Sorry to every actor who just earned a Golden Globe nomination—none of you can beat the performance I’m about to shower with unfettered praise. No one (and I mean no one—not even Ken is enough) will be able to top Robert Pattinson’s voice acting in the dubbed version of The Boy and the Heron.
Shocking, electric, and, at times, achingly emotional, Pattinson’s performance as the Gray Heron is simultaneously a masterclass in voice acting and his very first role in the genre. How was he able to pull it off? Not only does this performance merit a million new voice acting roles from Pattinson, it also warrants a new category from the Oscars. It’s about damn time the Academy Awards started rewarding the year’s best voice actors among the rest of the contenders.
The Boy and the Heron follows—well, it sounds silly, but a boy and a heron. The boy is Mahito (voiced in the dub by Luca Padovan, and by Soma Santoki in the original Japanese-language release), who has just lost his mother in the war. He’s since moved out of Tokyo with his father to live with his new stepmother (who was also his mother’s sister). Said heron (originally performed by Masaki Suda) has insider info about Mahito’s mom: She’s alive, per the bird. Mahito just needs to trust this talking heron—who is snarky, somewhat cruel, and super scary—as his guide to find her.
Pattison’s voiceover debut as the crotchety Gray Heron actually came before Hayao Miyazaki’s latest film premiered stateside. Two different teasers for the dubbed version featured clips of his performance—and off the bat, fans were shocked not to hear the usual tenor of Pattinson’s low voice. Instead, the Gray Heron’s vocals are higher and more hoarse.
After watching the dubbed version of The Boy and the Heron, however, Pattinson’s husky intonation is not the most surprising aspect of his performance. What’s astonishing is that his understanding of the role doesn’t linger at that surface-level rasp—Pattinson goes deeper. When the heron is speaking with Mahito, his range is wide: He’s emotional, he’s infuriated, and he’s frightened.
The rasp is always there, and it’d be easy—“easy,” I say, as if this is something I’d ever be able to do—to just keep shouting recordings into an iPhone. (Yes, Pattinson began by recording the voice he thought might suit the Gray Heron at home on his phone.) But the actor pushes the Heron’s nasal further with yelps of fear, sarcastic quips about the journey, and touching moments of meaningful connection with Mahito. The voice is a lot, and it’s certainly scene-stealing, but it’s never too much.
Perhaps all that time growling under the mask in The Batman gave him the experience he needed to pull off this feat. Then again, those who watched Netflix’s The Devil All the Time—all seven of us—have known that Pattinson has harbored this ability to manipulate his voice for a long while. He’s been able to squeak and squawk unlike any other since he was giving horrifying sermons in 2020!
Pattinson’s ability to manipulate his voice in the same way that opera singers practice over and over again to hit the high notes adds a new dimension to not just his character, but also the star. There’s already quite a bit of RobPatt lore in the world—there was that handheld pasta dish that went viral in 2020; he claimed that he refused to perform some sort of “sex act” on a dog to prepare for Good Time; and he’s also about to become a dad(dy?)—so why not add something new to the pile? RobPatt, inventor of the piccolini cuscino, Twilight superstar, and voice-acting mastermind: It has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?
Before I send you on your way to see the dubbed version of The Boy and the Heron (and see the subtitled version, too!), allow me to initiate a formal petition for two things to happen. The first: I’d like to be able to lay eyes on Pattinson while he recorded his lines for The Boy and the Heron. Was he swinging his arms around? Was he wearing one of those plush sweaters from The Lighthouse to get him into character as a frazzled entity in a confusing new world? We’ve seen plenty of Disney voice actors recording their parts—Studio Ghibli, give us the Pattinson cut.
Secondly, and this one is inarguably more important: We need a Best Voice Acting category at the Academy Awards, and we need it now. I still believe Phyllis Smith deserved an Oscar for her woe-is-me work as Sadness in Inside Out—Academy, take notes, you’ll have a chance to redeem yourself next year with Inside Out 2—and there are boatloads of other voice actors who deserve to be recognized alongside the screen actors. Out of all the spectacular performances that 2023 has brought us, Pattinson’s wowed me the most, and it’s a shame he likely won’t be recognized, come Oscar-nomination time.
But there is a plus side—we now know Pattinson’s strong suit. Hopefully, Pixar, Disney, DreamWorks, Illumination, Laika, and every other animation studio is in touch with Pattinson’s people. Get this man a role in the next Spider-Verse installment. Cast him in everything. Just make sure he’s got a bounty of throat lozenges to keep that voice healthy along the way.