Back in February, Nickelodeon hit upon the ingenious idea to have SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick Star provide comedic commentary live during its telecast of Super Bowl LVIII. On the chance you didn’t catch the cultural event, the broadcast was a smash hit generating countless memes. Nickelodeon hopes to capture the same magic tomorrow by having SpongeBob and Patrick host Kids’ Choice Awards, making history as the first time animated characters have hosted a full-length awards show.
Ahead of the Kids’ Choice Awards, The Beat had the chance to sit down with Tom Kenny and Bill Fagerbakke, the voices behind SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick Star respectively to discuss not only performing live as their iconic characters but celebrating the 25th anniversary of Nickelodeon’s marquee character.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Taimur Dar: I’m tempted to assume having SpongeBob and Patrick host the Kids’ Choice Awards was based on the incredible reception to their Super Bowl broadcast back in February. Can you say if that’s true or this planned way in advance?
Bill Fagerbakke: [Patrick voice] Well, we’re calling it the Kids’ Choice Bowl!
[Laughter}Tom Kenny: That Super Bowl appearance with SpongeBob and Patrick calling the game along with Nate Burleson and Noah Eagle, was a big gamble for Nickelodeon. There were a lot of ways that could have gone wrong. And it went right in pretty much every way. It was kind of nerve-wracking. It worked so well that the network [wanted] to do more of this. The Super Bowl was kind of the dry run. [SpongeBob voice] Water would be nice.
Fagerbakke: The Kids’ Choice Awards makes more sense.
Kenny: The Super Bowl was just crazy to be at that event and something of that magnitude and how many eyeballs were watching. One of the best parts for us is how many people we’ve talked to who said, “I don’t usually watch the Super Bowl” or “My kids don’t usually watch the Super Bowl with me.” There was something for everybody. I heard from some people who were having Super Bowl parties and the hardcore football guys eventually got won over by the sheer weirdness of it.
Dar: I think the Super Bowl is a testament to the great chemistry you’ve developed over the decades. What’s the secret for you as performers?
Fagerbakke: First of all, I checked out of chemistry in high school and into weight lifting.
[Laughter]Kenny: I bet one of those things comes in real handy. Chemistry, you either have it or you don’t. We’re just actors and they choose who you work with. The chemistry is just there or it isn’t. It’s like a dating app. You can’t swipe left. If Bill and I didn’t like each other it would be 25 years of being shackled to somebody I didn’t like. Thankfully that didn’t happen. Chemistry can work two ways. Either it can result in something amazing or a really big explosion that will destroy everyone.
Fagerbakke: And sometimes the toxic can produce good content. Hopefully this is a happy chemistry. I played team sports when I was younger. When I started studying theater, I found the two were very connected in terms of the ensemble experience of what you’re working towards. The better your cast members do the better you do. I love working with people who actually listen to each other and it’s a much better environment for everything.
Kenny: That’s a good point. The team aspect is very important to the show. Team SpongeBob is just full of A-Game top of the line people. The cast obviously has that in spades. But it’s everybody on the production. The artists, musicians, engineers. Everybody is on the same page and loves what they’re doing. We feel lucky to be working on SpongeBob that has such a great run. It’s a very rare bird in the business.
Fagerbakke: A lot of the young people coming into the fold as writers and storyboard artists very often were heavily influenced by the show growing up and maybe inspired by the show. There’s this extra layer of creative joy and connection.
Kenny: Our team is a mix of the old dogs there from the beginning and this new blood who grew up loving SpongeBob. It’s fun to be around and adjacent to that. We get energy from that energy.
Dar: After the passing of Paul Reubens, it only recently dawned on me how much overlap there is between his iconic Pee-wee Herman character and SpongeBob. Can you comment on influence on Pee-wee on the SpongeBob franchise?
Fagerbakke: Beyond the movie, I never saw the show. I just heard about it. I can’t say it influenced me aside from, going as far back as Captain Kangaroo, inanimate objects would be animated characters. There’s the value of that in the way SpongeBob will connect to items.
Kenny: I knew Paul and loved Pee-wee from the first time I saw those specials which were more adult. It was a weird, twisted version of a ‘50s or ‘60s kids show. A little more scatological than the Saturday morning show which also snuck in some very funny entendres in there. I loved Pee-wee from the beginning when I used to watch him on the David Letterman Show. Pee-wee’s Playhouse was such a creative show. There was nothing like it on Saturday morning at the time. That was way before I had kids. But it was during my ‘20s when I would be coming home at 10am and wondering what’s on.
Fagerbakke: Thomas!
[Laughter]Kenny: I remember when Stephen Hillenburg pitched the character of SpongeBob to me, he mentioned Pee-wee as one of the building blocks. That was before Pee-wee’s comeback. Pee-wee’s definitely part of SpongeBob’s DNA. Pee-wee’s Big Adventure is probably the movie my 21-year old daughter has seen the most times in her life. I’m so grateful for that movie. People tell me that SpongeBob is “this” for them. When my daughter was having a hard day or going through something trying, whenever I would walk in and she was watching Pee-wee’s Big Adventure I knew she had a tough day. That was her medicine. SpongeBob is like that for people now. I heard that all the time. A great example of this, a friend of mine said he went to see the movie Oppenheimer. He said there were three grown women sitting in front of him in the theater and at the end, he hears one of the women say to her friend, “I need to go home and watch some SpongeBob.” Forget Barbenheimr! We’ve got Spongenheimer happening!
Fagerbakke: We might need the medical community to study that! I love when I hear millennials say they check into a hotel in a stranger city and just turn on some SpongeBob to feel comfortable.
Dar: It feels like only yesterday we were celebrating the 20th anniversary. What can you tease for the 25th anniversary this year and beyond?
Kenny: I’m with you that the anniversaries just fly by. [Spongebob voice] “What’s funnier than 24? 25!” We’ve been working so hard. There’s so much happening. There are multiple series and there’s a Sandy Cheeks oriented movie dropping on streaming in August
Fagerbakke: And he’s directing all of it.
Kenny: Yeah, I voice direct it. I’m basically directing traffic like the dancing traffic cop. [Laughs]. There’s so much and we’re grateful there’s still such an appetite. The team that puts it together is the best in the business. I feel really excited to have fans see the content that we’re generating. I’m a lifelong animation freak and I’m just proud to be one of the last remaining cartoons that still cartoony with old school crazy squash and stretch. There’s no way you can make SpongeBob in live-action. The Broadway show managed to pull it off.
Fagerbakke: Hillenburg instilled his love for early animation and all those dynamics are right in the foundation of our show. That just gets more valuable as we go along.
Kenny: Steve loved classic animation and classic comedy but he also liked surreal animation that wasn’t story driven. A lot of the animation that he did wasn’t story or character. It was just imagery. I think that comes through in SpongeBob as well with the graphic psychedelic-ness of it is part of the mix as well as the music.
Fagerbakke: The pilot with the steel guitar and Tiny Tim song. What a perfect, brilliant choice.
Kenny: Who was more of a human SpongeBob than Tiny Tim? Him and SpongeBob are kind of the same guy. Man children that dance around and sing and don’t care what anybody thinks of them.
Fagerbakke: I used to see him at my bank in the ‘80s. He was a big guy.
Kenny: They should have called him Large Tim or XL Tim. I opened for him a couple of times as a standup in Deep Ellum, Texas. He was great. This was before the SpongeBob pilot. It’s kind of weird that my destiny and Tiny Tim’s have kind of intertwined. Touches like that, Steve just knew what to do. This mélange of stuff just worked.
Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards 2024 airs live on Saturday, July 13, at 8:00 p.m. (ET/PT).
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