The influential Fox Kids cartoon only hit the air after a studio exec bet her career on it, with the show going on to prove the Marvel Universe "had commercial value far beyond what anybody estimated."
In 1992, Marvel wasn't exactly a powerhouse in Hollywood.
Thirty years after writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby had revolutionized comics by creating a universe of characters with human foibles and colorful costumes, Marvel had failed to find steady success on the big screen or on television. Its crowning achievement was the charmingly campy The Incredible Hulk, which ran from 1978-82 on CBS, but other success eluded the company.
TV executive Margaret Loesch had long championed the idea that there was TV gold to be made with Marvel, and she'd spent years pitching shows to the networks. Loesch was particularly taken with the X-Men, the ragtag team of mutants led by Prof. Charles Xavier, who taught them to deal with their mutant powers, all the while protecting a public who feared and even hated them. She oversaw a failed pilot, 1989's Pryde of the X-Men, (featuring, of all things, a Wolverine with an Australian accent) and vowed not to make the same mistakes again. When Loesch started her role as Fox Kids CEO in 1990, she convinced Fox head Jamie Kellner to let her greenlight an X-Men show, staking her career on its success. She brought in Haim Saban of Saban Entertainment and production company Graz for the show.
X-Men's pilot episode "Night of the Sentinels" aired 25 years ago this week on Oct. 31, 1992 on Fox Kids in theSaturday morning time slot. But costly production delays would keep the rest of the season from airing until January 1993, a setback that would be just the first of many challenges the series faced. The show, which lives on in DVDs and on Hulu, is largely considered Marvel's greatest animated series ever, and many fans even insist it is the definitive onscreen depiction of the X-Men (sorry, Hugh Jackman).
X-Men weathered competing corporate interests, a cost-cutting obsessed producer, and even the threat from the creative staff to quit over a merchandising initiative gone wrong. Through it all, the show persevered, becoming a critical and ratings hit that paved the way for Fox's big-screen X-Men a few short years later and a slew of other successes, such as Saban's Power Rangers. Below, the key players involved share these memories and more with The Hollywood Reporter.
ASSEMBLING THE X-MEN
Though the writers were in Los Angeles, the team opted to cast Canadian actors, a cost-saving measure to save on residual payments. Meanwhile, Haim Saban championed finding cheaper animation options in South Korea, a move that proved to be part of the show's charm but at times was challenging for the staff.
Eric Lewald, showrunner and author of the upcoming book Previously on X-Men: Our first casting session was awful. It was just worthless. It was like Scooby Doo X-Men. … We sent up sides [sample scripts actors used to audition with] and sent up the casting director and voice director and they picked a bunch of people and sent them down and they had three or four [actors picked out] for everybody. They were really, really wrong. We tried to convey to them what was different about X-Men, and they didn't hear it. They thought, "They want to do something goofy and childish." They didn’t get it. So we had to send a bunch of people up and completely redo it [the casting] from scratch.
Julia Lewald, writer: There was a time lag that was happening with all of this. It required writing of the sides. Shipping material up north to Canada. Having people audition. Making of the audio. Cassette tapes. It was snail mail back down to Los Angeles and getting those disseminated to the folks at Fox. This isn't something that happened in a matter of days. This is a process.
Eric Lewald: We were starting a month behind, and this made it two.
Haim Saban, founder of Saban Entertainment: The initial launch was the most challenging part of the entire series run. ... My company at the time, Saban Entertainment, was contracted to produce the show for Fox. We quickly hired a small studio (Graz Entertainment) to help us produce the episodes since we did not have sufficient staff at the time to handle this complicated production in-house. ... there were lots of spinning plates, but we somehow met our deadline and got “The Night of the Sentinels" ready to air as a two-part "sneak preview" on October 31, 1992.
Alyson Court, the teenage X-Man Jubilee: Originally, they cast someone else as Jubilee. … The actress they cast was a real pro, but she had a sweeter, cuter voice that wasn’t really representative of the more serious world they were trying to portray. So they recorded the first episode with her, then I got a call to come in and record it. They spent so much money on that pilot. It took several days for the writers to rehash the episode, then we came back weeks later to record a third time. Then we recorded more episodes; then we went back and did the pilot a 4th time.
Cal Dodd, Wolverine: When I moved to this area [Toronto] in 1981, I had a pretty popular show in Canada. Alyson was probably around 12 at the time… she and her friends would sit outside my property and wait for me to come in and out of the house. They couldn’t believe I was living in their neighborhood. Then, she becomes Jubilee to my Wolverine, who wants to protect her and look after her.
Court: I absolutely clicked with Cal when we got to work together. It was very much a Wolverine and Jubilee relationship. With any production, there’s a lot of muck that you have to wade through, especially at the beginning. That can be frustrating for actors, but Cal was caring with me and would keep the set light with jokes, in a way that was very true to our characters.
Lenore Zann, Rogue: I was living in Toronto and my agent told me that there was some animated series that was going to be happening, and they were looking for a voice that was exactly like mine. I'm actually Australian, but I ended up playing a lot of American characters. A lot of characters that had Southern accents. I was doing a lot of those roles on TV and film, and I hadn't done any animation. In the early '90s, animation wasn't quite the cool thing that it kind of became later. … I kind of blew off the audition. I didn't bother going. I couldn't wrap my head around it. Then finally my agent called and said, "Lenore, they are having final callbacks for that cartoon series and I want you to go because they haven't found the right voice yet for this character called Rogue, and the reason they haven't found it is because it's you." They were asking for a sexy, husky female voice with a Southern accent. I walk in, they gave me the sides, they gave me the script — a paragraph. I went into the booth and put the headphones on and the producers were on the line from L.A. "They said, could you do the first line? And I said "My daddy like to kill himself when he found out I was a mutant!" I heard these shrieks on the other end of the line … They said, " Don't let her leave! That's the one! That's Rogue!"
Catherine Disher, Jean Grey: I remember auditioning for Storm, but I don’t remember auditioning for Jean. I think they just gave it to me. … I was doing a vampire series that shot at night, and we would record X-Men on Friday mornings, so I would just work all night and show up without going to bed.
George Buza, Beast: They wanted natural voices, nothing cartoonish or overtly comedic. So, it was reading the character and finding that he was the voice of reason. Beast always wanted to talk things out before he went completely ballistic. I went with a more erudite, learned voice that was always in control. Basically the opposite of Wolverine.
Chris Britton, Mr. Sinister: The producers really wanted to get that evil tone in Sinister’s voice. He wasn’t always shouting, often it was a very ominous, dark tone that he used. I’ll always remember the amount of energy it takes in a studio to do that type of villain. It’s really drains you.
Chris Potter, Gambit: I was in Toronto at the time filming a Kung-Fu series [Kung-Fu: The Legend Continues] with David Carradine, who was a big comic book fan. When he found out I was cast, he was really excited. I didn’t know anything about X-Men at the time … The Cajun accent, I cobbled together, and they liked it enough to keep me around for the next five years.
Zann: Recording in the studio, all of the actors were there. It was like a radio drama. It was like those old days when you are standing there and you can see each other and you are standing in a circle and relating to each other and acting and responding.
Disher: I remember us smoking in the recording studio. I remember because when I got pregnant, I had to ask people to not smoke when I was in the room. It just boggles my mind now, that we were allowed to light up in a recording studio.
Cal Dodd, Wolverine: When I moved to this area [Toronto] in 1981, I had a pretty popular show in Canada. Alyson was probably around 12 at the time… she and her friends would sit outside my property and wait for me to come in and out of the house. They couldn’t believe I was living in their neighborhood. Then, she becomes Jubilee to my Wolverine, who wants to protect her and look after her.
Court: I absolutely clicked with Cal when we got to work together. It was very much a Wolverine and Jubilee relationship. With any production, there’s a lot of muck that you have to wade through, especially at the beginning. That can be frustrating for actors, but Cal was caring with me and would keep the set light with jokes, in a way that was very true to our characters.
Lenore Zann, Rogue: I was living in Toronto and my agent told me that there was some animated series that was going to be happening, and they were looking for a voice that was exactly like mine. I'm actually Australian, but I ended up playing a lot of American characters. A lot of characters that had Southern accents. I was doing a lot of those roles on TV and film, and I hadn't done any animation. In the early '90s, animation wasn't quite the cool thing that it kind of became later. … I kind of blew off the audition. I didn't bother going. I couldn't wrap my head around it. Then finally my agent called and said, "Lenore, they are having final callbacks for that cartoon series and I want you to go because they haven't found the right voice yet for this character called Rogue, and the reason they haven't found it is because it's you." They were asking for a sexy, husky female voice with a Southern accent. I walk in, they gave me the sides, they gave me the script — a paragraph. I went into the booth and put the headphones on and the producers were on the line from L.A. "They said, could you do the first line? And I said "My daddy like to kill himself when he found out I was a mutant!" I heard these shrieks on the other end of the line … They said, " Don't let her leave! That's the one! That's Rogue!"
Catherine Disher, Jean Grey: I remember auditioning for Storm, but I don’t remember auditioning for Jean. I think they just gave it to me. … I was doing a vampire series that shot at night, and we would record X-Men on Friday mornings, so I would just work all night and show up without going to bed.
George Buza, Beast: They wanted natural voices, nothing cartoonish or overtly comedic. So, it was reading the character and finding that he was the voice of reason. Beast always wanted to talk things out before he went completely ballistic. I went with a more erudite, learned voice that was always in control. Basically the opposite of Wolverine.
Chris Britton, Mr. Sinister: The producers really wanted to get that evil tone in Sinister’s voice. He wasn’t always shouting, often it was a very ominous, dark tone that he used. I’ll always remember the amount of energy it takes in a studio to do that type of villain. It’s really drains you.
Chris Potter, Gambit: I was in Toronto at the time filming a Kung-Fu series [Kung-Fu: The Legend Continues] with David Carradine, who was a big comic book fan. When he found out I was cast, he was really excited. I didn’t know anything about X-Men at the time … The Cajun accent, I cobbled together, and they liked it enough to keep me around for the next five years.
Zann: Recording in the studio, all of the actors were there. It was like a radio drama. It was like those old days when you are standing there and you can see each other and you are standing in a circle and relating to each other and acting and responding.
Disher: I remember us smoking in the recording studio. I remember because when I got pregnant, I had to ask people to not smoke when I was in the room. It just boggles my mind now, that we were allowed to light up in a recording studio.
No shyt
I miss Saturday morning cartoons, especially X-Men
