This year marks the 25th anniversary of Warner Bros. Animation's Superman: The Animated Series, introducing the Man of Steel into the same DC Animated Universe that began with Batman: The Animated Series in 1992. Within the beloved animated series, the cunning supervillain Lex Luthor was portrayed by Clancy Brown. Menacing and brilliant, Brown's depiction of Luthor was every inch the worthy opponent for the Man of Tomorrow. To date, Brown's iconic take on Lex remains one of the DCU's most memorable villains.

In an exclusive interview with CBR, Brown reflected on the legacy of Superman: The Animated Series and his portrayal of Luthor. Brown also discussed his influences for Luthor's voice and how it informed his take on the DC villain -- lending him that "big, bass" of a voice.

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With this year marking the 25th anniversary of Superman: The Animated Series, do you remember getting the call from Warner Bros. Animation and casting and voice director Andrea Romano to take on the role of Superman's greatest enemy?

Clancy Brown: It was a general call, really. I threw my hat into the ring because I was a new dad. I had had a little taste of animation work and these voice actors are so good and they're all my friends now. I thought it was astounding but my agents said at the time, "What are you doing?! You don't need to go into voiceover!" [laughs] But I really wanted to go into voiceover and Warner Bros. was casting outside-of-the-box because they had cast outside-of-the-box for Batman and that was such a success that they decided to do Superman: The Animated Series.

Lex Luthor Superman The Animated Series

It was a general call and they brought in a lot of people to read for Superman. I read for Superman and Andrea had me stick around and read for Lex. I rolled my eyes and she went, "Oh, you don't have to read for it!" I said, "No, I'll read for it, I just wonder what it is about me that I'm always playing the bad guy?" [laughs] But she was just seeing what mixes and matches and that's how I got it. I wasn't bummed. I was actually quite happy to do it, but I really thought I had a shot at being Superman. [laughs] But I never did! I didn't ever!

At the time, audiences were still coming off Gene Hackman's portrayal of Luthor, the self-proclaimed greatest criminal mind of all time. Your Luthor was much more erudite and calculating. What made you want to approach him in that way?

That's really in the writing team. That's really what separates this whole iteration of Superman -- the writing of Bruce Timm, Paul Dini, and all those guys.

That's the way they wrote him but I was always thinking of the guy who played him on Super Friends, Stanley Jones, that's who I always thought of as Luthor. Even though Gene Hackman was the live-action Luthor, I always thought of that big, bass voice as him. Then you put the writing in and I was like, "Oh, there's nuance here so let's play that nuance!" It was so much fun.

How was it working with Andrea in the booth, running these lines, and keeping the energy up?

There is nobody with more energy than Andrea. She was a big blessing for me. I was basically going to school. She taught me how to be a voiceover actor. She's a lot of fun and is very high-energy. Most of the direction to me was to go faster. She doesn't waste any time. When she gets stuck, and she got stuck with me a couple of times, she'll put it aside and come back to it. She's not about giving a line reading and I'm not about taking one. Mostly, she's very supportive.

At that time, it was an all group read too. We were all in the room together and that was always fun because you had people that were new to it -- TV and movie stars that had never done it before. You had old pros, whose voices you would recognize, these chameleon voices, like Corey Burton, who could do everything. It was a lot of fun to be in the room and Andrea was really the conductor. She would coordinate and manipulate all those guys to talk a bit differently but, mostly, she got us into a good rhythm and we'd execute.

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Were there any group reading moments in particular that stood out? You had quite the list of guest stars, like Malcolm McDowell and Mark Hamill.

Yeah, the Malcolm McDowell one was pretty cool. Brad Garrett -- and this was before he was Brad Garrett, TV star -- he's such an impressive figure. He's got the biggest voice and he's funny as hell so that was fun. Dorian Harewood, I remember being impressed when he was there. You'd see guys like Ed Asner, Christopher McDonald, and Ron Perlman, who I'd run into anyway. [laughs] The core group was always there and always fun -- Lisa Edelstein, Corey, Dana Delaney. I love those guys.

Superman: The Animated Series is available now on Blu-ray and Digital HD.

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