Posted in: BBC, Games, TV | Tagged: Broken Sword, Teletubbies

Teletubbies: Rolf Saxon on Series' Legacy, "Broken Sword" Franchise

Rolf Saxon (Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning) spoke with Bleeding Cool about his voiceover legacy on Broken Sword and Teletubbies.

Rolf Saxon will always be grateful to have a career in Hollywood that spans over four decades since his debut in the TV movie Little Lord Fauntleroy in 1980. From there, he regularly appeared across several TV shows and took the occasional film role. Some of his most memorable works include 1984 (1984), Pulaski: The TV Detective, Capital City, and Love Hurts. One of his biggest unexpected roles would be as CIA Analyst William Donloe in the 1996 cinematic reboot of Paramount's Mission: Impossible, which is based on the Bruce Geller TV spy franchise of the same name that starred Peter Graves. Following the success of the film, Saxon would work on several other major film projects while landing a second career as a voice actor with roles as the voice of George Stobbart in the THQ video game franchise Broken Sword and as the narrator of the BBC's massively popular children's series Teletubbies from Andrew Davenport. While promoting his return to the screen after an eight-year on-screen absence in the upcoming Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, the final in the Tom Cruise-starred franchise, Saxon spoke to Bleeding Cool about what voice work in projects like Broken Sword and Teletubbies allowed him to do as an actor, and the delicate nature of children's programming.

Rolf Saxon on His Legacy in 'Broken Sword' and 'Teletubbies'

Bleeding Cool: As you were doing voiceovers, did you find that you were opening the door to a wide range of possibilities of roles available to you that you may not have found in the live-action setting?

Yeah, 100 percent. I do a game called 'Broken Sword,' which I've done for about 25, 26 years, and [my character, George Stobbart, is] a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, young surfer dude from California. That ain't me [laughs]. So yeah, there's no way that I would be able to do something like that if it were visual, not at all. Voice opened some, although I have to say, I sort of fell into voice. That was a bit of a surprise. I've had two amazing voice jobs. I spent most of my career in England, and that is something that's done quite readily. I mean, you just jump on the BBC, or you do radio stuff. It's not a big deal. I got very lucky with 'Teletubbies' and 'Broken Sword,' and they fell into my lap. I'm lucky with the instrument and got very lucky with meeting the right people at the right time, but it's not something I actively pursued. It's just something that came along.

How did you feel about the legacy you helped build with Teletubbies and its persistence throughout the years?

'Teletubbies' was an extraordinary show for kids. They spent something like two years developing it, and one of the ways they did it was they putting children in front of the television. They had cameras mounted on the television, and they watched children's reactions, which is where they got the idea of repetition through it, repeating the story twice. This is for kids who are under five, not for preschool. Again, in Britain, there were a lot of folks, and it was difficult to get childcare sometimes, and children had to be put in front of a television while mom or dad worked from home, or were getting ready for work, and before the babysitter or family member came by.

That was what I understood was 'Teletubbies.' That was the fundamental premise behind it, and the idea that it took off the way it did certainly surprised the producer of the program. When you look at it now, there's no threat. It's something that's very positive for kids, which was fascinating for me to work on it. I had to really learn, I mean, not vocally, there could be no tension to pass on to the children. It's supposed to be absolutely "safe," before that was the catchword that it is today. It's exactly the same. It wasn't an enormous amount of money in any way, shape, or form, but it was one of the jobs I'm proud of being a small part of. I had nothing to do with writing or anything, but that was great for kids.

Teletubbies is available to stream across multiple platforms, such as Netflix and Peacock. Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning, which also stars Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, and Angela Bassett, will be released exclusively in theaters on May 23rd.

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