Adventure Time: Fionna And Cake Showrunner Talks Season Two’s Recastings (Exclusive)

Adventure Time: Fionna And Cake’s second season is seeing its titular characters go through some changes. Now that the universe has been saved, Fionna and her feline companion are soaking up the adulation for halting the world-ending threat to their planet. With the premiere episode now streaming on HBO Max, the more things change, the more they stay the same for the Land of Oooo, though not every cast member made a comeback. In a recent discussion with showrunner and executive producer Adam Muto, we discussed the recasting of two classic characters and how the team approached the big change.

For those who might need a refresher, Donald Glover and Jenny Slate left the Adventure Time franchise, leaving behind their characters of Marshall Lee and the Huntress Wizard, respectively. Now voiced by Kris Kollins and Ashly Burch, Muto noted that there is a fine balance between staying true to the characters and forging a new path for the actors stepping into the roles. We asked Muto whether the director for the voice actors sees them adding their new spin to the characters or if they are pushed toward sounding like the previous voices that brought them to life.

“I’d say it’s very much the former,” Muto confirmed in terms of the Burch and Kollins making the roles their own, “It feels like too much baggage to put on an actor to just be a sound alike. Sometimes that happens, but for this many episodes, it would be awkward to tell Kris to just ‘do your Donald Glover impression. The actors all have unique voices of their own, so it would feel like a fool’s errand to just try to sound like Jenny Slate. We definitely cast to match a certain vibe, but we try to avoid doing sound-alike stuff. I think that as much as an actor can make it their own, we try to open it up to that.”

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The Land of Ooooo Changes

Muto further extrapolated on the casting decisions and the decision to let voice actors work with the characters, “It’s hard too, because they’re established characters, so we also don’t necessarily say, ‘do your own thing with it! Make it completely different! It’s kind of balancing those two things. In general, we try not to do the exact same voice because it’s so hard, and there are so many examples of other shows doing that. We thought we might as well try to make it distinct in a different way. Like Harvey Guillen playing Gary is different, but it still feels like it’s in the same kind of neighborhood.”

Rather than releasing all of Adventure Time: Fionna And Cake’s second season all at once, fans will have to wait weekly to see each new episode land on HBO Max. With the premiere episode already throwing some major challenges at the titular characters, and Finn himself, the spin-off is venturing into some wild territory.

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