What follows are some excerpts from the interview:
USA TODAY: Did they come after you to play Robin?
JESSE MCCARTNEY: I had worked with the director before on some other projects, and he gave me a call. He’s like, “We’ve got this project. You’ve gotta come in and put your voice down to see what you sound like as Dick Grayson. You may be a little too old because it’s the young Justice League and your voice is kind of lower.” So I went in there and put a little bit more of a pre-pubescent voice on the track. [Laughs] They called me and said they wanted me to play the role. I’ve done a lot of voiceovers for cartoons before, and it’s something I really enjoy doing.
USA TODAY: Dick Grayson’s the original Robin, but he’s grown up in the comic books and has now taken on the mantle of Batman. Even though you’re playing him as a youngster, do you throw in a little gravitas to the role foreshadowing that future strength?
JESSE MCCARTNEY: Absolutely. He aspires to be the next Batman. He looks up to those people, and in certain places throughout this season, you’re going to see that Robin is given the chance to really lead the team at certain times. You’ll see how he deals with that, when he’s faced with literally life-changing or –altering or –ending situations, how he deals with it. You can see how he’s still green — he’s still a kid and still trying to figure it out. As time goes on throughout the season, even in the first season, you start to see a little bit of growth and at some point in the future he could potentially be someone as great as Batman. There’s a really cool relationship with Batman throughout the season that they kept intact, where you can see he’s this fatherly figure and he’s very hard on him. But Robin puts it to good use.
USA TODAY: Do you get to work with Bruce Greenwood directly when recording those Dynamic Duo scenarios?
JESSE MCCARTNEY: When we’re recording we’re altogether for the most part. You can imagine, there’s 15 actors and everyone has a different schedule. A lot of times, it’s hard to get everyone in the room, but for the first few episodes, we’re all in there and everyone got to hang out, meet each other, look at the characters, read the first few scripts together, and then once in a while it would be broken down. I remember I had to go away for a while and I had to do an entire script by myself, but it’s really nice when all the actors can get in the room together because you can really bounce off each other and you don’t have to listen to a prerecorded voice of the session a week prior.
USA TODAY: Does Robin get his own showcase episode? Do we see some of his origin with his acrobat parents?
JESSE MCCARTNEY: I won’t give too much of the storyline away, but he certainly has some key episodes where he is the man and it’s all about Dick Grayson and Robin. There are a few episodes where they really just focus in on him, his story and where he could potentially be. That’s something the writers wanted to make sure was there for the first season.
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