Chris Pratt's Original Mario Voice Was Very Tony Soprano And Too Much New Jersey
Chris Pratt's Mario voice has been a hot topic since the first trailer for The Super Mario Bros. Movie debuted. In a recent Entertainment Weekly interview, Pratt revealed that one of his first attempts at the Mario voice got rejected by the film's directors, Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, because it resembled Tony Soprano, the mob boss played by James Gandolfini in HBO’s The Sopranos.
«We tried different things, different voices,» Day added. «Every now and then they would say, 'Charlie, maybe a little less Goodfellas in this one.' I'm like, 'Alright! I think you're wrong, but fine!'… until they landed on something they liked.»
Pratt told Variety last year that he «worked really closely with the directors» to find the Mario voice that made sense for the story. «It's an animated voiceover narrative. It's not a live-action movie. I'm providing a voice for an animated character, and it is updated and unlike anything you've heard in the Mario world before.»
Jelenic and Horvath later defended casting Pratt, telling Total Film Magazine that finding the perfect Mario voice meant finding an actor who could believably portray a plumber from Brooklyn who is «a blue-collar guy from a family of Italian immigrants.»
«To develop the voice, I sampled various Italian and New York accents,» Pratt told Variety. «As the directors and I developed the character, we came to land on a voice that is different than Charles Martinet's version of Mario, but also different from my own voice… My hope is that people will come into the movie with an open mind and that once they see the film, any criticism around Mario's accent will disappear.»
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