Ryan Reynolds’ ‘Deadpool’ voice gets evaluated by one of the voice actors who played him

A number of different voice actors have taken on the role of Deadpool over the years, each bringing his own specific sensibility to the Marvel anti-hero. Among that group is John Kassir, most famous for voicing the Crypt Keeper on HBO's iconic Tales from the Crypt series, who brought the wise-cracking assassin to life in a total of three video games: X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse and both entries in the Marvel: Ultimate Alliance series. With the live-action Deadpool starring Ryan Reynolds hitting theaters on Feb. 12, I took a moment to ask the voice actor (speaking to me about the rumored non-involvement of the Crypt Keeper in M. Night Shyamalan's Tales from the Crypt reboot) how he would rate Reynolds' Deadpool voice. Turns out he likes it, which perhaps isn't surprising considering Reynolds' take is actually quite similar to his.

“At first when I saw the commercial for it I was like, 'Is that his voice?' It's like kinda high and fun. [But] I think that Ryan Reynolds' voice is closer to what I was doing to it than what's currently in the games and the cartoons,” said Kassir of Reynolds' interpretation (the character has more recently been voiced by Nolan North in video games and Will Friedle on the cartoon series Ultimate Spider-Man). “So I like it. You know, as far as — I haven't seen it all together, so I can't really completely rate it. But I'm sure it'll be great.”

As for Nolan North, who has voiced Deadpool more than any other actor (the prolific voice performer has played the role in a total of six different titles), Kassir sees his performance as distinctly different than his interpretation, owing to the “beefier version” of the character imagined by the animators.

“My take…was that they had more of a beefier version of Deadpool, and so they had a little more of the hero-ish kind of voice that Nolan North brought to it,” said Kassir, “but at the same time they still always have kept that fun sarcasm.”

You can check out a side-by-side comparison of both Kassir and North's voice performances in the below video.

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