Internet briefly thinks it's identified Mario's new voice actor - until he says no

eurogamer.net:

It's been a dramatic day for internet-sleuthing Mario fans; with Nintendo still tightlipped on who'll take over the role of the iconic plumber following Charles Martinet's acension to «Mario Ambassador», a fresh leak appeared to have finally revealed video gaming's current biggest secret. However, the actor in question — one Mick Wingert — has now thrown a bit of a spanner in the works by declaring that, no, it's not actually him.

To rewind a bit, all this started when (thanks VGC) an anonymous 4chan forum user shared images and details said to be from a US kiosk demo for Switch's soon-to-be-released Super Mario Bros. Wonder. Some of those images revealed previously unseen areas of the game, suggesting the leak was, in fact, legit — suddenly making an accompanying 20-strong unverified list of Mario Wonder voice actors a lot more interesting.

Now relatively sure of the list's veracity, internet sleuths began combing through the names — unhelpfully provided with no hint of the roles they're playing in-game — trying to figure out if one them might just be the new voice of Mario. To cut a long story short, after removing returning Mario series voice actors, indentifiable foreign language actors, and female actors, only two names remained: Kevin Afghani and Mick Wingert.

Sharp-eared Mario hunters soon discovered that Afgahni's online demo reel featured vocal work sounding extremely close to the English voice of the Wonder Flower. Assuming Afghani wasn't on doubling-up duties, that would just leave Wingert — who seemed perhaps the more likely candidate for a job that might also include voicing the likes of Wario, Luigi, and more, given his extensive cartoon and video game work over the years (in 2023 alone, he's appeared in