X-Men: The Animated Series co-stars Cal Dodd and Chris Potter remember Cyclops actor Norm Spencer, who died in August at the age of 62. Dodd, whose temperamental Wolverine often clashed with Spencer’s Scott Summers over a love triangle with teammate Jean Grey (voice of Catherine Disher), reported Spencer’s death on social media in a post remembering the actor as a “dear friend and cohort.” Referencing their time together on X-Men by apologizing for Scott’s “convertible” — referring to an enraged Wolverine using his adamantium claws to slice the roof from Scott’s car — Dodd paid tribute to Spencer as a “genuine character and sweetheart.”
Videos by ComicBook.com
Dodd and Potter, who played the card-throwing mutant Gambit in the first four seasons of X-Men, reflected on working with Spencer during a virtual Wizard World panel with series director Larry Houston and co-stars George Buza (Beast) and Lenore Zann (Rogue):
“I think as far as my [favorite] memories doing the show would have been working with Norm Spencer,” Potter said. “I often found myself in the studio with Norm because he was always cherry-picking the small roles [laughs]. So he was always there as Cyclops, who of course he played, but he was one entertaining guy to be around. He was a favorite of mine.”
“What a sense of humor he had,” Dodd said of Spencer. When Potter began to recount an interaction with Spencer over a line he delivered as Gambit, a chuckling Dodd called it his “favorite story of [his] life.”
“The line I remember probably the most in my head about most times wasn’t anything that Gambit said,” Potter said, “it’s what other people said to me — in particular Norm Spencer — in the studio. ‘Is that how you’re gonna do it?‘ [Laughs].”
“I told this story many times, but I was always so insecure about life and about the surroundings at the time,” he added. “I kept it all inside, feeling that way, but it only took a comment like that from someone like Norm to just ground me.”
Spencer and his X-Men co-stars reprised their roles in two episodes of Spider-Man and voiced Cyclops in multiple video games, including X-Men: Children of the Atom and Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter. Spencer’s other credits include lending his voice to another Marvel Comics character, Drax the Destroyer, across three episodes of Silver Surfer and providing the voice of firefighter Billy Blazes in Rescue Heroes.
X-Men: The Animated Series is now streaming on Disney+.
