page_title: List of SpongeBob SquarePants cast members
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: List of SpongeBob SquarePants cast members / Regular cast / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: Clancy Brown
context_page_description: SpongeBob SquarePants is an American animated television series created by marine biologist and animator Stephen Hillenburg that debuted on Nickelodeon in the United States on May 1, 1999. The regular voice cast consists of Tom Kenny, Bill Fagerbakke, Rodger Bumpass, Clancy Brown, Doug Lawrence, Jill Talley, Carolyn Lawrence, Mary Jo Catlett and Lori Alan. Most one-off and background characters are voiced by Dee Bradley Baker, Sirena Irwin, Bob Joles, Mark Fite and Thomas F. Wilson. Throughout the show's run, it has employed numerous guest stars from many ranges of professions. Repeat guests include Ernest Borgnine, Tim Conway, Brian Doyle-Murray, Marion Ross, John O'Hurley and Michael McKean.
  SpongeBob SquarePants chronicles the adventures and endeavors of the title character and his various friends in the fictional underwater city of Bikini Bottom. Many of the ideas for the show originated in an unpublished, educational comic book titled The Intertidal Zone, which Hillenburg created in the mid-1980s.
context_section_description: SpongeBob SquarePants has featured the voices of Tom Kenny, Bill Fagerbakke,  Rodger Bumpass,  Clancy Brown, Mr. Lawrence, Jill Talley, Carolyn Lawrence, Mary Jo Catlett and Lori Alan since it began. Stephen Hillenburg started developing the SpongeBob concept into a television series in 1996 upon the cancellation of Rocko's Modern Life, which he directed. While creating the show and writing its pilot episode in 1997, he and the show's then-creative director Derek Drymon were also conducting auditions to find voices for the show's characters.
  For the voice of SpongeBob, the main character, Hillenburg approached Kenny, who previously worked with him on Rocko's Modern Life. Drymon said, "Steve [Hillenburg] wanted to find an original sounding voice [for SpongeBob]." Hillenburg utilized Kenny's and other people's personalities to help create the personality of SpongeBob. The voice of SpongeBob was originally used by Kenny for a minor character in Rocko's Modern Life. Kenny forgot the voice initially as he created it only for that single use. Hillenburg, however, remembered it when he was coming up with SpongeBob and used a video clip of the episode to remind Kenny of the voice. Kenny says that SpongeBob's high-pitched laugh was specifically created to be unique.  They wanted an annoying laugh in the tradition of Popeye and Woody Woodpecker. Voice acting veteran Clancy Brown voices Mr. Krabs, SpongeBob's boss at the Krusty Krab. For the character, Brown uses a voice that he describes as "piratey" with "a little Scottish brogue." According to him, his Mr. Krabs voice was improvised during his audition and it was not challenging for him to find the correct voice. Bumpass provides the voice of Squidward Tentacles, and other characters. Squidward was "a very nasally, monotone kind of guy", said Bumpass. He said that the character "became a very interesting character to do" because of "his sarcasm, and then his frustration, and then his apoplexy, and so he became a wide spectrum of emotions".
  Mr. Lawrence had met Hillenburg previously on Rocko's Modern Life. When working on the pilot episode of SpongeBob, Hillenburg invited him to audition for all of the characters. Since other voices had been found for the main cast already, Lawrence started out by voicing a variety of minor characters. This included Plankton, who was initially only set to appear in one episode. Mr. Lawrence stated in an interview with Thomas F. Wilson that Nickelodeon executives told Hillenburg, "'we could stunt-cast this. You know, we could have Bruce Willis do this voice.' And Steve was just like, 'it's Doug [Lawrence], don't you hear it? This is the character! This is the guy!'" Jill Talley, Tom Kenny's wife, voices Karen Plankton. Being a Chicago native, she uses a Midwestern accent for the character. Electronic sound effects are underlaid by the series' audio engineers to create a robotic sound whenever she speaks. Talley and Mr. Lawrence often improvise their characters' dialogue. In 2009, Lawrence called improvisation his "favorite part of the voice over." He elaborated in a 2012 interview, saying, "I always enjoy the back-and-forth. [Talley and I] start to actually overlap so much talking to each other that [the voice directors] have to tell us, 'hey, stop doing that, separate what you're saying!'"
  Fagerbakke voices SpongeBob's best friend, a starfish named Patrick Star. He auditioned for the role after Kenny had been cast as SpongeBob. Fagerbakke said, "Steve is such a lovely guy, and I had absolutely no feeling for the material whatsoever." He described his experience in the audition, saying "I was just going in for another audition, and I had no idea what was in store there in terms of the remarkable visual wit and really the kind of endearing child-like humanity in the show. I couldn't pick that up from the audition material at all. I was just kind of perfunctorially trying to give the guy what he wanted." Carolyn Lawrence provides Sandy Cheeks' voice. When Lawrence was on a sidewalk in Los Feliz, Los Angeles with a friend who knew SpongeBob SquarePan
caption: Voice acting veteran Clancy Brown provides the voice of Mr. Krabs.
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