The Boy And The Heron’s Michael Sinterniklaas Wants To Not ‘Make The Obvious Choice’
If you’d ask Michael Sinterniklaas, The Ventures Bros. star would probably tell you that he’s nothing special. But just taking a peek at his filmography, it’s obvious that he has been doing something right throughout his career.
With nearly 300 credits to his name, Sinterniklaas has voiced characters in TV shows, movies, and even video games. Sinterniklaas is perhaps best known for his roles as Dean Venture in The Venture Bros. and as Leonardo in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
In 2023, Sinterniklaas directed the English-language dub for The Boy And The Heron, the newest film from anime icon Hayao Miyazaki. He was responsible for a cast including Christian Bale, Dave Bautista, Gemma Chan, Willem Dafoe, Karen Fukuhara, Mark Hamill, Robert Pattinson, and Florence Pugh.
We sat down with Sinterniklaas to discuss his prolific voice acting career and what working on The Boy And The Heron meant to him.
Michael Sinterniklaas On His Voice
Matthew Swigonski: So when was the first time you went, ‘Hey, you know what, I’m actually pretty good at this voice acting thing?’
Michael Sinterniklaas: I’ll let you know when it happens. I mean, I don’t think I’m one of the more extraordinary voice actors in the world. For me, I try to just be honest with the moment. I don’t think as much about changing the voice. I mean, I have done other voices and I don’t sound like certain things.
The animation director for Ninja Turtles could not recognize me on The Venture Bros., which he really enjoyed. He would ask me every week, ‘Which one were you again!?’ It’s not that hard. How do you not know? You got a 50/50 shot.
But like most people, I don’t love hearing my own voice. So as long as I don’t hear myself in the role, then I can put up with it. But I don’t typically love hearing myself. I just try to transcend myself as much as possible while bringing my personal experience so that I can ground a performance in truth. But I’m focused on certain moments and I hope I don’t annoy people as I do myself with the sound of my voice.
Matthew Swigonski: I think you’re being way too modest. What would be the first step in bringing that honesty to any character you play?
Michael Sinterniklaas: Well, fortunately for me, this is something that came up in a recent acting workshop that I took. I never wanna be stagnant. I kind of live my life a little more difficultly by not assuming I know anything.
Even though I’ve been directing for well over [lowers voice] 20 years, I still think there’s another way to do it. I look at my old work and go, ‘I could have tightened this up. This could feel different.’ And because tastes and times are always changing. I want to be able to tell relevant stories in a relevant way.
So I don’t feel like I know anything. Therefore, I just have to be as available at the moment as possible. And then it’s not incumbent on me to invent anything. It’s incumbent on me to be available to let the piece speak for me. I don’t want it to be the Michael show. In this case, it’s the Hayao Miyazaki show.
The only truth we know is our lived experience. And so I want to bring the reality of something rather than the sound of something. I’m not just trying to make voices. I’m really trying to find the history of a character and then let that form the moment. But it’s my hope that if I’m honest, that it touches something personal in you.
Not Making The Obvious Choice
Matthew Swigonski: When you’re dubbing a character, is it challenging to find your voice? Or do you feel like you’re comfortable stepping into the shoes of a character that someone has already voiced?
Michael Sinterniklaas: Well, if it’s a dub I usually think they sound cooler. But if it’s an original, I am the voice and I hope I’m serving what the original [creator] thought. It’s weird, your question sparks this idea that I had.
I came to originals with Ninja Turtles, which was the first big series I’d booked after having done a bunch of anime. But I kind of cut my teeth on anime where a lot of the choices are defined for you. You can see the level of projection. ‘How far away is the person I’m talking to? Are they in front of me or behind me? And when I’m following you, it’s for 10 seconds or one second?’ You know all those things. When I got into the booth for Ninja Turtles, I was like, ‘Ohhhh, I’ve got to make this up!? And that’s liberating, potentially.
But since I was a dorky kid who had too much Dean Venture in him, I was always wanting to do the right and good thing. Be a good boy, be a good actor, and do the right thing. Do the correct thing. We had Patrick Warburton on The Venture Bros.. And he came into my booth in LA. I was so excited to get to watch him work. And immediately, he was doing an action scene as Brock Samson, and he wasn’t doing action stuff. He wasn’t being aggressive or whatever, all these things.
And he kind of had a conversation with Chris McCulloch, who created the show. And they came up with something else that wasn’t necessarily on the page. At first, I was shocked. I was horrified. ‘Did he read the script!? He’s coming in here doing something totally different than what it clearly needs! It needs him to say, ‘I don’t need another one of your excuses, Monarch!’’ And to threaten him holding a knife to his throat. But in the end, the take that’s in the show, in season two, I think it’s “Hate Floats.” He literally yawns the line. Almost like ‘I don’t get a shit about you, you’re not a threat to me because I’m so badass.’
And in that moment, when I saw him work, what he came up with was so much funnier. I went, ‘Michael, stop being a good boy. Don’t limit yourself to what you think they want. Be open to the vastness of possibilities and find something more extraordinary.’ Patrick Warburton is great. And he didn’t just make the obvious choice. That was a huge lesson for me.
Matthew Swigonski: So is Patrick the same in person as he appears to be in movies and shows?
Michael Sinterniklaas: If you mean like hot and charming, then absolutely. Yeah, he’s so smooth and lovely. And he’s so funny. He’s hilarious. And he’s also super nice.
Matthew Swigonski: Some people have it all, you know?
Michael Sinterniklaas: Yeah, Chris [McCulloch] talked about being on set and when he shot the Apple commercials. The ‘I’m a Mac and I’m a PC commercials.’ They had just recorded someone else who was like a one-off PC guy. And it hadn’t gone smoothly.
Then Patrick walks on set and says, ‘Hey how is everybody doing?’ And everybody had gone from a stressful session to like, ‘Oh, I feel good. I feel like my old buddy just showed up. Like he’s my big brother who I love and I want to impress.’ And he just put everyone at ease. Look at him, he’s so naturally smooth. He’s got that rizz as the kids say. Please don’t ever let me say that word again.
Getting Lost in Hayao Miyazaki’s Worlds
Matthew Swigonski: I will not. To you, what separates Miyazaki films from other anime? What elevates his stories above, say just a routine anime story?
Michael Sinterniklaas: Wow! Well, I think his ability to convey magic is kind of unparalleled. I mean, he’s a standard for so many others. And I think what really kind of fundamentally comes down to me, in my experience, is that he’s so fluid in his ability to speak from his unconscious. We get to receive his work on all these personal sort of unexplored levels. So he can make something resonate in you, which shines a light on something that maybe you haven’t examined or explored. But you don’t always recognize why that is.
I’ve had the most interesting conversations with people coming out of his movies. And even this one, like maybe particularly this one. The first reaction I get is, ‘I need to see it again. I don’t think I got it all.’ But then they go into what they did get and it’s never the same twice.
It is a Rorschach test. Because he’s so fluent in his subconscious. In animation, everything is a decision. Any piece of dirt, the way people bounce and stretch is a 2D choice and has to be considered and rendered framed by friends. So to be so fluid in his ability to speak to our unconscious from his, I think it’s almost inconceivable. And because of that, it touches us in our most personal places, whether or not we intended to let it in or not.
Matthew Swigonski: The Boy and The Heron follows that typical Miyazaki path of creating worlds with so many complex layers. Did that factor into your job at all? Was it intimidating?
Michael Sinterniklaas: You know, it’s funny because of course it was intimidating. But what that did to me fundamentally was inspire me to rise to the occasion. And because of his intimacy and his transparency, I had to check myself to make sure I wasn’t imposing my will or my interpretation on his work. I really wanted it to be able to come through as his voice, his moments, his question marks. So that the audience could have the same experience in English that the Japanese audience would have. And then be able to spark something for themselves.
