Jess Harnell
Jess Harnell is an actor, born 1963.
Jess Harnell is a voice actor and a singer, and the singing matters. Wakko Warner, the role that made him, breaks into song every few minutes, and Animaniacs was written by people who assumed their cast could carry a full musical number while staying in character. He played Wakko from 1993 and came back for the 2020 revival, which is nearly thirty years inside one voice.
The range underneath is the interesting part. The same performer is Captain Hero, the obscene superhero parody at the centre of Drawn Together, and Cedric the bumbling royal sorcerer on Sofia the First, a show for five-year-olds. He was Ironhide in the first three live-action Transformers films, the title character in the Crash Bandicoot games, and Hunter on Road Rovers. He has also announced America's Funniest Home Videos since 1998, the kind of steady job that quietly funds a career of stranger work.
The film credits mostly read additional voices, and that is honest labour rather than a footnote: he is in Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3, A Bug's Life, WALL-E, Up, Minions and both Despicable Me sequels, filling out crowds and rooms and background arguments. The exceptions worth naming are Don in Wreck-It Ralph, Arnold in Casper, and Abraham Lincoln and George Washington in Mr. Peabody and Sherman, three small parts that are unmistakably him once you know what to listen for.
Movies (76)
- WALL·E (2008)
- Toy Story 2 (1999)
- Toy Story 3 (2010)
- The Emoji Movie (2017)
- Up (2009)
- A Bug's Life (1998)
- Migration (2023)
- The Emperor's New Groove (2000)
- The Lorax (2012)
- Despicable Me 2 (2013)
- Wreck-It Ralph (2012)
- Hotel Transylvania: Transformania (2022)
- Lilo & Stitch (2002)
- Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009)
- The Grinch (2018)
- Horton Hears a Who! (2008)
- Despicable Me 3 (2017)
- Minions (2015)
- Casper (1995)
- Surf's Up (2007)
- Once Upon a Studio (2023)
- Mr. Peabody & Sherman (2014)
- Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers (2004)
- TMNT (2007)
- Minions & More 2 (2022)
- The Wild (2006)
- Joseph: King of Dreams (2000)
- Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp's Adventure (2001)
- The Jungle Book 2 (2003)
- Racing Stripes (2005)
TV (55)
- Rick and Morty (2013)
- The Fairly OddParents (2001)
- Animaniacs (1993)
- The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy (2001)
- Samurai Jack (2001)
- Sofia the First (2013)
- Cow and Chicken (1997)
- Duckman (1994)
- Doc McStuffins (2012)
- Drawn Together (2004)
- The Looney Tunes Show (2011)
- Buzz Lightyear of Star Command (2000)
- Recess (1997)
- Animaniacs (2020)
- Duck Dodgers (2003)
- Pepper Ann (1997)
- Batwheels (2022)
- Pound Puppies (2010)
- Chowder (2007)
- The Life and Times of Juniper Lee (2005)
- The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper (1996)
- The 7D (2014)
- I Am Weasel (1997)
- Pinky and the Brain (1995)
- Freakazoid! (1995)
- Muppet Babies (2018)
- Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero (2014)
- The Pink Panther (1993)
- The Mask: Animated Series (1995)
- ChalkZone (2002)
Where to start with Jess Harnell
Animaniacs is the reason to be here, and either version works: the original for the sheer density of the writing, Animaniacs for hearing him walk back into a voice three decades later with no visible seam. Wakko is one of the great cartoon performances and most of it is timing.
At the adult end, Drawn Together is genuinely unpleasant and his Captain Hero is the most committed thing in it. Sofia the First is the opposite pole, with Cedric as a nicely pathetic little villain.
In features, Wreck-It Ralph hands him a proper named part and Casper is the nostalgic pick. After that it becomes a listening game, and Rick and Morty has him buried in there too.
Animaniacs and the Warner Bros cartoons
Wakko Warner is the role his career rests on, and the 2020 revival is remarkable mostly for how completely the voice survived a twenty-three year gap. The Warner Bros animation of the nineties is where his range got established, and it holds up better than almost anything else from that era.
The big-studio animated features
Harnell is one of the reliable ensemble voices in American animation, which means he is in far more films than his credits suggest. Most of this work is incidental characters and additional dialogue, done well enough that you never notice the same actor twice in one film.
The stranger and more adult cartoons
The cable-animation side, where the material is weirder and the performances are louder. Drawn Together is the crudest thing on his resume and he commits to it entirely. Samurai Jack is the opposite, a show built on restraint and long stretches of silence.