Considering the popularity of anime and the wizarding world of Harry Potter, the Walt Disney Company is joining the bandwagon with Disney Twisted—Wonderland. In a realm of fairy tales, the magical Night Raven College is divvied up into dormitories honoring seven classic Disney villains: The Queen of Hearts (Alice in WonderlandSnow White), Hades, and Maleficent, where students learn all about manipulating reality and engage in challenges of one-upsmanship. A human from Japan, Yuu (or you as the player in the mobile game version) is somehow trapped in this school. His biggest hope in returning to our world is with the headmaster, the flamboyant Dire Crowley.

Crowley is performed by J. Michael Tatum, a Texas native who trained in theater and segued to voiceover acting for Funimation. Twenty years later, he moved to Los Angeles for wider opportunities in anime and video games, which so far number over 200 roles.

Bob Miller: What are your most significant roles that you’ve done prior to Dire Crowley?

J. Michael Tatum: Oh, well, I’ve been in the business for about 20 years, so it’s not easy to pick. But if I had to think of the ones that have endured the longest out of those 20 years, definitely Sebastian [Michaelis] from Black Butler, which just so happens to be a creation of Yanba Toboso, the same mangakan [a person who creates manga, a Japanese style of comic books] that gave us Twisted – Wonderland. And other than that, I play Erwin Smith in Attack on Titan. I’m more recently Sid Highwind in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and many, many, many others. Every time I’m asked to name a bunch of characters, I’m always gonna miss like 10 or 15.

Of all those characters, I’ve probably played Sebastian from Black Butler the longest because that show comes back every few years with new material, and so he’s never entirely gone. Sebastian’s always waiting to come back to do the next season. I’ve been with him for 16 years, 15 years now.

BM: You’ve also done Tenya Iada (Ingenium) from My Hero Academia.

JMT: True, yeah. See, there’s too many of them. They all live in my head and they’re always talking at the same time, so it’s hard to parse them out. [chuckles]

JMT: I come from the stage. When I began my acting journey, I was a kid. My first gig was when I was nine years old in a production of The Velveteen Rabbit. I fell in love with acting through the stage, which of course is very physical and larger than life because you have to play to the back row, as it were.

BM: I saw an interview where you describe yourself as a physical actor, moving your whole body behind the microphone, and certainly Ingenium, with all his hand gestures. Tell us about that approach.

JMT: One of the challenges when I found myself in voiceover years later was to funnel that and dampen it a little bit because you can’t be that physical in the booth. You have to stay on mic and you have to be more contained, because the rustle of your clothes makes noise when you move. But I’m a big believer in the physicality of it because emotion and nuance comes from what your body happens to be doing in a given moment and it gives more texture to the reads.

I may not be the most physical in the sense where my arms are flailing about or I’m dancing–although that does happen sometimes, especially with Iada where I’m always doing the hands. [chuckles] But I’m always focusing on what my body is reacting to and where that emotion lives. That’s how I find my way into characters. I let my body live in whatever situation they’re in in that moment. Then the character emerges naturally.

BM: Well, now Dire seems to be a more flamboyant-type character and so I would assume you would have different body motions for him.

JMT: Very much so. He’s elegant and he’s over the top, but he’s also kind of an amalgam of a bunch of different ideas. He is sort of an homage visually to all the iconic classic Disney villains. There’s some element of his costume that is reminiscent of all of them. The idea that we ran with was, why don’t we kind of let his physicality reflect that? So rather than him being a character, he’s more of a vessel for multiple different personalities to come out. It’s subtle. We don’t want to make him sound like a whole universe of different characters. There has to be some continuity for the viewer. We would come up with ways of, what if in this moment we just play a little bit of homage to Scar? What if in this moment we do just a little hat tipping to Ursula and so on and so forth? And I would change my stance accordingly. The characters or different styles of their approach kind of live in places of my body.

Bizarrely enough, it does change the quality of the read. You can hear it without necessarily knowing what you’re hearing. It does make a difference. We would refer to them as ‘tactics,’ because Crowley is very much a character who is very pragmatic. He’s wearing a mask, and behind that mask is a whole universe of different approaches to the other person. He’s constantly shifting who he is to get what he needs to get out of the person he’s speaking to.

BM: Are you doing prelay or ADR on this project?

JMT: ADR. We get to work with the lovely animation and the music, which also helps. Prelay is super fun, but especially doing dubs, as I’ve largely done for most of my career. I’m spoiled. I like having the visuals to work with and the score in place and getting to hear the lovely masterful performances of the seiyuu [Japanese voice actors] who we’re trying to honor. The vacuum of getting to do prelay is a very different beast, and can be very fun, but man, I love dubbing.

BM: Are you recording from your own home studio?

JMT: In this case, no. Frequently we are for other projects. It depends on the studio and a bunch of different factors, but for this one, no, we got to go in to the studio, which is lovely. I love the interaction I get to have with the crew. We don’t get to record with other actors very often, not in dubbing. The literal timing of the animation just doesn’t make that a very practical thing, but I do love having my director, Michael Sinterniklaas, right there and be able to look through the glass and see him looking and know, like, oh, that hit, because I can see that look on his face. It doesn’t translate on a Zoom call or an audio home record. Sometimes that can be a little like doing a seance with a Ouija board. (laughs)

BM: Let’s get more into your background. How did you become motivated to become an actor?

JMT: Well, thank you for saying that. I gather you’re probably alluding to the speech impediment I had as a child. And I did. The speech therapist I had for a number of years, who was lovely, discovered that I could commit a script to memory and speak it and not have the same issues as I would when I was having to spontaneously speak. So she encouraged me to pursue theater. She had ties as a dialect coach to various theaters where I grew up near Dallas, as you know. I got to do some children’s theater. I literally credit acting with helping me find my voice. I fell in love with it. I did stage acting as a young person for years and years and years. My 20s are kind of a weird time where I stepped away from it because things were changing and it was really hard to make ends meet doing that kind of work, especially where I was. I wasn’t willing to move to like New York or someplace that was more theater-centric, especially where I wasn’t at that age. So I pursued other things and left acting behind.

Then a buddy of mine that worked for Funimation back in the day as a director and writer and actor was like, ‘Hey, I need some new voices. You used to be an actor in a past life. Do you want to try it again?’ I’d been maybe seven years since I tried acting and had never done anything like voice acting before. I’d never been in a booth with all the technical constraints of dub performance requires. So I went in and by God, he was right. [chuckles] I was an actor and here I am 20 some odd years later still doing it. So I’m very glad. I owe so much of my career to other people believing in me and seeing something in me that I just couldn’t. So I’ve learned to just listen.

BM: Who was the director?

JMT: Christopher Bevins, who moved out here from Texas a few years before I did. So, yeah, we’re still friends. We still talk. You know, he still blames himself for me. [laughs] As well he should.

Whenever people ask me, ‘How do I become a voice actor?’ I’m like, ‘Well, don’t do what I did because I just messed around and forgot that I was an actor for a long time and then waited for someone to come find me and then had to be kind of dragged into it kicking and screaming.’ I don’t think that approach works anymore.

BM: What else do you want people to know about your contribution to Disney Twisted – Wonderland?

JMT: Whatever I’ve done, I do out of such love and admiration for Disney villains that were such a part of me. They were so baked into my DNA as a young man growing up when and where I did and who I was and am. And Disney villains helped me. Not only were they incredibly compelling because they were so colorful and fabulous and over-the-top and self-actualized and like I said before, even if I didn’t agree with what they were doing, oh, what I wouldn’t have given for the confidence they had to do it. But considering their own perspective as villains gave me access to things in my own inner life that I wouldn’t necessarily have found otherwise. Disney villains were just fascinating archetypes in a way that helped me illuminate certain archetypes within myself that one, I wanted to become an actor. I always thought the villains were more fun. I think as a kid, I lacked control. You know, most kids do. And that brought about a lot of anxiety.

The best Disney villains always are the chief architect of the plot. They have this level of control. And of course, it all goes wrong at the end. It must. That’s the rule of the story. But for the bulk of it, for at least two thirds of every story, that villain is in control, which makes them very fascinating. And for someone that, especially for me, that had the anxiety of not being in control and not feeling like I had that power, you know, it makes sense that I would be compelled by those villains.

I would love for fans to take away from my performance: the love I have for all those iconic villains that I’m getting to pay homage to. I mean, how lucky am I to get to play such a fun character. It really feels like a homecoming in a way, because the Disney villains are kind of what set me on this path to begin with in a lot of ways.

BM: That’s fantastic. Do you have any final words?

JMT: Just a thank you to everyone. You guys and your enthusiasm and your belief in us is wonderful. We absolutely share your passion for this project. Every single one of us that’s worked on Twisted is absolutely in love with it and cannot wait to share more of it with you. So thank you for letting us come play. We really, really appreciate it.

Interview conducted November 4, 2025.  Special thanks to Shae DeWaal and Ariana Drummond.of Allied Global Marketing.

Disney Twisted – Wonderland: The Animation is currently streaming on Disney Plus.