Why Tom Holland Wasn’t Allowed To Use His Real Voice In Animated ‘Spies in Disguise’

Spies in Disguise features the voices of Tom Holland and Will Smith. You’ll definitely recognize Will Smith. Superspy Lance Sterling (Smith) sounds just like all of Smith’s blockbuster movies. You may recognize Walter (Holland) as Peter Parker too. Holland is speaking with his American accent.

True Tom Holland fans know he’s British and has a lovely British accent. That’s not the Tom Holland you’ll hear in Spies in Disguise though. The directors of Spies in Disguise spoke with reporters today and Showbiz Cheat Sheet will have more with them in December. Here’s why they rules out Tom Holland’s real voice. Spies in Disguise opens Christmas Day.

Tom Holland’s real voice wouldn’t work for ‘Spies in Disguise’

Walter was an inventor growing up and got a job making gadgets for the spy agency for which Sterling works. That meant Tom Holland needed to be an all-American boy for Spies in Disguise.

“Ultimately for the character of Walter, Walter is somebody who hasn’t really gone out and seen the world,” co-director Nick Bruno said. “Our conversations with Tom earlier, we all felt as a group that it was better to keep him just as a kid who grew up in D.C., who experienced a tragic past so he’s still worldly in that sort of experience.”

When Walter goes on a mission with Sterling, his world opens up. Walter is far from home just like Spider-Man was.

“You really want to feel like when he’s out in the world, this is the first time he’s experiencing this new adventure, unlike Lance Sterling,” Bruno continued.

Tom Holland’s costars got to keep their real voices

Tom Holland may have had to turn on his American accent again, but other Spies in Disguise voice actors got to use theirs. Two of them happen to be Holland’s Marvel colleagues.

“The fun of spy movies is they’re global,” co-director Tony Quane said. “We really wanted to make sure that there was a texture for that palette of sound. While Tom uses his American accent, we’ve got Karen Gillan who uses her Scottish accent and Ben Mendelsohn uses his Australian accent. We made sure we cast Masi [Oka]so the Japanese characters are speaking true to their dialect.”

Even some of of the non famous Spies in Disguise voices represent international languages and accents.

“We didn’t want it to be someone just doing a funny accent,” Quane said. “We really wanted to be authentic. So we cast all of our loop group is all native speaking for all those regions and that was really important.

There are different variations of Americans in ‘Spies in Disguise’ too

International voices make Spies in Disguise exotic, but even within the States there’s no one accent. One celebrity voice brought her Southern charm.

“Even within the American dialect, we have Reba McEntire who comes in with this wonderful Southern twang,” Quane said. “Again, it was about texture and making it feel big and broad in its scope.

Bruno added, “It represents the world that we see.”