Michelangelo is a turtle who grew up in New York under the supervision of his mentor, a Japanese rat. It’s only natural that he has a Californian surfer accent.
If you watched the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated series, you probably noticed that Michelangelo sounds a little silly. Turns out you can thank Sean Penn for that. Penn played a stoner named Jeff Spicoli in the 1982 comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and TMNT producers thought Spicoli’s laid-back persona was the perfect fit for the turtle party boy.
“What they were looking for with Michelangelo, they were looking for a surfer dude, and they used Sean Penn in Fast Times at Ridgemont High as kind of a prototype,” says Michelangelo voice actor Townsend Coleman during the TMNT reunion panel at Florida Supercon.
At the time, producers had chosen four actors to play each turtle, but were unsure which turtle they would play. Coleman believed Cam Clark had an advantage over Michelangelo because he was from California. However, the voice actor decided to do his best Sean Penn impression.
“I thought, ‘Okay, I can do this.’ But like (Cam Clark) said, he’s from California and his voice was quiet. I’m from Cleveland, Ohio, so I didn’t have that surfer sound, so I just copied Cam.”
In the end, the decision was made by tossing a coin.
Does this mean we can consider Jeff Spicoli the unofficial Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle? I bet they’ll really get along.