Talkin’ Tigger With Star Jim Cummings

Some highlights:

On being a little bitter about not being in the Pooh loop:

“You know what? I don’t know what’s in there. They never tell me anything. Honestly, I love Disney, but get a load of this…Winnie the Pooh had his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and they didn’t tell me. I’ve been doing the voice of Winnie the Pooh since 1987 and Disney doesn’t call! As much as you love them, its not like they want to make you the star—they want the character to be the star, which is cool. I understand that. [And] who knows? Maybe they’re afraid I’ll ask for a raise. [Laughs]“

On his favorite characters:

“Pooh, Tigger, Darkwing Duck, Don Karnage from TaleSpin, and there was a great little guy called Mr. Bumpy on an ABC series called Bump in the Night. It’s the stuff that used to get me kicked out of class, now the joke’s on them.”

As always, you can find the whole article in our News archive after the original site takes the story down.

Along with his interview with The Catholics Next Door, Jim Cummings also did an interview for The Catholic Review Online.

He talks about doing dolphin sounds in the back of his catholic school classroom, his Emmy nomination, having to say about 25,000 names for My Interactive Pooh and his only regret, missing the auditions for The Simpsons because he was sick.

You can find the article in it’s entirety in our archives.

Junior Celebs has a great little backstage interview with Jim Cummings with tween interviewer Rachel Fox. Please enjoy it below:

Jim Cummings fans will definitely want to check out this great article and feature from today’s Washington Times.

You can read the article in it’s entirety online here. I’ve also moved a copy of the article into the News Archive.

It is a great time to be a JC fan right now as his people do a huge marketing push in advance of the Emmys so expect plenty more where this came from.

(I will have you know that the first draft of this post totally said Youngstown, Onion. I’m tired.)

One of the local papers in Youngstown, Ohio did a two features on Jim Cummings on Sunday. Youngstown is his hometown, so while there is nothing all that new and earth-shattering in the articles, there are some very nice local touches and pre-fame tidbits.

If you wish to read the articles in their entirety, I have added both to the press section of the site.

• The voice of Tigger and Pooh (the interview)
• JIM CUMMINGS At a glance (a brief biography)

The writing of the articles are a little. . . I don’t want to be too harsh because it doesn’t say if it the author is a local student or something but there are a lot of typos, mistakes and other oddities that you wouldn’t normally see in a more professional piece but it is nice to see him in the news in any form. There are some really nice bits in it so if you can overlook the choppy writing, it is worth a read. 

The best part of the interview?

[Jim Cummings] recalled a shopping trip during which he picked up a Winnie the Pooh greeting card in a store, and went into character for his children. A nearby clerk heard him and squealed, “Oooh, you sound just like him!”

(Still trying to catch up from the outage last week, sorry that this news is a little old.)

On Wednesday, 24th, June 2009, Jim Cummings was a guest on The Catholics Next Door on Sirus radio.

There is a small clip of him doing station identification on the show’s homepage here.

As always, if I do managed to get any info about what the interview was about or a clip from it, I will post accordingly. If anyone managed to catch the show, please give us an overview in the comments. It would be most appreciated.

As we covered on Twitter earlier, there is a great interview with Jim Cummings on StarWars.com for his involvement in The Clone Wars animated movie. You can read the full interview here.

If you visit the Cult of Cummings website (for those of you reading in a feed reader), the random quote sidebar spot has been updated to include some of the great quotes from this interview.

One part of the interview I wanted to specifically call your attention to, though, is this part. When asked if he had a favorite character, Jim replied:

I have a brand new favorite for a Disney animated feature coming out next Christmas called The Princess and the Frog. I’m Ray the singing Cajun firefly. New Orleans is my second hometown. I was a deckhand on a riverboat there when I was 18, so I have that Cajun accent down pat. Ray is a lovesick firefly who’s near-sighted and falls in love with the Evening Star. Of course, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger will always be favorites of mine too.

So I think its interesting to note that however large the controversy about The Princess and the Frog‘s firefly may be, Jim Cummings himself is either unaware of it or doesn’t care and still cites the character as a favorite. I think its interesting as well that he says he has the accent down pat when that is what most people were focusing on as being racist. Just confirms my idea that it’s not racist if the name grew up there!

There are also some great little tidbits on how Jim creates a character and about meeting Mark Hamill and working on Comic Book the movie which is worth a look. Overall a great interview, better than most so thanks goes out to the Star Wars team for it!