no brainer.
MARTELLA: That would be perfect! That’d be hysterical! Like, their dynamic is already so similar. I don’t know who would be who in that. I think Buford would probably be Gimli. Like, it would have to be tied in that way. But no, I love that intheStar Warscrossover too is that it’s all the things happening at the same time as theNew Hopeand so then you have like Isabella grabbing a drink with Han Solo, but they’re not on the same path. I thought that was a cool and very original way of doing it instead of just… Like I love this episode, but even when likeFamily Guydid Blue Harvest, it was a nice way to not do exactly that and to do something a little bit more original. But I do love that episode ofFamily Guy.
Vincent Martella Dreams of Playing Spider-Man in the Future
In addition toPhineas and FerbandEverybody Hates Chris, you’ve also voiced a couple other characters. You’ve voiced Jason Todd in a couple Batman projects at this point. Is there any other character that you really want to give a crack at voicing, be it a type of character you want to play, or maybe a specific individual?
I would love to be able to play Spider-Man. I feel like my voice is at an OK register to realistically play a character like that, and Spider-Man is one of my favorite superheroes. That would be so cool. Obviously,Yuri Lowenthal is absolutely amazing in the Spider-Man PlayStation games, but if they ever need someone to play Spider-Man, I would really love to. Playing comic book characters is such a different experience with that type of fandom too. When I got to play Jason Todd twice, and I got to play Red Hood as well, I got to meet Batman fans at Comic-Con and people who have spent 20 years reading these comics and these graphic novels. That was such a really cool experience of how much these characters meant to them. They’ve lived their whole lives with them. So I would like to play some more comic book characters for sure.
‘Phineas and Ferb’ Season 5 Is Some of the Show’s Best Work So Far According to Vincent Martella
I’ll conclude with one last question: Of all the things that you are hoping for fans to see, what do you what do you really want them to take away from the upcoming 40 episodes?
The thing I’m looking forward to the most is fans who have followed these characters for so long and care so much about the show, are going to get an opportunity to not only get to have similar experiences with these characters, but the way we’re able to now expand on maybe some side characters and use some storytelling that we maybe couldn’t as much in the first run of the show.
Some of these episodes are really some of the best stuff that we’ve done. but I just hope that everyone has as much fun now with these new episodes as they did with the original run. And the message thatPhineas and Ferbalways has had is that, even when Candace wants to bust them, they want everyone to enjoy themselves. And that’s all I feel about the show coming back is I hope that everyone learns all the hard work and the love that we’ve been putting into this show, and I hope we get to do this forever. We all love this job. So, I would love to do more seasons after this.
Phineas and FerbSeason 5 premiers on June 6th, on Disney Channel. New episodes will then be available to stream next day onDisney+.
