SpongeBob SquarePants gets profiled on CBS News Sunday Morning as Nickelodeon character turns 25
- CBS News correspondent and co-anchor Lee Cowan, 59, visited the Nickelodeon studios in Burbank, California, for a feature that included interviews with cast
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SpongeBob SquarePants got the profile treatment on CBS News Sunday Morning as the animated character who lives in a pineapple under the sea turns 25.
CBS News correspondent and co-anchor Lee Cowan, 59, visited the Nickelodeon studios in Burbank, California, for a feature that included interviews with cast members of the long-running show that officially premiered on July 17, 1999.
'SpongeBob SquarePants and his undersea buddies have become a multi-billion dollar a year franchise for our sister network Nickelodeon. They spawned countless video games, internet memes, action figures, three feature films, even a Broadway musical,' Cowan said.
'He lets his freak flag fly. He is who he is. It's amazing that folks find that empowering that are now grown-ups or even little kids now,' said Tom Kenny, 61, who has voiced titular character SpongeBob since 1999.
Cowan observed that what separates SpongeBob from other cartoons, in part, is the cast.
SpongeBob SquarePants got the profile treatment on CBS News Sunday Morning as the animated character who lives in a pineapple under the sea turns 25
'Every one of them has been side by side since the very beginning,' Cowan said.
During a group interview with Kenny, Bill Fagerbakke, Carolyn Lawrence, Rodger Bumpass and Mr. Lawrence, Cowan said, 'What an amazing gift you guys have given people.'
'No, but we got the gift,' said Lawrence, 57, who voices squirrel Sandy Cheeks who wears a diving suit and lives underwater.
'It's our first best destiny I always say,' chimed in Bumpass, 72, who voices Squidward Tentacles.
Behind-the-scenes video was shown of the cast recording a scene and afterward Cowan told the voice actors that he was struck how they still laugh at it.
'That's the beauty of it,' said Fagerbakke, who voices dimwitted starfish Patrick.
'We always will laugh at it,' Bumpass added.
'Patrick still makes me laugh. I kind of lose myself in Patrick,' Fagerbakke admitted as a clip was shown of Patrick asking if mayonnaise was an instrument.
CBS News correspondent and co-anchor Lee Cowan, 59, visited the Nickelodeon studios in Burbank, California, for a feature that included interviews with cast members of the long-running show that officially premiered on July 17, 1999
'SpongeBob SquarePants and his undersea buddies have become a multi-billion dollar a year franchise for our sister network Nickelodeon. They spawned countless video games, internet memes, action figures, three feature films, even a Broadway musical,' Cowan said
'He lets his freak flag fly. It's amazing that folks find that empowering that are now grown-ups or even little kids now,' said Tom Kenny, 61, who has voiced titular character SpongeBob since 1999
During a group interview with Kenny, Bill Fagerbakke, Carolyn Lawrence, Rodger Bumpass and Mr. Lawrence, Cowan said, 'What an amazing gift you guys have given people'
'We always will laugh at it,' said Rodger Bumpass
Cowan told viewers how this 'fantastically improbable world was dreamed up by a former marine biologist named Stephen Hillenburg'.
Kenny gave Cowan a tour of the 'Nickelodeon archives' with a short Igor impersonation.
'Hillenburg thought it would be particularly funny if the sponge who lived in this tidepool wasn't an actual sea sponge, but an ordinary kitchen sponge instead,' Cowan said.
He added: 'Hillenburg's premise was simple. A happy-go-lucky SpongeBob wants nothing more than to be the best fry cook in the ocean. And has a pet snail named Gary.'
Cowan said that Ramsey Naito, president of Nickelodeon Animation, argues that SpongeBob became for Gen Z what Mickey Mouse was to Baby Boomers.
'One of the things I always loved about SpongeBob, personally, is that SpongeBob reminds us of the kid inside of us all, truly. That sweet, honest, naive, loveable kid in all of us,' Naito said.
'Patrick still makes me laugh. I kind of lose myself in Patrick,' Bill Fagerbakke admitted as a clip was shown of Patrick asking if mayonnaise was an instrument
The Nickelodeon show has spawned numerous Internet memes
A SpongeBob SquarePants show played on Broadway
'One of the things I always loved about SpongeBob, personally, is that SpongeBob reminds us of the kid inside of us all, truly. That sweet, honest, naive, loveable kid in all of us,' said Ramsey Naito, president of Nickelodeon Animation
Kenny noted that SpongeBob does get discouraged and feels bad, but he always comes back.
Fagerbakke said a 15-year-old girl came up to him at a convention and said she went through a period of great depression and the show made her want to keep living.
'That's such an incredibly intense thing to hear. And I look up and there's her mother standing right behind her, she's sobbing,' Fagerbakke said of the show's impact on people.
SpongeBob SquarePants creator Hillenburg died in November 2018 at age 57 after being diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.
