Vincent Martella on Phineas and Ferb’s Season 5 Return & Legacy

[00:00:09] Vincent, thank you for joining me today on Pop Culture Unplugged. No, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to talk about a lot of things, but I'm super excited to talk about Phineas and Ferb. How excited are you about this? The whole revival and everything. Do you want to call it revival or reboot? What are we calling this? Yeah, it's not a reboot exactly. The way that we've been talking about it is it's a continuation of the show. It really just is a continuation of what we were doing.

[00:00:35] It very much feels as though the show never ended. I mean, it takes place the following summer, and the heart and the soul of the show is all very much the same. And I'm super, super proud of these episodes that we have. You know, I work on the show every week, and I'm blown away by the things that our writers do. I always have been. I mean, that's what makes the show so good is the life they bring to the show. But I think that some of these episodes are some of the best things we've ever done.

[00:01:04] So I am very, very excited for fans to see these new episodes. What was your reaction when you first heard, okay, hey, we're gonna do another season? Are you on board? Like, what went through your mind? Yeah, I mean, I found out the good old fashioned way by the internet, not by anyone giving me a call telling me it was happening.

[00:01:24] I literally had it. My cast member texted me and was like, is this real? Because he saw like a tweet from Variety. And I was like, I don't know if that's real. I have heard nothing about this. And I called my bosses and they were like, yeah, we just announced that this is happening. I was elated. I mean, Phineas and Ferb has been a part of my years, my life for 20 years. And I mean, my hope is that we get to keep making new episodes for as long as they'll let us.

[00:01:52] I think there are so many stories to tell. And I know that we have such a really good, dedicated fan base who have kept this show alive through TikTok and through social media. And there's been a demand for the show. I mean, the numbers on Disney Plus are really great streaming wise. And I think that really helped incentivize them to allow us to keep telling stories with these characters. And it was a really great day. I've been working on this new season for a year and a half.

[00:02:16] So it's nice to finally be able to release it to the public and show you guys all the hard work we've been doing. What's the first memory that came back when you recorded your first line as Phineas when you came back? Genuinely, it was it was some of it. So it's interesting because when I first started doing the show, I guess I was a teenager and I'm living in Florida and I was recording most of the first season, probably about half of the first season from Disney World.

[00:02:43] I would go behind Hollywood Studios and record at, you know, an animation studio there that they still had in operation. And so my. When I came back to do these new episodes, we it felt very much like when the show first got picked up and I had lived in L.A. because we were back at that same studio I had recorded at for like 10 years. And so it was very surreal. It was very much like, oh, my gosh, I spent so many years of my life in this studio with these people playing this character.

[00:03:14] And yeah, it was it was definitely an emotional thing. I mean, I. You know, we got in trouble about this because because Dan wasn't supposed to post it, but one of my one of my cast members and my boss, Dan Pommenmeyer, he posted like a video of me singing one of our first songs from the show coming back. And, you know, him and Swampy were, you know, they were choked up. They were emotional. It was a. It is a very special, rare thing to be part of something that means so much to so many people and something that we really, really deeply care about.

[00:03:41] I know I can speak for a lot of the cast when I say that. So it's meant the world to me that I get to come back and play this character. Did your approach voicing Phineas like change now that you're older instead of a teenager? Like, how did you put your mindset and your voice back to that? No. So, I mean, what's nice about is I did a lot of work during the first run of the show to make sure I could do all the things I needed to do as Phineas,

[00:04:04] which is, you know, you create a voice for a character and you go, OK, you know, this works really, really wonderfully as this character embodies the character really well. But then on a show like Phineas and Ferb, you realize I'm going to have to sing a lot of music in a lot of different genres. So that kind of adjusts your approach on how you do things vocally. I'm also going to have to be yelling and screaming a lot over the loud inventions that we've built.

[00:04:26] And so I straight up took, you know, a lot of voice lessons with literally opera coaches to try and figure out vocal exercises I could do to extend my range and to extend the amount of time that I could be in the booth. And what's great about coming back all these years later, I'd say the biggest difference is I play a lot of characters on the show now. Like I'm playing all kinds of additional voices where I'll come in and, you know, kind of back in the day, they weren't as comfortable letting some of the leads play multiple characters because they didn't want to.

[00:04:55] I think they just didn't trust a teenage voice actors as much as they do, you know, 32 year old, very experienced voice actors. And so they were like, oh, yeah, you can play, you know, a lot of people. And so I've had the opportunity to kind of come in and I'm not just playing Phineas. You know, they'll hand me five or six other roles and be like, you know, construction guy or, you know, this guy who's a barista, you know, and just these very random characters on the spot. And that's just super fun for me where I get to go. I get to create something on the spot and see what happens.

[00:05:26] And that's been a real pleasure is getting the chance to kind of play in the sandbox with a lot of different roles. You mentioned, you know, singing before. How long do you rehearse before you jump into the recording for the for the musical stuff? I rehearse a lot like they give me sometimes sometimes it's tough because they'll give me like if I have a session on a Monday, like I know I'm working this coming Monday on Phineas and Ferb. And a lot of times they won't have the finished and fully edited material until Friday night, like at close.

[00:05:53] And so I have the weekend to prepare. So I have the weekend to go over all my music. Like I don't have a music session on Monday, but I'm just giving you an example. And I'll just rehearse it a million times and be like, oh, I have this. This is going to be great. I'm going to go in there and I'm going to sound awesome. And then I get there and and I'm always reminded about how although I'm a professional musician now, because I've been singing so long professionally for my job, when you are in a room with people who are like like Danny Jacob,

[00:06:22] who runs our music department, you go, oh, that's right. You can hear every flat note that I'm singing instantly. Like you hear so much more than me. And, you know, Olivia Olson is one of our cast members and a really talented writer on the show. And she writes a lot of our music and just instantaneously they hear things that I never heard. But I was like, oh, I thought I sounded perfect. And they're like, no, no, you were very flat. And so I'm like, OK, well, I did my best and we're going to go again.

[00:06:51] And everyone's super great. But it's it's always a surprise hearing the new genres that I'm going to have to do. Like they're like, hey, you're doing a disco song or hey, now you're rapping. I'm like, well, that's something I've never done professionally before. You wouldn't think I'd be doing that. But here we are. What can you tease about like this season? Any like a certain storyline or like a scene that held you in that you can't wait for the viewers to see? I can discuss very little.

[00:07:17] The things I can I can say are that we because we have done so many storylines and have the benefit of having like a dedicated, really dedicated audience who knows a lot of our characters. We have taken opportunities to explore some of the characters in like full episodes in ways that we didn't before. So you're going to get a little bit more time with some characters who maybe you didn't have as much time with the first time around.

[00:07:45] And I think fans of the show are really going to appreciate that. I think it's going to be very fun. And they found inventive ways to tell those stories. So that's what I'm personally most excited about, as well as just a lot of the new music, because I have some songs where I'm like, this is just going to be so fun for people to get to hear us perform. So I wrote down here, I didn't want to forget. So you're trying to tell me there's going to be episodes where Phineas's friends get their own episodes, baby. Possibly, possibly.

[00:08:14] That might be something I'm hinting at. It would never be something I would confirm, but it could be them. It could be other characters in the universe. Who knows? But we we spend time with a lot of these characters who are definitely fan favorite characters in just in different ways than we used to. And some of them are are truly hilarious. Like I, I, I spend a lot of time in the writer's room now. I've been shadowing Dan and Swampy for, you know, the last year in the writer's room.

[00:08:41] And I'm just blown away by all these really new, incredible ideas that they're able to come up with for all of our characters. What's your favorite thing that Phineas and Ferb have created? Is it something in the past seasons or something new coming up? It is my favorite thing that they ever did. And it's not exactly an invention. It's more of like an achievement is we have an episode really early on in the show. It is a fan favorite episode that's called, that's called Dude, We're Getting the Band Back Together.

[00:09:08] And they get a band called Love Handle back together, which was like one of their parents' favorite bands. And they do it for their anniversary. And number one, I love the idea of being able to get a band who like hates each other back together. I just think that that's great. Like, you know, somehow we're able to get Pink Floyd back together for like my parents' anniversary or something. But I also love that episode because it's like the first episode, I believe, that Candace is like working with the boys.

[00:09:37] She's like, actually, this is something I'm not going to try to bust you about this. Like, I'm not going to try to sell you out. Like, I want to help you do this because it's for the betterment of, yeah, of our parents. And so I think that's just a really sweet, like nice story, you know? How many episodes are we expecting this season? We have 40 more episodes coming. I do not know how they're going to release them all. I don't know in what order. I know that we are told to say 40 episodes, not multiple seasons.

[00:10:07] I know that that's what I'm allowed to say is that it is 40 episodes. I don't know if they're going to split them down the middle. I know that on June 5th they're going to be premiering, and then June 6th they're going to be premiering on both Disney Channel and Disney Plus. And it is not going to be a – they're not going to drop them all at once. I know that much. They are going to premiere the first episode, and then the following week on Disney Plus they're going to drop a few more episodes. But it will not be a full season drop.

[00:10:37] I don't know beyond that how they're going to schedule it out. I mean, I love weekly releases. I think that they're super fun. But I know with our first season on Phineas and Ferb, we premiered our pilot after High School Musical 2 came out. And it was like the biggest thing ever, like the most number that a new Disney Channel original show had ever had. Thanks for the lead-in, High School Musical 2. That really helped us.

[00:11:01] But then a couple months later in 2008, we did a thing called Phineas and Ferb-uary because it was a leap year. And so every day of February, we premiered a new 11-minute. It was just a portion. We didn't premiere them all together. And that did gangbusters for the network. That was wonderful, and people loved that. And that was before streaming. So that was just an idea that they had. So I can't say for certain how they're going to release all the episodes, but I know that we are at least doing 40 more.

[00:11:29] And I really hope we do as many more after that as possible because this is something that fans love. Maybe a movie? And we all want to do it. Maybe another movie. Yeah, I mean, we had heard rumors, honestly, before we got in the call about coming back to do the show. Yeah. The assumption was maybe we do another movie after Candace Against the Universe because it did so well for Disney+. And then, in my eyes, the even better news was that we were getting to do new seasons of the show.

[00:11:58] That is how I love to consume this, and I know how other people love to consume this show. So, I mean, we all feel very strongly that this could be an evergreen TV show for Disney. And there are a lot of stories left to tell. So we hope that if people really tune in for Season 5 here this summer that Disney will say, you know what, come on back for many more seasons. What do you think is the biggest impact this series has had on you personally? On me personally?

[00:12:27] It's been an experience as meeting fans and meeting people who really, really care about the show and what it means to them. There are a lot of really special moments for me personally that are very surreal that I can't believe happened. Like, you know, I was telling some people yesterday, you know, just like I can work on a lot of really great stuff. Like, I'm a big Disney fan in general. And, like, I can work on a lot of really great stuff in my life, and I've been fortunate to have already done that. And I hope I get to the rest of my life. I really do. I hope I get to have a really long, great career.

[00:12:56] But the odds of working on something again that, like, there are Phineas and Ferb walk-around characters at the park. Like, that kids wait in line to meet Phineas and Ferb to get Phineas and Ferb autographs and stuff. And, like, that is so rare to work on something where you are in the parks. Like, your character is in the parks. And so that's something that I'll never, ever get over.

[00:13:18] And then in terms of personal experiences with fans, I mean, I was talking with someone about this recently because it was just one of the most incredible moments I've ever had with someone is that I met someone at a Comic-Con. I met their family. And their son is nonverbal autistic. And, you know, he was listening to the show in his ear. And they all had matching Phineas and Ferb shirts. And they came down because, like, our son loved your show. It's one of the only shows he watches. And he was listening to the show.

[00:13:46] And I started talking to him as Phineas because, obviously, he wasn't going to talk to me. And I started talking to him as Phineas. And he talked back to me. He was – yeah, he had a conversation with me because he thought he was talking to his favorite character. And, you know, his family was in tears. Like, I was, you know, I was getting really emotional. I was like, wow, this is incredible. Like, he doesn't talk to us. Like, he does not speak. He only talks to the characters on this show. And he thinks you're here. Like, he thinks that he's talking to Phineas.

[00:14:14] And that's, like – that's incredible. That's just an incredible thing that there are people who care enough about these characters and about this show that it has that kind of impact on their life. So I really don't take it for granted. No, definitely, yeah. So what do you think, like, seeing a new generation discover the show? Like, what are you hoping they get out of it? Like, I have a seven-year-old son. He just started watching it recently. I think it's going to be such a treat for them because they're going to get to go back.

[00:14:40] I can watch all the old episodes on Disney Plus and on Disney Channel because they're doing, like, marathons of it. But they're going to get to go back and then get new content. Whereas, like, there was a generation in the middle there who were discovering it who then just went, oh, no, there's nothing new. Like, it all – there's nothing new.

[00:14:57] And so we have such an opportunity with, you know, the end of Gen Z and then into Gen Alpha to really introduce these people who know about the show because it's such a hit on the internet to now get new content and get new episodes and have new songs that will go viral on TikTok and stuff. And, you know, I have a niece who's turning three soon. And I'm like, some of this is going to time out where she's going to be able to watch this. Like, even if we don't get more – I hope we get more seasons.

[00:15:25] But this is going to kind of time out where she's going to be able to start watching the show. And that means a lot to me. Like, that means a lot that I'm going to get to share that with a family member. And so I'm so glad your seven-year-old son is getting to experience the show. How about, like, the returning fans? Are they going to notice anything different in the series? Like, any type of Easter eggs from, like, the old episodes or little things like that? I mean, there's a ton of Easter eggs. Yeah, we're very self-referential in our show, even more so, I would say, now than before because there's so much random stuff. I mean, we have, you know, a floating baby head.

[00:15:55] We have a Clint Balloon, the old-timey bathing suit that lives in the Himalayas. Like, we have all these random characters like Meep and Ducky Momo who are fan-favorite characters who will, you know, possibly appear in new episodes. And then what's great for the new fans of what they can expect, too, is we have a wonderful actor playing Ferb now who we didn't have in our original run. His name is David Arrigo Jr. And I love the guy. He's one of my best friends. And he plays Ferb now on the show.

[00:16:24] And so he gives an incredible performance. And I think people are going to really love, you know, that additional cast member we have now. Last question, Vincent. What do you hope? What's the message? One message you got for the fans? My biggest message is same thing Phineas would say, which is carpe diem, you know. Enjoy every day to its fullest. We really hope that you have an amazing summer vacation and you enjoy our new season of Vanessa and Ferb.

[00:16:53] And I really do hope that you have the best time on these adventures with us because we've had the best time making it for all of you. That's awesome. Vincent, I want to thank you for giving me a few minutes today. We got to get you back on. I know you're short on time today. No, of course. Thank you so much. We got to continue all this conversation. This was great. Yeah, absolutely. I hope we get to speak again about it.