We were promised a voice ‘unlike anything you’ve heard in the Mario world before’. In The Super Mario Bros film, we got Pratt doing Paulie Walnuts instead
There are certain seminal roles of stage and screen that all actors crave to play in their lifetimes. King Lear. John Proctor. Lady Macbeth. Willy Loman. Hannibal Lecter. And of course, Mario.
Charles Martinet, who plays the happy little plumber in the video games, was initially told in his audition to speak like “an Italian plumber from Brooklyn”. (Martinet claims his portrayal of Mario is inspired by Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew, but that’s by the by.) Then there was Bob Hoskins, who played Mario in the notoriously bad 1993 film Super Mario Bros, and knew the qualities he was bringing to it from the get-go. “How do I prepare for the role?” he said, crankily flinging the question back at a reporter, who was visiting the famously chaotic set amid endless script rewrites and Dennis Hopper tantrums. “I’m the right shape. I’ve got a moustache.”
