THE DEADBOLT: Was it weird for you to play an older version of Spritle?

FERNANDEZ: Well, the original Spritle was like five-years-old, done by Corinne Orr. Now he’s a forty-year-old man, so I had no problem with that. Naturally, his voice had changed.

THE DEADBOLT: What type of parameters did you have to work within since he was so much older?

FERNANDEZ: None. I saw a sketch of him before it was animated and it was like the old days when you saw an episode and it had to be dubbed. You saw the character but you didn’t try to imitate the voice of the original Japanese. You just came up with an American voice that seemed to fit that character.

THE DEADBOLT: What was the decision behind a robotic Chim Chim for the new series?

FERNANDEZ: I don’t know. More modern, I guess. In the feature film they use a real chimpanzee.

THE DEADBOLT: How did your role in the big screen Speed Racer come about?

FERNANDEZ: My role, I don’t know if it’s still going to be in the film until I see it. I only have a couple of lines and you know that you usually end up on the cutting room floor. So until I see that, I don’t even know if I’ll be in it. I got a call last summer from Warner Brothers offering me a small part as a local announcer. I was flown over to Berlin to do it and I met the Wachowskis, who are very nice guys. They said they grew up running home from school to watch Speed Racer and they’d been fans all of their lives.

THE DEADBOLT: From what you could tell, what was different about the Wachowskis’ approach to the characters and style of Speed Racer in general?

FERNANDEZ: I couldn’t tell. I think with the characters they were going to stick pretty close to the originals. I’m looking forward to seeing it. I have invitations to the Tribeca Film Festival, it’s going to be the last film in the festival and they’ll be closing it with that. I’ll be there with the family. I hope I’m not embarrassed. They’re going to say, "Where were you in the film?"

THE DEADBOLT: Have you been called about the upcoming Astroboy movie?

FERNANDEZ: No. I don’t know anything about it. Well, of course I don’t get any credits for Astroboy. It says written and directed by Fred Ladd, but he farmed out the scripts to be ghosted.

THE DEADBOLT: In your opinion, what makes Japanese animation so special as compared to American properties?

FERNANDEZ: I think it is a lot fuller than American animation. Starting with perhaps - I’m not sure about Astroboy but certainly with Speed Racer. The storylines of course were a lot more complicated and deeper rather than the Saturday morning cartoons. Also, I think the animation was a lot fuller, because when you watch a lot of television animation made in the United States, there’s hardly any movement. The background will move, the head might move once, but I find it very flat.