I recently had the opportunity to interview Kellen Goff, a voice actor who has taken the gaming and anime industry by storm over the last decade. He has starred as Overhaul in My Hero Academia and has appeared in numerous entries in Five Nights at Freddy’s, providing the voices of Glamrock Freddy, Funtime Freddy, and both Foxy and Toy Freddy in the recent Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 movie, among others. Furthermore, fans of the Marvel universe can now find him in MARVEL Tokōn: Fighting Souls as the voice of Carnage.
Our interview dives into how he approached the Carnage role, the influences he drew from, his overall experience with the Marvel universe, his journey through the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise, and potential advice for new voice talent getting their first major IP role. We hope you enjoy this exclusive interview, and we’d like to thank Kellen Goff and his team for making this possible! Enjoy!
Let’s start with your next big project coming out later this week: MARVEL Tokōn, where you will voice Carnage! So that must be exciting?
Kellen Goff (KG): Incredibly! I’m super super pumped for you guys to finally see what we’ve been cooking all these years…well, all these two years, I guess.
I’m definitely excited to see it, as someone who is a big fan of Marvel Comics! In that vein, though, Carnage is a character who has decades of history, throughout movies and cartoons and, of course, the original comics. How do you prepare for a character like that? Did you look into the previous voice-over done for the character in previous media, did you stick to the comics, or did you try to kind of create your own path?
KG: Whenever I’m doing a legacy role like this, I always do my best to go back and see what actors had done for previous iterations. So, there are lovely YouTube videos of Carnage voice actors, like Dee Bradley Baker, David Sobolov, and of course Scott Cleverdon from the original ’90s cartoon. So I did my best to, if not incorporate something from each of those, at least try and honor the way that they approached it, while still creating something new and me. But he definitely is inspired by Dee Bradley Baker’s shrillness (in Spider-Man for PlayStation 1) and all of the creature noises. The low-ends are very David Sobalov, the craziness is Scott Cleverdon, and a little bit of lowness from Woody Harrelson as well.
It definitely is a conglomeration of all of those voices, and of course I do my due diligence to go back into the comics and try and know the source material best I can, so that when we’re in session, if something comes up that could reference earlier on in his history, it could be a cool Easter egg for fans. There’s a chance for me to suggest it, then I’ll do my best to. At this time, I am not sure I am allowed to say what made it in, of course, but there will be a lot of Easter eggs there for you guys.
I am looking forward to seeing it! But of course, this is not your only dip into Marvel as of late. It’s funny, before I started the interview, I was looking at your IMDb page, and obviously there’s Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, in which you played the Symbiote, but all the way near the bottom you can see Bruce Banner in Avengers Academy. So, I wanted to ask: How does it feel to return to this world once again for both Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man and especially for Tokōn?
KG: I have had so much fun on [Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man]. It’s one of my first syndication TV shows that I’ve got to play a bigger role in, and I’m super super pumped to be part of that team. Sara Sherman and Jeff Trammel are gods, and I just have fun every time getting to come in for that. And yeah, Banner was so long ago that that app doesn’t exist anymore. I don’t even remember how I got that, but I just remember being so happy because, between DC and Marvel, I always gravitated toward Marvel more; I couldn’t tell you why. More of the heroes resonated with me.
I adore both, but for some reason, Marvel has just always gotten me. And I read the comics when I was younger; I’ve always been a fan of the MCU. I am very excited to see what they’re cooking with Doomsday. I also saw Brand New Day: It deserves that biggest weekend opening of all time; Daniel Destin Cretton cooked. I’ve deep-dove into the lore best I could; I’ve gone into some rabbit holes, some icebergs, in my time. Doing any role regardless of the IP and franchise, I feel like going in knowing that world very much adds to the performance because having perspective can only be good for an actor. Unless it’s part of their character not to know, I like to have all the cards. I like to know where everything is on the chessboard if I can.
I completely understand that, especially when you’re taking on characters with as much legacy as the Symbiotes, right? In fact, you have played two Symbiotes back to back, which made me realize that you have voiced a lot of monster characters over the years. Whether it’s mindless monsters like in Dead Space or Evil Dead, or someone with a little bit more intelligence, albeit chaotic intelligence, like Carnage, how different is your psychology and view of that character, compared to someone like Overhaul, for instance?
KG: Well, it’s not actually too different. I’d say everybody, villain or hero, believes that they are the hero. Even if they’re reprehensible, they’re doing it because it’s fun, and fun for them is the meaning of life. Or they do it because they feel it’s righteous and will lead to greater good, the means be danged. So when approaching Carnage, he’s pretty mindless. It’s about the fun for him, and his fun is very, very twisted. He gets mad glee from ripping people limb from limb.
I actually really like the Insomniac Games interpretation of Cletus Kasady; it’s a different take on his philosophy, but watching the world burn has definitely been a part of Carnage in one way or another throughout his history, regardless of the iteration. So who knows? Maybe behind that’s what he’s hoping for: once the flames subside, a better world that he can either tear up again or shape to be his own. But I don’t know. When it’s someone mindless like that, it’s a bit simpler. When it’s someone like Overhaul, where the ends justify the means because he grew up in an environment where everything was so unfair, where you made your own fairness, there’s more to it there.
He got taken off the streets by his boss, the father figure, and so he’ll do anything in his power to pay his father figure back. And I’m assuming he saw awful stuff on the streets because he has no qualms whatsoever about touching a person and them exploding, you know. So there are different ways to approach it, but regardless if if it’s a villain or a hero, I always go toward What are they trying to do to show that their life has meaning? What is their meaning to them?
Then I assume for like a Deadite or a Bloater in Evil Dead or Dead Space, you’re just in the booth making noises for like an hour?
KG: Yeah, I mean, under that is if there is any humanity there, then under that is pain, and in that moment their meaning is to destroy as much as they can before they go. Quite like Carnage, you know. Or, depending on the zombie, maybe they’re just trying to antagonize someone into ending their pain. It’s fun in a very morose way; a game to see what way you could take it differently to make a different zombie performance than you have before. Dead Space is a great example: they are in constant pain. I remember thinking that when I was recording them. It’s like, “Oh god, they just want this guy to end their suffering.”
Speaking of Dead Space, there is a specific horror franchise that you are very attached to, to such a degree that you can be considered the voice of this series: Five Nights at Freddy’s. You have been part of it since Sister Location, and you are still attached to it, all the way to Secret of the Mimic and the recent movie. So how did that journey even start in the first place, and what was getting that first audition like?
KG: It was the humblest of beginnings: the first audition was, as most are nowadays, codenamed. It was at the time, Costumed Entertainer, and my friend sent it to me, and I had no idea what it was for. All I knew was that Scott Cawthon was working on it. At the time, he had said that he was going to stop making the Five Nights at Freddy’s games. So, I thought maybe this was a new project for him or something. So, I did my best; I shot in my audition, and I only had about three hours of sleep to my name at the time. So, it took all of my energy, but when I woke up, he had emailed me and said, “Cool, you’re it.”
I didn’t have any context for anything else, but when I saw the trailer release later, I was like, “Oh, that has to be him because he talks to Bon Bon and there’s Bonnie as a hand puppet. That’s really cool, right? To have to be one of the first, if not the first, voice of a Freddy.” If Scott finds somebody that he likes, he is a very loyal guy. He tends to keep coming back to them, because 1. he is just a loyal dude, and 2. once he has a style integrated into his own, like many loop groups, he likes to keep the same voices in the world to keep that same vibe; at least that’s how I understand it from our conversations.
So, I kept auditioning, or he kept throwing me stuff; it’s a different story pretty much every time for how I got into all of these games and movies. But I am very grateful that the community has accepted me so much as a part of this. It’s really because of the fans and their clamoring that I keep getting brought back, on top of me and Scott’s partnership and friendship. I hope in the future we keep doing it; we’re about to have our 12th anniversary this week, so I’m super excited to see what the future holds.
You are part of a very, very rare group of people that get to reprise your role in a major film adaptation, as you (for the most part) played the same character in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 as in the games, where you took on the role of both Toy Freddy and Foxy. How different was the experience of recording to that film compared to the games, if at all?
KG: Well, the first one came on because Scott and the people who were making the film couldn’t, at the time, find or get the rights to the original uh Foxy scatting. And so I reached out to say, “Hey, I heard this is happening, I would adore to collaborate with you on this. If there’s anything or anywhere you feel I could help out with the production, I would adore to do so.” And he said, “Could you do this uh pirate scatting for Foxy?” At the time I was at Shakespeare camp, I thought we were going to record it when we got back, but Scott is a DIY kind of guy. If it can be brought to him immediately, he adores that. So he asked if I could do it while I was in my room, and I said “Yeah, sure.” I thought we were just making a temp, that we were going to re-record it later. I also did the vocal effects as well for Funtime Freddy, so he knew I could do that. So I applied some echo, some uh some robot effects to it, and he said, “Great.” And then it ended up in the movie.
The second one was a bit more conventional in the way that it was recorded. First, I was at a convention in New Orleans, and it’s a complete coincidence that this happened, but someone came up to my table who was also an extra in the film, and it was apparently just filming just down the street. So I emailed Scott, I was like, “Hey, I’m in town. I heard something’s happening, could I come and watch?” And he’s like, “Oh, yeah, sure. Come on.” So, I went over there and got to meet him in person for the first time; that was dope. After a bit, he was like, “Do you want to be in the scene?” I’m like, “Yeah.” So they threw me in there in the background of the Fazfest scene. You can see walking in the background behind Toy Freddy.
This was before we even knew who was going to voice Toy Freddy. Later down the line, he emailed me and said, and I love Scott’s emails, they were straight to the point. It said, “Hey, do you want to be Toy Freddy in the movie?” I’m like, “Yeah.” He’s like, “Cool. I’ll have them reach out to you.” That’s it. It’s always either a complete coincidence or just the simplest of, “Hey, you want to do this?” And I say, “Yeah.” That’s why I like Scott a lot as a uh creator. We get straight to the point with him.
How eerie was it seeing the animatronic in person?
KG: I’ve never been extremely put off by the original animatronics in the pizza places that you’d go to. I’ve never been super put off by them, except if I was like peeking behind the curtain. And I’ve always adored engineering. I love seeing people do this stuff, like “daregularsauce” on Instagram. He made this giant Glamrock Freddy, which was super cool, so I’d been around that costume a lot. So, I was already sort of used to it when I got to see Toy Freddy.
Inside was Kevin Foster, who I had spoken with before. I got to meet him in person as well; he’s like, “Kellen, what are you doing here?” So, we got to talk for a bit; that was super nice, and it sort of diffused it pretty quickly. But really, it was just incredible to see how detailed and how perfectly they had recreated and put their own spin on Toy Freddy for the movie. Jim Henson Company is incredible at what they do, and I hope to visit them one day. I know it’s just down the street, but I’ve never gotten the chance to go.
My last question is this: with Marvel and Five Nights at Freddy’s, as well as the countless anime you’ve been in over the last decade or so, you have a lot of experience with some really big franchises. As such, you are undoubtedly familiar with the pressure of keeping secrets about what role you are playing, and representing a character that so many people have preconceived notions of. So, for the burgeoning voice actor that is just getting their first big IP role, what advice would you offer to someone new having to deal with that same pressure?
KG: The way I did it was to keep a relatively safe online presence, to do my best to be PR friendly and all that. They very much like that when that comes through. You shouldn’t, you know, censor your beliefs or anything, but they tend to look for people who are going to represent the brand in the way that they would like to be publicly represented. So when you get that audition, keep it cool. Don’t tell your friends about it if you can help it; you don’t want that to spread and then come back to you.
Just give it you. You know, I’d say give it your all, but that’s a foregone conclusion. But all you can ever bring to these auditions is the accumulation of your own experiences, because that’s going to be what differentiates you from the crowd. So give what you always felt Carnage might sound like in your head, even if it’s different from anything that came before. If it’s the same Carnage that’s come before, give that too, you can do more than one take. Treat it like you would keeping a secret for your friend. You wouldn’t go out and tell your other friends something that your friend told you in confidence. People respect people who keep their mouth shut with things that they are not theirs to tell. You know, like their own personal secrets and stuff, not keeping their mouth shut.
100%! And you know, 10 years from now, you’ll be the one who’s included in those Carnage compilation voices, and someone will be like, “I want to sound like that guy.”
KG: I can only hope. It’s still very unreal to me that this is dropping.
Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day for this interview!
KG: Thank you so much for interviewing me! This has been super nice, and I hope you like what’s coming out.
