In the mid-’90s, actor Matthew Sussman auditioned for a variety of roles in a small Japanese anime, where he was eventually cast as a talking cat. That anime would quickly go on to become the highest-grossing media franchise in the world— Pokemon.
“I think that if I had any idea that it would be more than just a momentary popular thing with kids, I would have been completely out of my mind. It didn’t even occur to me,” Sussman tells me. “That it has lasted as long as it’s lasted, at the level it has, is beyond what I would have ever expected. The only thing I can do at this point is have gratitude and delight in the fact that I get to meet people for whom it’s had so much meaning.”
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Busy signing cards and taking photos with fans at the recent London Card Show, I grabbed 30 minutes with the actor to discuss how he got the role, what it was like working on such a massive franchise, and how he came up with Meowth’s legendary voice.
The Early Days Of Pokemon And Conceptualizing Meowth
“It was great fun,” Sussman reminisces. “It’s a long time ago now, so my memories are fond but maybe not as crystal clear as they might have been at one time. I remember very well starting it, auditioning for it, and getting involved. The people were great. Nobody knew at that point that we were going to be such a big phenomenon, and certainly not for decades, so we just had a great deal of fun with it.”
There’s a reason Sussman remembers the audition phase so well: he didn’t just audition for the role of Meowth, but a range of other characters.
“I was reading for a lot of different parts,” Sussman says. “I think I read for virtually every male voice. And we didn’t have video. We had binders full of pictures of the characters and little descriptions of what they did, what they were like. So you would try to tune your voice for the recording to test for the audition, and it would be different for each image.”
It was in the audition period that Sussman’s iconic Meowth was born, and the rest, as they say, is history.
‘I’m going to try something a little crazy. And if you hate it, just tell me, and I’ll change it to something else’.
“I have to take full credit for Meowth’s voice,” he tells me. “I see this character, and it’s described as part of a group that is the antagonists, but they’re harmless. And this character thinks he’s a tough guy, but he’s just this little cat. He’s very obnoxious but in a nice way, charming way.
“So I just came up with an idea in my head. I was like, ‘Okay, he thinks he’s tough, so he might be like one of these old gangster characters from the old movies.’ And then I thought, ‘Okay, but he’s also a nerd and easily bullied.’ I then thought of the comic actor Jerry Lewis, who always had this infantile voice, and I blended the two. I had some lines to work with, and I was trying it out.”
After hashing out ideas in his head, it was Sussman’s turn to step into the reading room.
“I went in to read for the producer, and I said, ‘I’m going to try something a little crazy. And if you hate it, just tell me, and I’ll change it to something else’,” Sussman recalls. Thankfully, they didn’t hate it, and Meowth’s voice was born.
It wasn’t until after he got the part that Sussman realized he’d be voicing the only talking Pokemon in the show at that point.
“Actually, for a while, I didn’t even realize that Meowth was the only Pokemon to speak,” he says. “And then that became clear as we were doing it, especially as they incorporated it into the story. But it’s kind of fun because I got to do a lot of crazy lines, and then everybody else was stuck just doing their little sounds.”
Sussman’s Departure From The Show
Matthew Sussman signing autographs at London Card Show
Despite being credited with creating one of Pokemon’s most iconic voices, Sussman was only part of the show for a total of 37 episodes, something he says was “the nature of the business.”
“I was a stage actor and a film actor,” Sussman tells me. “And then this came along out of circumstance. I was really enjoying it, and, of course, I would have loved to have stayed, but I got a part in a play that I could not turn down. It was a really great stage opportunity. But it meant I had to go to Chicago for three months.”
In today’s age, this wouldn’t have necessarily been the death knell, but things were different in 1998.
“In those days, to do a remote recording session would have been a very big-budgeted thing. It wasn’t like now with the internet,” he says. “So they told me, ‘We’re going to have to have someone else fill in for you for the months that you’re out of town.’”
Initially, Sussman only anticipated his departure to be a temporary one, but as it is with showbusiness, that wasn’t the case.
“I then came back, and the producers said, ‘You know, we love you. We want you to do other things, but we don’t want to switch back again because now the other person is doing the voice. And we don’t want to confuse the kids,’” he says, “Even though, truth be told, the other actor was instructed to follow a template that was sort of based on my creation. So I thought it was a bit of an excuse not just to be bothered switching again. That being said, that’s the nature of being an actor.”
Sussman returned to the show in a variety of smaller roles, including voicing Slowking in Pokemon: The Movie 2000, but he was never able to return to voice his beloved Meowth.
Sussman’s Impact On The World
Following his role in the Pokemon movie, Sussman left the Pokemon scene behind, only returning for his first convention appearance last year. Despite this, queues for signatures at Sussman’s table at London Card Show regularly snaked across the whole showfloor with the actor signing Pokemon cards for a huge number of fans.
“I say this with great sincerity,” he tells me. “When people tell me this was a big part of their childhood or I brought them so much happiness, I’m flattered. I’m really grateful for the appreciation. It’s kind of a little bit that feeling of, ‘Wow, something I did when I was a much younger man has lasted for other people’.”
If somebody wants an autograph of any kind, I just love to take a photograph with them and send them off with a little extra souvenir.
It’s clear early on that Sussman was humble with his success, and this was encapsulated by the fact that he didn’t charge anybody who came to see him for a photograph.
“If somebody wants an autograph of any kind, I just love to take a photograph with them and send them off with a little extra souvenir. It’s literally the least I can do to say thank you back. If you’re coming out and spending a little bit of money and coming to say hello, it’s humbling, actually.”
I ask Sussman if he was ever gifted anything memorable from 4Kids or Pokemon during his time working with them. He shares that while he has a few bits of merchandise, it was actually a gift from a fan that resonated with him the most.
“It was the first convention I had done last year. There was a ten-year-old girl who came up to the table with her dad, and she presented me with a Meowth drawing she had done. I asked her if she wanted me to sign it, and she said, ‘No, that’s for you. That’s a gift, I made it for you.’
“It was the first piece of fan art that someone gave me as a gift, and it came from this adorable kid who was obviously part of a new generation of Pokemon fans. She was just so sweet, and it was so delightful. I have it in its own protective sleeve in my office at home, right in front of my desk. I always see it, and that always brings a smile to my face because it was the first.”
