Jack Black opens up on being the class clown, pure evil Bowser and why he struggles with jealousy
Jack Black first found his voice as a way of getting attention as a class clown but despite his fame, wealth and plaudits he admits why he still struggles with professional jealousy.
Jack Black freely admits he used to be the class clown.
He was the kid who was desperate for attention and always “wanted to put on a show”, spending hours in front of the mirror or with a tape recorder practising funny voices to crack up his friends, family and peers.
But the hard work he put into his unique vocal stylings back then – he’s now one of those Hollywood stars with instantly recognisable tones – paid off in spades once he started to pursue a career in showbiz.
Not only has he made his indelible mark in the title role of three hugely successful Kung Fu Panda movies – not to mention his voice parts in Ice Age and Shark Tale – but his singing has given him a successful side career as half of the comedy-rock duo Tenacious D and arguably his signature role in the 2003 smash School of Rock.
And despite the continuing demand for live action roles, from comedy to action to drama, Black gives the impression he is just as happy, if not happier, locked in a small room with a microphone where he is only limited by his imagination and is actively encouraged to be as wild and off-the-wall as he wants to be.
“There’s something about focusing just on the voice and not having to worry about the costume and the makeup and just doing a character,” Black says. “The sound is very pleasing to me because I’m able to explore it in a more relaxed way. I can take as much time as I want and do as many takes as I want. That’s a freedom that you don’t get on the set of a live action film because you don’t have time.”
Black’s very first professional role, after his parents divorced when he was 10 and just as he was about to enter his sometimes-rocky, substance-abusing teenage years came in 1983 in an ad for the then state-of-the-art Atari video game, Pitfall.
The gaming world has continued to dot his career even since, most notably in the Jumanji franchise, in which he played a vain teenage girl sucked into a video game and made to inhabit Black’s portly frame. He’s also appeared in several video games himself – from King Kong to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 and 2 – and has his own YouTube channel, Jablinski Games, which leans hard into gaming content.
And now he has signed up for an animated movie adaptation of one of the biggest video game universes ever created, by voicing the villainous Bowser in The Super Mario Bros. Movie.
“Maybe these are bookends to a career,” he ponders with a laugh. “And maybe now I drop the mic and say ‘sayonara, I’m gonna go off into the sunset and retire on top’. But I doubt it. I have too much fun – I gotta keep rocking.”
Black says he relished the opportunity to go full villain in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, in playing the main antagonist to Chris Pratt’s Mario and Charlie Day’s Luigi, who is prepared to “lie, cheat, steal and destroy” to get his own way. He’s been a Mario enthusiast for more than 40 years, first with Donkey Kong (the arcade classic in which the plucky New York plumber makes his very first appearance) right though to playing more recent iterations of the games with his two teenage sons, both of whom refused to believe him when he said he’d been asked to play Bowser.
“He’s the worst of all of us, right?,” he says of the king of the Koopas and ruler of the Dark Lands. “He’s greedy. He’s narcissistic. He’s jealous. It’s something that I don’t get to do in real life. In real life, I’m a pretty sweet guy. I think I’m pretty nice.”
Black is loath to read anything too deep into playing a giant, rapacious, fire-breathing, occasionally singing turtle in what is essentially a fun, family-friendly, freewheeling romp with big action set pieces and plenty of laughs and Easter eggs for the hard-core Mario fans. But despite all his success, accolades and reported net worth of $75 million, he does rather candidly admit to an ongoing battle to overcome feelings of jealousy and professional dissatisfaction.
“I do spend a lot of my time looking at other people in the industry especially and going ‘Oh God, I wish I had what they have. Oh, that’s so good, that is such genius. God why can’t I be a genius like that?’,” he says. “And I realised what a waste of time that can be and how it really serves us to just enjoy other people’s strengths and not spend so much time wishing we could be that.”
Hollywood has had a very chequered history of adapting video games for the screen – the bad far outweigh the good – but Black is bullish about the meeting of those two worlds going forward. He was a huge fan of the recent HBO hit The Last Of Us and would love to see Rockstar Games’ revered Western open-world epic Red Dead Redemption also get the full treatment.
He says that two media are also bleeding into each other more than ever before, with video games becoming ever more cinematic with their elaborate cut scenes, more complex plots and characters and bigger ambitions. And he points to Netflix’s 2018 experimental movie Bandersnatch, which allowed viewers to choose their own actions and ending, as an example of how the interactivity of gaming can work in a film storytelling environment.
“I think we’re going to see more video games that are cinematic and telling stories in a more cinematic way,” he says. “I think it’s a great trend of those two types of storytelling coming together. It’s a very exciting thing, the hybrid between video game and movie. I look forward to the future.”
The Super Mario Bros. Movie is in cinemas now.
Originally published as Jack Black opens up on being the class clown, pure evil Bowser and why he struggles with jealousy
‘Threat’: Elon slammed for sick post
Controversial billionaire Elon Musk has been condemned for a post about Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, which the Secret Service is now probing.
Haunting photo of Titan wreckage as crews’ final words revealed
A newly released photo shows the doomed Titan submersible’s tail cone on the ocean floor, as the crews’ final communication was revealed.