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Dee Bradley Baker has been voicing clones in the Star Wars universe for over a decade, but on The Clone Wars and Rebels, he was part of ensembles. With the debut of Star Wars: The Bad Batch on Disney+, Baker is the star of the show, as this series follows along with Clone Force 99, made up of Hunter, Wrecker, Tech, Crosshair and Echo. So of these elite, yet genetically-mutated clones, who is the most challenging for Baker to voice on this latest animated Star Wars TV series? That would be the towering Wrecker.
I learned this during my interview with Dee Bradley Baker last month about his experience working on Star Wars: The Bad Batch. Here’s what Baker had to say about why Wrecker presents more of a challenge for him to voice compared to the show’s other main clone characters:
Of all the Batch, if anyone presents a challenge, it’s gonna be Wrecker because he likes to yell a lot while he blows things up [laughs]. I have to kind of manage my vocal performance. Sometimes we’ll put his yelling and screaming at the end of the record, because most of the scenes we just go straight through it. But Wrecker, some of his efforts and yells we’ll put towards the end of the session.
If you’ve seen the first episode of Star Wars: The Bad Batch or caught Clone Force 99’s debut in The Clone Wars Season 7, then you’re quite familiar with Wrecker’s yells. Whether he’s in the middle taking out some battle droids or getting to blow something up, Clone Force 99’s muscle doesn’t shy away from expressing enthusiasm pertaining to combat. For Dee Bradley Baker, that means he needs to dedicate more attention to regulating his voice when he’s reading Wrecker’s lines, so it makes sense why the yells would be saved for the end of a recording session rather than keep them at their proper place in the story flow.
Still, after voicing clones since The Clone Wars animated movie was released in 2008, Dee Bradley Baker is more than up to the task of infusing Wrecker and the other Clone Force 99 members with unique personalities. While there were a handful of clones who scored meaningful story arcs throughout The Clone Wars (most notably Captain Rex), Star Wars: The Bad Batch’s leads are more colorful than your average clone, and viewers will follow along with them as they embark on mercenary missions following the rise of the Empire. They’ll be accompanied by a young female clone named Omega and run into some familiar faces from the Star Wars franchise, such as The Mandalorian’s Fennec Shand.
New episodes of Star Wars: The Bad Batch premiere Fridays on Disney+, so if you’re not already subscribed to the Mouse House’s streaming service, you can do so with this link. And as always, keep checking back with CinemaBlend for more updates on Star Wars movies and TV shows.
