When Bill Fagerbakke first auditioned for the role of Patrick Star in SpongeBob SquarePants over two decades ago, he had no idea what he was getting into.
“There was Stephen Hillenburg, this just unassuming, quiet guy, really obviously very bright, sitting there with the little cassette recorder,” Fagerbakke recalls. “And he showed me pictures of the characters, which were delightful of course, but I didn’t really know what was going on. I didn’t really understand it…I frankly just saw it as just some weird preschool kind of Strawberry Shortcake or something.”
Several months later, Fagerbakke received the pilot episode in the mail: Help Wanted. He sat down to watch. “And I was just overcome with delight.”
“Just the coin dropped, and I finally got it. I saw all this incredible wit, and creativity, and rhythm, and color, and the depth of the culture of it. Man, it was just, it was such a discovery for me..and then at that point, you just think, ‘Well, I hope this thing gets a chance,’ because you never know.”
It is now apparent, of course, that SpongeBob got its chance and more. Over two decades, more than 200 episodes, 13 seasons, a number of movie and video game adaptations, and a pile of awards later, Fagerbakke’s goofy, empty-headed sidekick character is now getting his own spin-off: The Patrick Star Show. Fagerbakke is thrilled.
Remembering Stephen Hillenburg
Fagerbakke says it’s hard to precisely pin down what it is about SpongeBob SquarePants that has captivated audiences for so long. He names a number of people central to its creation and continuation over the years, including his fellow voice actors, Derek Drymon, Aaron Springer, and members of the crew and art teams he doesn’t normally get to work as closely with.
“Their creativity and their talent just knocks you out when you see the script,” he says. “But so many things have to fall in place, because at the end of the day, it is a collaboration between a lot of people. And Stephen cast it, I think, so perfectly. Oh my God, Tom Kenny, it started with Tom. He recognized the importance of that. And he’d cast Tom, that was the first thing he did once he moved into the whole casting process, was he wanted that voice to be right.”
But at the heart of it, Fagerbakke keeps coming back to Hillenburg. From the start, he says Nickelodeon “handled [SpongeBob] really well,” giving Hillenburg the freedom to develop SpongeBob organically, season by season. Hillenburg eventually resigned as showrunner following the third season, though he remained around as an executive producer and continued to offer advice alongside occasional, more direct involvement. He passed away in 2018.
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“What a unique, wonderful person he was,” Fagerbakke says of Hillenburg. “Really brilliant. And obviously, I’m certainly eternally grateful, but he also, in a way, affected our culture, managing to mix his love for the ocean and for the creatures of the ocean with his love for animation. It’s pretty amazing.
“Stephen was able to keep that sense of cleverness and innocence at the same time, which is extraordinarily difficult. But he did it, because of who he is. And the people running the show, the people writing the show, Vincent Waller and Marc Ceccarelli, I think they really honor Steve’s creation. They’re really determined to represent that. And they do a great job.”
Patrick, the star
Fagerbakke tells me that The Patrick Star Show poses an interesting new challenge for his character. Patrick, he says, has always existed and been funny and interesting in his relationship to SpongeBob. And while SpongeBob does appear in The Patrick Star Show, ultimately it’s not about the yellow square dude. It’s about Patrick and his relationships with his family, his friends, and the world of his imagination.
But Fagerbakke says he feels the writing team handled Patrick’s independence splendidly.
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“I was very concerned, just because it was hard for me to imagine how [The Patrick Star Show] would work,” he says. “But God, they created this thing. And it’s just every time I see what’s happened with the Patrick Show, I’m just struck by it as…It strikes me as a writer’s delight, because it has such a freewheeling narrative and changes willy-nilly, and that’s always really great. I think it takes a lot of courage to write like that. You have to trust your audience will go with you as you suddenly take a right turn and go into a different animation style. But it’s wonderful. I’m very proud of it.”
Fagerbakke is full of praise for his fellow actors, too, calling SpongeBob voice actor Tom Kenny a “national treasure” and expressing delight at being able to finally work more closely with Jill Talley, who normally plays Karen (Plankton’s computer wife) in SpongeBob SquarePants. Patrick and Karen rarely interact, but in The Patrick Star Show, Talley voices Patrick’s sister Squidina, meaning the two are constantly able to play off one another.
“She’s fantastic,” he says. “[Squidina] is such a great character. Squidina is just delightful, and she’s the producer of the Patrick show. And they have this great relationship where she was the little sister, but she’s always kind of playing the adult. And then the parents are voiced by Tom Wilson and Cree Summer, both of whom I’ve worked with before in the past, and are really deeply talented people, and Dana Snyder [GrandPat].”
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Though Fagerbakke has obviously finished recording the entirety of The Patrick Star Show’s first season, he hasn’t yet gotten to watch all the episodes the whole way through, so he wasn’t able to pick a favorite episode just yet (though he did call out the recent episode “Lost in Couch” for its different animation style twists and turns as being particularly “fantastic”).
And he does have a favorite relationship to portray in The Patrick Star Show, alongside Patrick’s relationships with SpongeBob and Squidina — and it’s not what you’d expect.
“This is kind of an odd thing, but it’s Patrick and the space, because it’s in his bedroom and he’s got all this weird stuff. So I would anticipate that if we did do more of the Patrick Show, that would be a fun thing to really further develop his relationship with his space. And there’s a time machine, and there’s just a lot of stuff that’s going on in his room that I would like to have more fun with. But, there are untold riches in the brains of every one of those writers, and I just wait with relish to see what comes next.”
The one big downside of Fagerbakke’s work on The Patrick Star Show, he says, was the fact that the entire show was recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic. That situation understandably meant everything had to be created remotely, and he wasn’t able to play off his fellow actors in quite the same way he was used to.
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“I was so bummed,” he says. “Obviously as actors, we’re always hoping something gets picked up, etc, that it gets renewed or whatever. And I got to say, the primary reason I want that to happen with the Patrick Show is I want to be in a room with all these guys, because they’re so good.
“I know a lot of voiceover actors, they can just do it wherever they are, in whatever circumstance. And I do my best in that regard, but there’s something about being in the room with your fellow performers, and you’re telling the story, because everything they do contributes to what you’re doing. It all relates to each other, and it informs me. And we’ve done a little bit of group recording through the Zoom, etc, but it’s weird. You’re in this weird freaking physical relationship with this laptop that’s stacked up on top of a bunch of junk. Because I record on my feet, and I like to use my body a lot.
“And it’s just odd. Wah wah wah, I’m lucky to have the job, sure as shit. But I do look forward to — excuse my language — I do look forward to returning to the studio with my other actors.”
Patrick, Perfected
Over 200 episodes later, Fagerbakke is still having a blast with the twists and turns the series and spinoffs have taken over the years. But for him, no episode of SpongeBob has yet managed to top Help Wanted in his heart.
“It’s in so many ways, a perfect standalone cartoon. It’s eight minutes long, and it has such a rich feel, an immediately recognizable cast of characters, and relationships, and types. And it features what remains my favorite line in the entire run of the series, which is from Squidward, because he’s anxious that he sees his annoying neighbor applying for a job where he works. And then to his relief, he hears Mr. Krabs clearly sending SpongeBob on a fool’s errand, because he’s not taking the application seriously.”
In the episode Fagerbakke is referring to, Mr. Krabs sends SpongeBob to find “a hydrodynamic spatula with port and starboard attachments and turbo drive,” an item which shouldn’t exist at all. (Of course, in pure cartoon silliness, SpongeBob will eventually find one at the local Barg’N-Mart).
“Squidward is so relieved that clearly Mr. Krabs does not want to hire him. So as soon as SpongeBob runs off, he goes up to Mr. Krabs and goes, [here Fagerbakke jumps into Squidward’s voice for his rendition of the line] ‘A hydro-what? Mr. Krabs, you’re horrible.’
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“It floored me. That line just killed me because it was such an adult sophistication in the humor, but yet it would still fit completely within this world. And then the use of that wonderful Tiny Tim song [Livin’ in the Sunlight, Lovin’ in the Moonlight] as SpongeBob is making Krabby Patties for all the anchovies was just delightful. And again, for me, such an epiphany of realizing what I had stumbled into there.
“You know, in your position as a young animator, you don’t know if you’re going to get another chance, and you don’t know if this thing’s going to get picked up. And [Hillenburg] had been working on these characters for a long time. This had been something he’d been cooking up in his mind for a long time. And boom, then Nickelodeon says, ‘Yeah, we’ll go ahead and produce that pilot.’ And you can tell, every frame of it is perfect, and he put so much of his heart and soul into that. It’s a great testament, I think, to his passion.”
After all these years, Fagerbakke still adores Patrick, a love that shines through at every moment during our interview. I ask if there’s any untrodden ground for Patrick that he’d like to eventually explore with the character, and he jokingly hops into character for a moment to say, “I want to do a musical!” before telling me truthfully, no. He just looks forward to the next episode, whatever it may be.
What does Fagerbakke love so much about Patrick, after all this time?
“I love his raw honesty,” he says. “He’s utterly guileless. He’s pure in his own way. He’s kind of like a modern-day Caliban from the Tempest, Shakespeare’s Tempest, which I actually played a long, long, long, long time ago. He’s very much of the earth. He’s a base creature, and his loyalty and devotion to SpongeBob, and the simplicity of his moment-to-moment whim, it’s really great to play.
“And this is all just nuts. It makes no sense to play a character this long. And I have never, ever gotten tired of it. It entertains me so much. He makes me laugh. And it remains a manner of therapy for me when I go in and I let Patrick take the wheel. And next thing I know, I’m walking out of the studio feeling exhausted, but elated.”
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Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.
