Eric Bauza Remembered as a “Once-in-a-Generation” Talent Who Gave Looney Tunes a New Voice

At the 2024 Annie Awards, the Oscars for the animation industry, Eric Bauza stepped up to the podium and, in the lispy-spitty tones of Daffy Duck, pleaded with Warner Bros. to release Coyote vs. Acme. Bauza would later explain that Daffy, as the cartoon world’s go-to character for begging and pleading, seemed an appropriate choice. The room roared. Bauza died suddenly on Oct. 25, of natural causes. He was 46. “This week, this entire tower [Warner Bros. headquarters in Burbank] is in mourning,” says Susan Rogers, a producer at Warner Bros. Pictures Animation, who worked with Bauza on the upcoming animated short Daffy Season. “Everyone is grieving, because I think everybody felt a personal connection with him.” The animation world is remembering him as the artist who revived the Looney Tunes characters for a new generation, as the man widely regarded as the new Mel Blanc. Voice actors, directors, showrunners and studio executives describe a performer who inherited one of Hollywood’s most protected legacies and made it his own. “Other people can do Looney Tunes voices, but you can’t replace Eric Bauza,” says Alex Kirwan, producer of Cartoon Network’s Looney Tunes Cartoons, which features Bauza in multiple roles, including Bugs, Daffy and Marvin the Martian. “He did all these voices, but he was also part of the community. Every single person who works in animation knows him, and every single voice actor knew him and loved him.” “Everybody felt a personal connection with him.” LISA O’CONNOR / AFP via Getty Images Bauza’s route to Bugs Bunny ran through the animation trenches. Born in Scarborough, Toronto, he started out as an animator, character designer and layout artist at Spümcø, the company behind Ren & Stimpy. His voice-over breakthrough came playing Stimpy in Spümcø’s Ren & Stimpy revival Adult Party Cartoon. The series bombed, but Bauza’s performance caught the attention of the animation community. Kirwan’s wife started at Spümcø the same day as Bauza, so Kirwan had heard about “the animation guy who does voices” long before he ever heard him audition. When Bauza auditioned in 2018 for the Bugs Bunny role on Looney Tunes Cartoons, he stood out from the pack. “We listened to like 50 people going, ‘What’s up, doc?’ over and over again,” Kirwan recalls. “His jumped out right away.” Many actors could match the pitch and timbre of Mel Blanc’s original Looney Tunes performances, but only Bauza, says Kirwan, had the same frenetic, high-energy spirit. “He had this very loony energy,” Kirwan says. “There were little line reads in there that were very specific references to very specific shorts. I could tell when he screams here, he’s doing the Bugs Bunny scream from [original Looney Tunes short] Hair-Raising Hare. And I’m like, ‘oh, this guy’s like us. He’s a super fan.’” Rogers says that enthusiasm was rooted in an almost obsessive knowledge of the characters and their history: “He would spend an hour or so every day watching Looney Tunes, he considered that his gym workout. He was just such a fan.” “Just his enthusiasm and joy around the characters,” adds Rogers, who says Bauza played a huge role in the revival of the franchise for a new generation, “and his encyclopedic knowledge and insight into the history. There wasn’t a single short he couldn’t quote or couldn’t reference.” Eric Bauza at the July 12, 2021 premiere of Warner Bros.’ Space Jam: A New Legacy. Bauza voices multiple characters in the film. Matt Winkelmeyer/WireImage Pete Browngardt met Bauza years earlier, casting him as Belly Bag, the title character’s fanny pack, on his Cartoon Network show Uncle Grandpa. (The name was changed for U.K. audiences, who wouldn’t have tolerated a cartoon character saying “fanny.”) Over more than 150 episodes, the two became friends and between takes Bauza would try out the Looney Tunes voices. “The guy could do anything. It was fucking unbelievable,” Browngardt says. “He could do Homer Simpson and Trump and everybody. And I remember thinking to myself, if I ever did Looney Tunes, this is the guy.” Years later, when Warner Bros. offered Browngardt a chance to work on Looney Tunes Cartoons as a writer, he knew who he wanted in the booth. “When you’re doing Looney Tunes, more than half of it is the voices,” he says. “So much of it is Mel Blanc and his legacy, and to find the sort of next Mel Blanc was like, we could pull this off. We could do it justice.” But Bauza, both men say, was more than a mimic. Kirwan points to the range of Warner Bros. projects Bauza took on and how he reinvented the iconic characters for each performance. On Bugs Bunny Builders, a preschool series, Bauza’s Bugs is cuddly and sweet. His Daffy on The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie, which Browngardt directed, is a crazed conspiracy theorist. Eric Bauza voiced both Porky Pig and Daffy Duck in The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie. Ketchup Entertainment “In Coyote vs. Acme he did Foghorn Leghorn as a scary, evil villain,” says Kirwan. “In Space Jam: A New Legacy he does Porky Pig in a rap battle. You could throw anything at him. He didn’t just do the voice of Daffy Duck. He did the voice of 10 different Daffy Ducks that were all completely unique. I am hard-pressed to think of any other modern actor who’s done anything like that.” Coyote vs. Acme was arguably the ultimate showcase for Bauza’s vocal talents. Will Forte, John Cena and Lana Condor might be the live-action leads, but Bauza, who voices Bugs, Daffy, Porky, Tweety, Elmer Fudd, Foghorn Leghorn and the beep-beeping Road Runner, is the star. At first, however, it looked like his performance would never be heard. Then-Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav decided the $30 million to $40 million marketing spend needed to release the film wasn’t worth it. He shelved the movie as a tax write-off. Bauza pushed the hashtag #ReleaseCoyoteVsACME and released imagery from the film on social media long before he took the cause to the stage at the Annies. His Daffy appeal went viral and likely contributed to the studio’s decision to sell the film to Ketchup Entertainment for a reported $50 million. Coyote vs. Acme has since grossed more than $100 million worldwide. Ketchup confirmed it is submitting the film for best animated feature consideration at the 2027 Oscars. Browngardt says that kind of public advocacy was classic Bauza. “He was a great spokesperson. He was the real deal. Pure authenticity was Eric Bauza.” Bauza voices multiple characters, including a surprisingly sinister Foghorn Leghorn, in Coyote vs. Acme. Ketchup Entertainment The response from the industry to Bauza’s death has been as much about the man as the work. Posting on Instagram, Jack Quaid called him “one of the kindest people I’ve ever met.” “One of the most kind, generous and talented people,” wrote voice actor Matthew Mercer. Hazbin Hotel creator Vivienne Medrano, noting she had seen Bauza just a week before his death, wrote that she was struck by how someone “so joyous and talented” could be gone so soon. Others spoke to his stature in the industry. Voice actor Vincent Martella described “a giant. A titan in our industry.” Director Jorge R. Gutierrez, who worked with Bauza on projects including The Book of Life, wrote that he used to design and write characters “giddy, thinking how he would bring them to life.” Adam Rosette, co-director of GOAT, who shared a desk with Bauza at a small animation studio in 2010, recalled that the last thing he texted his friend was that he was “the voice of our generation.” Warner Bros. Television Group chair Channing Dungey said Bauza “followed in the footsteps of giants like Mel Blanc” and called carrying on the Looney Tunes legacy “among the greatest honors of his life.” Bauza had recently been recognized by The Hollywood Reporter, appearing in the inaugural Animation Power list, celebrating the industry’s most influential figures. He attended THR‘s accompanying Most Powerful People in Animation breakfast in Beverly Hills on Oct. 16, just nine days before his death. One tribute landed with particular force. Mike Myers posted on Instagram, first with a short note calling Bauza “a great talent” and a day later with a line about how he “made Scarborough proud.” Like Bauza, Myers grew up in Scarborough, a suburb of Toronto. “If Bauza knew that Mike Myers knew who he was, he would have just fainted,” says Browngardt. “Mike Myers was his hero. Eric dressed as Wayne from Wayne’s World like 20 years ago. Maybe it’s because they’re both from Scarborough, but I even think they sound similar. And, like Myers, Eric was a multiple performer, he could play all these roles, wear all the hats.” “He was the Mike Myers of animation,” Kirwan adds. Browngardt believes the entertainer in Bauza was only beginning to emerge. He remembers watching him work a New York audience on the Day the Earth Blew Up press tour, doing a Trump impression that won over an initially skeptical Big Apple crowd. “He was funny, he was witty, he was sharp. He knew how to entertain a room. He could be a game show host. I think his career was going on a trajectory of breaking out of just being in a booth behind a mic. I think he could be in front of the camera a million times over.” Rogers remembers a similar ability to connect with people and to use his characters to bring a room together. “I don’t think he ever met anybody he didn’t like. He was brilliant at walking into a room, and if there was any kind of tension in the room when he walked in, he immediately dispelled it as a character. If he was gonna comment on something, it was as a character; it was never Eric. Eric never complained about anything.” Both Browngardt and Kirwan return to the same point: Bauza gave his time to everyone, whatever the size of the project. “It didn’t matter if you were the biggest celebrity in the world, if you were working with LeBron James on Space Jam 2, or if you were just trying to make a little indie short,” Browngardt says. “He’d give everyone the same amount of time and effort. How many people can you say that about?” Kirwan notes that Bauza took on many smaller projects he had no need to do, and that students making films could reach out to him and get a reply. With his fiancée, Caro Beurmann, he co-founded Saturday Morning Cartoons United, a nonprofit screening series of vintage cartoons that raises money for the animation community, including industry members affected by the L.A. wildfires. Kirwan has his own memories. Bauza got his family seats at the Hollywood Bowl for a Looney Tunes symphony night, where he performed What’s Opera, Doc? as both Bugs and Elmer Fudd. Another came during the recording of the Day the Earth Blew Up score, when the orchestra was wrapping up and nobody knew Bauza was in the room. “He just started speaking as Porky Pig, giving compliments to the musicians. You just see everybody’s heads whip around and this huge smile come onto their face. It just warms your heart.” “I never saw a dark side. I never saw Eric get angry,” Browngardt says. “Maybe it was a Canadian thing.” Work Bauza completed is still on the way. His Looney Tunes short, Daffy Season, will play ahead of Warner Bros.’ The Cat in the Hat, opening Nov. 6. Warner Bros. will include an in-loving-memory card for Bauza in all Academy screeners of the short. And on Nov. 15 he will be heard voicing two different characters on The Simpsons, fulfilling a longstanding dream of appearing on the iconic show. Bauza did voice work and several musical numbers on the planned feature Bye Bye Bunny: A Looney Tunes Musical, but the future of project, which was in pre-production at the time of his death, remains uncertain. Browngardt says finding a successor will be hard. “It’s gonna be sort of huge shoes to fill.” “I don’t think you replace Eric Bauza,” says Rogers. “The hole he leaves is huge. There are many talented people out there, and the franchise will move on. But there’s only one Eric Bauza.” Kirwan is more hopeful. “There are other people who love these characters, and I hope there are other people who can step forward and bring that love.” Bauza was always conscious of the legacy he had inherited. Whenever he spoke about his chracters in public, notes Kirwan, he made a point of naming every actor who had voiced them before him. “Talking about the Looney Tunes characters, he would always say: Mel Blanc’s let me borrow his Cadillac to take for a spin,” remembers Browngardt. “He’d say he was just trying to return it without a scratch. He knew someone else was going to use it at some point, but he was just trying to take care of it while he was in it.”