Dee Bradley Baker loves a good challenge when it comes to crafting the voice for a new character. “It’s really fun to do characters that are not speaking English in Star Wars,” he tells StarWars.com.
For decades, the longtime Star Wars voice actor has helped create an eclectic group of characters in animated series and video games. From voicing all the clone troopers in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and The Bad Batch to the merqaal Nix in the soon-to-be released video game Star Wars Outlaws, if there’s a Star Wars project that needs voice actors, it’s highly likely Baker is a part of the crew.
As the animated series Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures sees the debut of its second season today, Baker, the voice of the fan-favorite character Nubs in the children's series, sat down with StarWars.com to chat about creating a language for the Pooba species and the rise of #NubsNation.
Young Jedi Adventures included a lot of firsts for Baker — his introduction to The High Republic era (about a century before the Star Wars prequel films) as well as creating the language Poobian for his character Nubs. “I approached it sort of like my character: with innocence and maybe a certain degree of cluelessness,” Baker says. “He’s a child stepping into a universe that he is unfamiliar with, but one that he greets with optimism and a cheerful spirit. And that’s how I approached stepping into Young Jedi Adventures, with that kind of open and innocent mind to the world that I’m about to start to explore and test myself in.”
In addition to voicing Nubs on Young Jedi Adventures, Baker regularly voices secondary characters in episodes ranging from pirates to droids to the many creatures Nubs and his friends encounter during missions, a particular thrill for Baker. “The creatures were the thing that captivated me the most about the original Star Wars film when I saw it back in 1977,” notes Baker. “The prospect of having this fully cosmopolitan, integrated galaxy of species from different planets that all coexist — that you can have a world with that. That was an incredibly appealing idea to me as a kid, and still is.”
As one of several Jedi younglings training on the planet Tenoo, Nubs is unique as he is not human and does not speak Basic (English). But as the show has a target audience of pre-schoolers, subtitles for Nubs’ lines were off the table. It was Baker’s job to make it obvious to a very young audience what Nubs was saying. Improvising is a huge part of Baker’s process of voicing Nubs as he regularly records multiple options for each line after speaking with Young Jedi Adventures creators about what Nubs is trying to get across.
And Baker notes that Nubs' fellow younglings, Kai Brightstar and Lys Solay, regularly reinforce what Nubs is saying in the series, similar to Han Solo helping to translate Chewbacca for the audience, among other aliens. “For me it tracks back to Greedo in the Cantina [in Star Wars: A New Hope]," Baker adds. "If you took out the subtitles, you could probably understand what the altercation was, but there’s a lot of specifics in there that the subtitles added that were necessary and worked well. I’m going for something a little more specific because this is for children. So, it’s got to be clear what’s being said. It’s almost like with a pre-lingual child or even a dog, where there’s a specific intent with the whining or vocalization. If you’re a parent, you can often read what that is. And that’s kind of what you want with a character like Nubs.” As Nubs speaks with some characters who speak English and others, such as the droid RJ-83 (voiced by Jonathan Lipow) who speak a droid language, Baker focuses on the intent of each character while recording his lines. “Whether they are speaking English words or not, if I know specifically what they are saying, however they say it, then I can do my version of the response that we come up with.”
It takes about twenty minutes for Baker to record his lines for each episode, depending on how Nubs-heavy the story is. The actors record remotely, and Baker credits Young Jedi Adventures screenwriters and directors for stitching all the disparate voice performances together so it feels like an ensemble recorded in the same studio.
Since Young Jedi Adventures debuted in 2023, Nubs has become a clear breakout character among fans of all ages. Many adults stopped by to take photos with Nubs during D23 last week and fans regularly use the hashtag #NubsNation to mark their adoration on social channels. That love for Nubs didn’t come as a surprise to Baker. “I understand that because I remember when I got the Time magazine back in 1977 heralding the premiere of a movie called Star Wars. And on it was a giant Wookiee, and he’s holding a gun, and it’s like ‘I gotta see that.’ So the enthusiasm inspired in a young person’s heart when seeing a sidekick — that’s a very exciting idea that I understand very, very well.”
While Baker has voiced dozens of Star Wars characters over more than 15 years working with Lucasfilm, he’s starting to have adults ask him to sign images of Nubs at conventions, he notes. It suggests that even though the series is intended for a younger audience, Nubs’ relatability transcends that target age group. “He’s got these wonderful superpowers. He’s got a good little team of friends. He gets to go to other worlds. He gets to ride in spaceships. And life is one great, big fun adventure for him," Baker says.
"Even if he has difficulties or hardships, he gets through it fine — and that is a vision for what life should be like. It’s an exciting world that you enter into as an adventure where you have good friends with you and family, and as new things come up in the road in front of you, you greet them with enthusiasm and with an open heart. I mean, who doesn’t want that? Who doesn’t want to frame their world and their life in that way? That to me is a big part of the appeal of the Star Wars galaxy — this is a world that you want to be a part of, for that and so many other reasons.”
Nubs and his friends return to Disney+ in Season Two of Young Jedi Adventures with new episodes available now.
