What is that screeching sound? Oh, It's 'Fred'
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Lucas Cruikshank gets loud in the title role in "Fred: The Show."
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Parents, plug your ears: Fred Figglehorn is back and he's got a weekly TV series, "Fred: The Show" (8 p.m. Friday, Nickelodeon).
The invention of 18-year-old Nebraska high school senior Lucas Cruikshank, Fred began as a character in online videos before moving on to headline two successful Nickelodeon cable movies.
Fred's regular speaking voice is pretty screechy, and it only gets worse when he's excited, but kids seem to love him. "Fred 2: Night of the Living Fred" drew 5.7 million viewers when it premiered in October.
Mr. Cruikshank created the character when he was 13, and he continued to live in Nebraska and attend school there as Fred's popularity grew. He moved to Los Angeles after the semester ended in December and is taking online classes with plans to graduate with his class back in Nebraska this spring.
When: 8 p.m. Friday, Nickelodeon.
"The videos were first popular when I was in middle school and everyone watched them, and as I've gotten older, the kids at school are still super-supportive, but now it's more like their little sister or little brother is a huge fan," Mr. Cruikshank said in a phone interview last week from Los Angeles. "No one in my school treats me different or acts like I'm a professional actor. They've all known me forever."
When Mr. Cruikshank started the Fred videos, Fred was 6. On the live-action Nick show, Fred is now in high school and surrounded by other characters played by professional actors. Each "Fred: The Show" episode runs about 10 minutes with two episodes airing in a half-hour programming block. Mr. Cruikshank answered a few questions about his popular-with-kids character:
As you've gotten older, do you still do the Fred voice on your own or do you get some help in audio post-production?
It's pretty much the same as when I started. It's always been my voice for the videos. In the movie and TV show they speed it up a little. Actually, they don't speed it up, they pitch it up a little bit. It's not as shrieky as in the videos.
Does your throat hurt after a day of playing Fred? Do you have any rituals to soothe it?
Luckily, I'm always conscious of that. I don't want to lose my voice in the middle of production. That would ruin everything. When we do rehearsals or if the camera is not on me, I don't do the scream of Fred's voice as 100 percent as I do when the camera is on me. And they're always giving me tea and that sort of thing to drink.
First Published February 23, 2012 12:00 am
