Wallace & Gromit's voice star on replacing Peter Sallis and honouring the actor's legacy
"Your priority is to get the character right. Worry less about hitting that exact voice match."
BBC/Aardman Animations/Richard Davies/Stuart Collis/Dave Benett/WireImage
- David Opie
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When Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl arrives on Christmas Day, it will be just the sixth film in Britain's favourite stop-motion franchise, but the first to star Ben Whitehead as the voice of Wallace.
Acting legend Peter Sallis — also known for appearing in all 295 episodes of Last of the Summer Wine — originally voiced Wallace in 1989's BAFTA-winning short A Grand Day Out and continued to do so in films and video games throughout the '90s and 2000s, until he retired in 2012. He passed away on 2nd June 2017.
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With Wallace & Gromit now back on screen for the first time since 2008's A Matter of Loaf and Death, Whitehead has now stepped up as the official voice of Wallace, leading the iconic pair's latest adventure, Vengeance Most Fowl, and is keen to look back on his start at Aardman Animations and when speaking to RT.
"I've been working with Aardman since The Curse of the Were-Rabbit in 2003," he says. "I've had that time, and they've given me that time, to develop as a voice actor and as a voice for Wallace, which has been fantastic."
"I was Peter's understudy, initially," he adds. "I didn't audition for the voice of Wallace at all. I just went in as a reading actor. It just so happened I could do the voice. So I focused on getting the voice right, and eventually, developed. It became less of an impersonation and more of a voice, which I think really helped."
Read more:
- Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl review — Get set for top jokes with storytelling as audacious as ever
- Nick Park says Wallace & Gromit is actually 'pro technology' – and this year there's even a 'smart gnome'
- Behind the scenes at Aardman for RT's Christmas cover with Wallace and Gromit
The trick for Whitehead was to honour what's come before, the Wallace that fans know and love, while still putting a unique spin on the character, making it his own.
"It's helped very much by Nick [Park] and Merlin [Crossingham], the directors, who just said to me, 'Look, the character's developing. So look at it that way. Your priority is to get the character right, to get the acting right. Worry less about hitting that exact voice match,' which was a great thing to hear. So I put my own spin on it."
"I tend to improvise a lot around things. I tend to come up with things, but less so on this project. Here, I've been more concerned about actually just getting the tone of what they want to say right."
Peter Sallis at the Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit premiere in 2005 Dave M. Benett/Getty Images
Judging by the overwhelmingly positive reactions to Vengeance Most Fowl (including RT's own review), Whitehead and the rest of the team didn't just get it right – they made a crackin' good show of it, which leads us to one last question of the utmost importance.
We all know Wallace's favourite cheese is Yorkshire Wensleydale, but what would the man behind the clay choose?
"It's a perfectly good question," says Whitehead. "I like a really strong vintage cheddar. It's perfect for me. I went and got some on the weekend and it was the best. A nice, lovely Somerset cheddar cheese. You can't go wrong."
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There you have it. A crackin' choice indeed.
Authors
David OpieFreelance Writer
David Opie is a freelance entertainment journalist who writes about TV and film across a range of sites including Radio Times, Indiewire, Empire, Yahoo, Paste, and more. He's spoken on numerous LGBTQ+ panels to discuss queer representation and strives to champion LGBTQ+ storytelling as much as possible. Other passions include comics, animation, and horror, which is why David longs to see a Buffy-themed Rusical on RuPaul's Drag Race. He previously worked at Digital Spy as a Deputy TV Editor and has a degree in Psychology.
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