\n<\/p>\n
For \u201cStar Wars\u201d fans who have seen only the theatrical blockbusters, clone troopers are peripheral figures, at most recalled as the title menace in \u201cAttack of the Clones,\u201d from 2002. But over the past two decades they have become essential to the franchise, the pillar of animated \u201cStar Wars\u201d series including \u201cThe Clone Wars,\u201d \u201cStar Wars Rebels\u201d and most recently, \u201cThe Bad Batch.\u201d<\/p>\n
And in that time one man has been essential to the clones: Dee Bradley Baker, who has voiced them all.<\/p>\n
Not all of the shows \u2014 all of the clones, hundreds of them since getting cast for \u201cStar Wars: The Clone Wars,\u201d which debuted in 2008 with a feature film and an animated series that lasted for seven seasons. Now Baker\u2019s incredibly prolific gig, which also included plenty of non-clone roles, has finally come to an end: \u201cThe Bad Batch,\u201d the \u201cClone Wars\u201d sequel series, concludes its three-season run on Disney+ this week, and there are no plans for more clone shows.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been wonderfully gratifying to go on this journey,\u201d Baker said.<\/p>\n
Baker, 61, has been a voice actor for nearly 30 years, working on series like \u201cDexter\u2019s Laboratory,\u201d \u201cAmerican Dad,\u201d \u201cCodename: Kids Next Door\u201d and \u201cSpace Jam.\u201d Before \u201cStar Wars,\u201d he almost exclusively played funny parts: He voiced every animal in \u201cAvatar: The Last Airbender,\u201d Perry the Platypus in \u201cPhineas & Ferb\u201d and creatures in live-action projects like Sebastian the rat in \u201cThe Suicide Squad.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cI would get cast as more young, energetic and comedic because that\u2019s how I thought of myself,\u201d Baker said. The \u201cStar Wars\u201d shows \u201cpulled so much more from me as an actor because it asked things of me I wouldn\u2019t even think of.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Many of the dramatic and emotional stories early on in \u201cThe Clone Wars\u201d involved the clone troopers. After all, it is easier to kill a replaceable clone, one of millions, than a Jedi who also shows up in the theatrical movies.<\/p>\n
Though the series was on Cartoon Network and aimed at kids, the war stories were intense and put the increasingly hard-bitten clones through one wringer after another. One story arc channels the novella \u201cHeart of Darkness\u201d: The troopers are led by a ruthless Jedi General in a jungle planet, until the general\u2019s constant sacrifice of lives leads to insurgency. One episode was directed by Walter Murch, the Oscar-winning sound designer behind the Vietnam War epic \u201cApocalypse Now,\u201d itself inspired by \u201cHeart of Darkness.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cVoice acting is acting, you need the same skill and the same talent,\u201d said Ashley Eckstein who played Ahsoka Tano<\/a>. (This central \u201cClone Wars\u201d character last year became the center of a live-action show<\/a>, \u201cAhsoka,\u201d starring Rosario Dawson.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt can even be harder and more difficult to do voice acting,\u201d Eckstein continued. \u201cDee and I had to do some deeply emotional and action-packed scenes, and we had to stand still behind a microphone. You can\u2019t act it out or move around. You have to convey all of it just through your voice.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe Clone Wars\u201d was followed by \u201cStar Wars Rebels,\u201d which follows a small Rebel crew that eventually includes a group of surviving clones, and \u201cThe Bad Batch,\u201d centered on a squad of \u201cdefective\u201d clones with even more distinct personalities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n One obstacle to making clone troopers compelling is the challenge of differentiating them. (They are, after all, clones.) There were small attempts from the beginning to make them distinct from a design standpoint. The creators gave them colorful armor and insignia to contrast them with the Empire\u2019s more well-known stormtroopers, according to Dave Filoni, who was supervising director and an executive producer of \u201cThe Clone Wars\u201d and is now the chief creative officer of Lucasfilm.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were able to express their individuality, where stormtroopers are individuals taken into service and stripped of their personality and identity,\u201d Filoni wrote in an email. Still, a look is little without the voice and personality that goes with it, and Baker\u2019s performance was a big reason the characters became so central.<\/p>\n The first test to see if Baker voicing all the clones would work came in \u201cRookies,\u201d the fifth episode of \u201cThe Clone Wars.\u201d The episode came from an idea by George Lucas, who wanted to do an episode of just clones, and follows a group of cadets who come together as a squad and stave off a droid invasion.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n As Henry Gilroy, the show\u2019s head writer, recalled, \u201cThat recording session was actually a revelation, for we realized that we could write anything for the clones to do with story and character and Dee would execute to perfection.\u201d<\/p>\n The clones soon went from being one-off characters with little personality to proper members of the expanded cast, with their own emotional and dramatic arcs that carried on throughout the show\u2019s seven seasons and into \u201cThe Bad Batch.\u201d (The character Echo is the last surviving member of that rookie squad.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n All the clones are based, fittingly, on the same voice: the one Baker created to play Captain Rex, the second-in-command to Anakin Skywalker and his closest friend in \u201cThe Clone Wars,\u201d after Obi-Wan Kenobi. Baker would settle on one or two defining qualities for each clone \u2014 rank, age, attitude, quirk \u2014 to guide his performances. He used to record one clone at a time, going through an entire script with one and then doing the same with the next and so on until an episode was done.<\/p>\n But as \u201cThe Clone Wars\u201d developed more complex arcs, he took a faster, more daunting approach. \u201cI would start to play all of them and just jump back and forth,\u201d Baker said. \u201cI just read through the scenes straight through as if they\u2019re characters playing out a scene, but it\u2019s just me going from one voice to the other.\u201d<\/p>\n Michelle Ang, who stars in \u201cThe Bad Batch\u201d as Omega, is amazed by this process. \u201cHe can not only perform the different personalities, but hold five different viewpoints of all the \u2018Bad Batch\u2019 characters and argue for each one,\u201d she said. \u201cIt feels like there are four distinct people I\u2019m working with.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Eckstein called Baker a mentor, comparing their relationship to that of Ahsoka, her young Padawan character, and Baker\u2019s seasoned Captain Rex. \u201cHe taught me the ways of the Force, the ways of voice acting,\u201d she said. When she too was asked to play multiple characters in the same episodes, \u201cI learned from Dee, who is brilliant at doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n Baker, who started out in comedy, said improv helped train him to embrace the odd vocalizations \u201cStar Wars\u201d shows can require and to move fluidly between characters.<\/p>\n \u201cI am not so much prepared as I\u2019m ready,\u201d he said. \u201cYou want to be open and available to steer this and configure that in a way that the writers you\u2019re working with want things to go. You can\u2019t prepare for it. You get that in the immediate human connection of now, and that is inherently improvisational.\u201d<\/p>\n The end of \u201cThe Bad Batch\u201d is the end of an era, even if other \u201cStar Wars\u201d roles eventually come Baker\u2019s way, like the upcoming video game \u201cStar Wars Outlaws.\u201d Though characters like Ahsoka Tano live on in live-action, and Captain Rex made a cameo in \u201cAhsoka,\u201d \u201cThe Bad Batch\u201d characters were the last characters that Lucas, the \u201cStar Wars\u201d mastermind who is no longer involved with the franchise, had direct input on. The significance of this isn\u2019t lost on Baker.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve loved \u2018Star Wars\u2019 since I was a kid,\u201d he said. \u201cNothing can be more fun than to play in the universe that captured your imagination as a kid.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n