Time for my Voice Actor of the Week.
Today, I'll be talking about NPH.
I first took notice of Neil Patrick Harris back when the hit CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother was in its early years of broadcast. This would have been back when I was about...12?
As most of you are surely aware, Harris's character Barney Stinson was easily the funniest part of the show. I didn't realize at the time that Harris was a pretty well-known fixture in the entertainment industry. My parents knew him as the titular teenage prodigy doctor on Doogie Howser, M.D. Considering the timeframe of that show's airing, I was a bit surprised I'd never at least heard of him.
Regardless, Neil Patrick Harris is almost always a treat when he appears in something. And his voice work is no exception. I was surprised when I found the number of projects he did voice over for. He is all over comics related animation, having voiced several different superheroes, both for Marvel and DC Comics, and even a couple of villains.
He has appeared as Dick Grayson, AKA Nightwing, the former sidekick of Batman in Batman: Under the Red Hood, cast alongside Bruce Greenwood's Bruce Wayne, AKA Batman. Before that, he voiced Barry Allen, AKA The Flash on Justice League: The New Frontier. You might also recognize him as Steve, the monkey sidekick of Bill Hader's character of Flint Lockwood from Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, or from Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore, in which he replaced Toby Maguire as the voice of Lou the Beagle.
Speaking of former Spider-Man actors, Harris played our friendly neighborhood webslinger twice. He lent his voice to Spider-Man: The New Animated Series back in 2003, and to the 2010 video game Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, in which he voiced one of several different versions of Spider-Man, together with Christopher Daniel Barnes, Dan Gilvezan and Josh Keaton.
I never really thought about it before I saw the clips, but as the characters of Peter Parker and Dick Grayson, I do think that Harris gave them a fairly heroic-sounding voice - perhaps a bit more so with Grayson than Parker. I would say that Harris's voice is also at a good depth, that it's not too low, and that it sounds very youthful. I could totally get behind him voicing more heroes in the future.
Based on what I know of the Justice League, he'd probably be a fairly good fit for Plastic Man and some other more youthful or comic relief heroes. But I think what might be even more interesting is hearing him as some kind of Barney Stinson analogue. That is, I think it would be interesting to see a guy who is like Harris's How I Met Your Mother character, but in animated form. I could see all kinds of hilarious hijinks happening if such a character were to appear in anime.
If you'd like to leave a like or a comment on the original clips, follow the links below:
The series How I Met Your Mother is available for streaming on Netflix.
You can watch Batman: Under the Red Hood under the DC Heading on HBO Max.
