One of the remarkable aspects about the new Warner Bros. animated feature, The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie, is that it has no marquee-value celebrities.  No sports stars.  No flavor-of-the-month comedians.  Just two veteran voiceover actors performing the leads:  Eric Bauza and Candi Milo.  And both have an impressive array of credits.

Bauza, whom I interviewed five years ago in promoting Looney Tunes Cartoons , began his career as an animation artist but showed he was facile as a vocal performer. His behind-the-mic adventures launched with Dream Street (1999), The Ripping Friends (2001), and as the lead in El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera (2007). Years later, he has accrued such major roles as Puss in Boots, Dr. Benton Quest, Luke Skywalker, and a plethora of Looney Tunes characters including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tweety Pie, Elmer Fudd, Marvin the Martian, and Foghorn Leghorn.  With Space Jam: A New Legacy (2021) he added Porky Pig to his resume. He voices both Daffy and Porky for The Day the Earth Blew Up.

Candi Milo’s vocal credits began with Darkwing Duck (1991), carrying on as Sweetie Pie in Tiny Toon Adventures (1989), and many roles thereafter. Perhaps she’s best known as Dexter from Dexter’s Laboratory (1997), Nick from Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (2001), and Astro Boy (2003), Cheese, Mrs. Foster, and Coco from Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends (2004).  She essayed the voice of Granny for Space Jam: A New Legacy, and now she voices Petunia Pig for Day the Earth Blew Up.

During our interview, it was amazing to see, and hear, Bauza and Milo switch from their natural voices to their animated roles with hardly a breath in-between.

Candi Milo: This is my first time as Petunia. Eric, remind me when we did the Looney Tunes cartoons for Max—I don’t know if they had any Petunias.

Eric Bauza: They may have had two.

Milo: Yeah. I didn’t do that. So this is a brand new outing for me. And I love that she’s on the big screen because she’s a big screen gal.

Bob Miller: How much creative leeway did you have into the character and did you have to lean into previous performances by other actors to fulfill the role?

Milo: Interesting. Like a little Betty Boop, kind of a little showgirl, and she was a girlfriend, and that’s what she did, and she just loved him. And I started my voice there. And then Pete Browngardt, our creator/director/producer/writer, brought me down into 2020. He said, ‘Have you listened to anybody else do it?’ And I said, ‘No, because many years ago, Jimmy Walker from Good Times told me—we were very good friends and told me—you never ask who got it and you never ask why you didn’t get it.’

They must have liked my audition, but they kept bringing my voice down. And you see it through the film as she relaxes, it just becomes me speaking more heightened. There’s a reason they had picked me. So we found it. I always nod to June Foray, who did not originate this voice of Petunia, but she went toe to toe with Mel Blanc on all of the cartoons that they did. And I just try to think, what would June do? And so I stay in that sassier, smarter, quicker kind of rhythm for Petunia.

Bauza: Always. Always. And Daffy, for that matter, because there is no reason to change what Mel Blanc had originally laid out. And again, I refer to him as the blueprint of Looney Tunes. Not just for voices, but these are well-rounded individuals. We know them like we know our oldest relatives. They’re entering their 90th year. [As Porky] Porky’s 90, and I have no wrinkles. [laughter] I’ll give you my doctor’s number. But, yeah, [As Daffy] thank goodness I have feathers covering my face. Hoo! You don’t want to see what’s going on under here.

Yeah. Again, having studied the characters religiously, every Saturday morning as a kid growing up in the ‘90s renaissance of the Looney Tunes, I would have a VHS.  (Kids, ask your parents what the letters VHS stand for). I would record every Saturday The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show. [singing as Bugs] ‘Overture, Curtains, Lights, this is it, we’ll hit the heights.’ And I would, as a lover of cartoons and as an artist myself, not for the sound, but I would actually pause an image on like, say, What’s Opera, Doc? Or any classic Looney Tunes short, and I would draw from the screen. I would actually have a notepad there and practice my drawing and get the construction of the character right. Meaning, like what they look like in three dimensions. That’s, if the drawing is well constructed, then it’ll be that much easier [for the animator].

Later on I found out I had a knack for doing voices. Class clowns like us were the ones in school that had trouble concentrating on work, but found it very easy to make the kids laugh. Your other classmates. I had a deal with the teachers in high school that if I got my work done on time, they would allow me to go into the main office the next morning and do the morning announcements over the PA system. So I would do Bugs Bunny, Doc. They got carrots in the cafeteria, kids. [chuckle, as Homer Simpson] like a Homer Simpson impression. [as Marge Simpson] Oh, Homer, French fries are bad for your cholesterol. [giggle].

So, I would do these impressions for me, really make myself laugh. But when I would walk back to the class, I would get stopped in the hall by other kids, and they would go, ‘Is that you?’

And I’m like, ‘Yeah, it was me.’ And it would be more fuel for the fire. You don’t really know if the voices that you’re doing are hitting the bullseye, but when you get the laughs that you do, then you want to do more.

Miller: Yeah. Now, the two of you had acted together the first time on [The Adventures of] Puss in Boots?

Bauza: Yeah.

Milo: Oh, my goodness.

Bauza: Yeah, bringing it back to Andrea Romano as being one of the highly decorated voiceover directors of our time. And that was a lot of fun. Kid Pickles over here [indicating Milo].

Oh, boy, Puss in Boots, ‘The kitty litter box is that way.’ Yeah, that’s me at Universal in Orlando now, they built Shrek’s Cottage. And I go, ‘You there doing the pee pee dance. The restroom is that way.’ You know, whatever keeps the lights on in my house, I have to do it.

Miller: Sure. So you guys were already familiar of recording with each other. So I assume that with this movie, you were able to carry the chemistry forward with your characters. Right?

Bauza: Not only do I look up to Mel Blanc, but I look up to Candi, and I see the clues that she lays down in her performance for me to gravitate towards, especially when it comes to Petunia and Porky. And, yeah, if I see Candi maybe once or twice a week, I know I’m doing something right. [laughter]

Milo: Yeah. And I like to appear once or twice a week to let people know I’m still alive, looking for work, still alive, looking for work, still functional, can still speak. But I want you to know that I’m having fun, that’s what I think that is missing from so much of the other aspects of our industry. You know, Bob, people are fighting for this job. There’s no voiceover category for either the SAG Awards or the Academy Awards, so we’re not fighting for anything. I go in praying that I can make him (Eric) laugh. If I can get somebody to laugh with what I said, or I switch up the punctuation to take what’s written and give it a kind of a Milo spin on it, and somebody laughs, my day is made.

Bauza: But that’s also why you are in the driver’s seat, is because they’re hoping that you take their material and deliver and lift it off the page.

Milo: Yeah. That is what that is. And that’s why you have so many times, so many sane people working. I mean, there’s politics of any sort of animation and all of that kind of stuff in casting.  But I think that people know if you need the job done, that you hire people who can get in, can get out. I don’t have any ego. I say one line, I make what the lead makes. I mean, that is what it is. It’s all a day rate. I just go in with a little bit of gratitude of, okay, I’m working. And then a lot of ‘please laugh’ because that’s what I live for. It’s how people clap for Tinkerbell. I’m like, just laugh so that I can live.

Miller: How did you get involved with this project? And did you record during COVID and were you able to record as an ensemble?

Milo: I got involved because I had done the Looney Tunes Cartoons with Max [the streaming service], with this same crowd, Johnny Ryan, Alex Kirwan, Pete Browngardt and everybody that was involved. I did record some stuff during COVID out of my house. I have a little studio and I mean little. I have not been in a crowd group record, but Eric and I discovered that we were on the same Zoom. We were actually in the same building, but in different studios recording together. And that was still at the tail end of protocols where you were still having to check in and tell them that you hadn’t been sick and that kind of stuff. Now production on Looney Tunes has come to a close and we’re hoping that this film brings it back up again. Eric?

Bauza: Yeah, [as Porky] Everything that she said, yeah. It actually is kind of a spinoff of The Looney Tunes Cartoons, the style, the rhythm and the pace of these characters. We were the lucky few to get called back to this party. Again, it’s a 2D hand-drawn animated film, which is a rare occasion these days and something that needs to be celebrated always. If not us, then somebody else.

Miller: So what would you like people to know about your involvement in the project?

Milo: First of all, I feel very lucky to be in that room. I feel very lucky to have been chosen to take this character and bring her to life. I’m very grateful to everybody who put me there. Sounds like an Oscar speech. It isn’t. They don’t do my category. But I want people to take away that women in Looney Tunes are coming into their own era, and I’m happy to shepherd us all in.

Bauza: [as Daffy] I’d like to thank my mom. I’d like to thank… Don’t play me off. No, no. This is not my first rodeo. Daffy Brody, meet Adrian Daffy Duck Brody. Again, it’s history. For me, it’s a miracle that I even get to do this for a living, but to do it forever in the history books. This will be like the first Looney Tunes and hopefully not the last standalone Looney Tunes movie. I hope that, and not only does this one do well, but it does well enough to convince the people in charge to do more because I think if not for the original Looney Tunes, where would we be in animation without them? So it’s a great way to pay homage to the godfathers and the godmothers of animation, but it’s also a fantastic way to introduce them to an all new generation.

Miller: Well, now, what would you say that would entice people to come see the movie in the theaters?

Bauza: Well, it’s bigger than your iPhone, that’s for sure. And it deserves that kind of attention. If we’re talking about 2D hand-drawn animation in the present time, it’s amazing that they were able to wrangle as many talented artists that still do this. And there is no better way to see every detail and hear every sound than in your local movie theater.

Milo: And I would say I am a big anime fan and I love it because I think it’s drenched in color. There’s nothing like Warner Bros. color. Also, you’re not getting flat oval. The hardest thing to draw, besides hands, I believe, is the face. And I think that the rendering and the drawings and the emotions and the time that they give for the audience to catch up to what’s happening on screen in the emotions and the characters, I think it needs to be seen on the big screen because that is the only way that butt cracks and bubblegum can be seen in its totality is on the big screen.

Bauza: [As Daffy] Unless you hire me as a plumber and I fix the leak under your sink.

Milo: Absolutely.

Interview conducted March 4, 2025 via Zoom.

Special thanks to Julia Allee, Alexandra B’Llamas-Reynoso, Dominick Durante, and Ava Intindola of 42West.

• Read a companion article, interviewing Director Peter Browngart and Supervising Producer Alex Kirwan on CARTOON RESEARCH.

The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie

Director: Peter Browngardt
Line Producer: Michael Baum
Supervising Producer: Alex Kirwan
Executive Producers: Peter Browngardt, Sam Register
Written By: Darrick Bachman, Peter Browngardt, Kevin Costello, Andrew Dickman, David Gemmill, Alex Kirwan, Ryan Kramer, Jason Reicher, Michael Ruocco, Johnny Ryan, Eddie Trigueros
Music By: Joshua Moshier
Edited By: Nick Simotas
Art Director: Nick Cross
Production Designer: Aaron Spurgeon
Production Company: Warner Bros. Animation
Released by Ketchup Entertainment
Run Time: 91 Minutes
World premiere: June 11, 2024 at the Annecy Film Festival