Talking Tigger and Pooh
Actor Jim Cummings has provided voices for children’s favourites for 30 years
The new live-action feature Christopher Robin sounds right because of Jim Cummings. The prolific voice actor has once again stepped into a recording booth to speak for Winnie the Pooh and Tigger in the latest production featuring the characters from the books by British author A.A. Milne.
Christopher Robin, played by Ewan McGregor, has grown up and lost the childhood innocence he had when he would play in the Hundred Acre Wood. Pooh comes back into Christopher’s life in hopes of rekindling his youthful exuberance.
Pooh aficionados will recognize Cummings’s vocal work, which he has provided since 1988. He began speaking for Tigger in 1989, sharing those duties with Paul Winchell over the next decade. He joins Sophie Okonedo (Kanga), Peter Capaldi (Rabbit), Brad Garrett (Eeyore), Nick Mohammed (Piglet) and Toby Jones (Owl).
When Christopher Robin director Marc Forster (Finding Neverland) was casting his voice talents, he originally selected Chris O’Dowd as the voice of Tigger. As the production progressed, it became clear Cummings had done such iconic work with the character that he was the perfect voice, and the lines for Tigger were re-recorded.
The idea someone else would be voicing Tigger left Cummings speechless. He appreciates Forster trying to do something different with Tigger, but believes because he’s been speaking for the energetic character for so many decades, the difference in the voices was too dramatic a change.
Cummings loves doing both voices, but he would have been happy with only speaking for Pooh. He has great hope for the film featuring Pooh and the gang, as the last animated movie starring the group, 2011’s Winnie the Pooh, struggled at the box office. It opened the same weekend as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows — Part 2.
The voicing is a slightly more subdued Pooh, as the film is not the traditional two-dimensional animation produced over the years. The Pooh in Christopher Robin looks like a much-loved teddy bear in the real world that just happens to be able to speak.
Cummings wants a large audience to be exposed to the messages in Christopher Robin.
“The film tells you to slow down to smell the roses. The world is spinning at 1,000 miles per hour and it is so easy to get caught up in the workaday world, the nine-to-five,” Cummings says. “Who better than Pooh and the gang to bust out of the Hundred Acre Wood and bring Christopher back to Earth? We can all use that because it’s easy to get lost.”
It would be easy for Cummings to get lost in all the work he has done. The Ohio native started out getting in trouble for the weird voices he would make in school and turned it into a career that since 1985 has had him rolling up more than 500 credits, creating a wide range of voices. You can hear his work in The Transformers, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, DuckTales, The Smurfs, Adventures of the Gummi Bears, Tony Toon Adventures, Adventure Time and Captain Planet and the Planeteers, to name just a few.
Even with more than 30 years of being a voice actor, Cummings can recall almost every voice he has done. He admits occasionally he will be asked at a convention to do the voice for some obscure character from a TV show that aired decades ago. But it only takes a little extra coaching for him to recall the voice.
This all comes from the passion Cummings has for voice work, especially Pooh and Tigger. That was on Cummings’ mind when he took over voice work for Pooh and Tigger to make sure they sounded like the original voice talents, Sterling Holloway and Winchell.
“In the beginning, I referred to myself as ‘Tigger Lite’ because Paul would do a few shows and then he would take off to Africa to cure hunger,” Cummings says. “Then he would come back to do a few more shows.”
Cummings never got to meet Holloway, but became close friends with Winchell as they shared Tigger duties for several years. Then Winchell’s health started failing and he had a stroke. During the last recording session with Winchell, Cummings asked him what this all meant. Cummings says Winchell told him: “It means I want you to take care of my little buddy for me.”
That’s what Cummings has been doing along with a myriad of other characters that he has voiced over the years.