Meet Glenn Howerton and Sam Richardson who are playing Fred Jones and Norville Rogers on Velma, out now on HBO Max.
Chris Im: How would you describe your portrayal of Fred and what will audiences enjoy about him?
Glenn Howerton: It’s just looking at the characters through a different lens. If you look at it differently, you’re like was Fred really the leader of this group of people? Should he have been? I think these are maybe questions that the show is having fun exploring. Certainly, I think it’s fun to watch a guy who so clearly is not a leader but probably still weirdly thinks of himself as a leader, who is so immature, so entitled, so petulant. It’ll be fun to see how he evolves to become even the person that we grew up with. But certainly, he’s never the smartest person in the crew. But he did dress well.
Chris Im: It’s really hard to picture Shaggy without Scooby by his side, but that’s who you’ll be portraying on Velma. How did you approach this new take on Shaggy without his best friend by his side?
Sam Richardson: Well, I think this is a fun chance for an audience to [see an] reimagining about all of [these characters]. But you say, Norville/Shaggy is a character unto himself. So, it’s a nice chance to meet this character [before he] becomes part of an iconic duo. Who was Shaggy? Who was Norville?
Chris Im: Follow-up question of both of you, what was your favorite part about being the voice actors for such iconic characters?
Glenn Howerton: I just like doing animation because it’s just something so freeing about people not being able to see me. Sam and I were talking about this before, we’re both very musical people. And the fact that we knew that the show was not meant to feel like the original Scooby-Doo. Also knowing that Mindy and Charlie trusted me to do my thing with it. I always just come at it from the philosophy of just having fun. If I’m having fun, it’s usually working.
Sam Richardson: Yeah.
Chris Im: Do you just echo the same sentiments, Sam?
Sam Richardson: I really do. Yeah, it’s fun to get to work in the booth because for the same reason, you can go back and do a line read 5 times, 5 different ways. When you’re acting in person, unless it’s a cut off, one shot and you’re just redoing a line, chances are [it’s dependent on] how you’re doing it in sequence with all the other lines, how it’s going to be and in relation to the other actors. But in a booth, on your own, you can change inflection when you can, you can change where you hit the joke or what word you focus on, and really pinpoint that without worrying about what your face is doing or what your body is doing, [and just] focus on the on the performances, which are really fun way to perform.
Interviews edited for clarity.
