“Greatest Job in the World”: A Conversation With Tom Kenny, the Voice of SpongeBob

For Tom Kenny, voicing Spongebob SquarePants has never really felt like work, even though he’s been at it for 22 years and counting.

“I don’t notice the passage of time,” he says. “You’re just working and then the next thing you know, you’re having the 10th anniversary and then the 15th anniversary and then the 20th anniversary, and you’re going, ‘Wow, SpongeBob has got legs,’ you know?’” 

Yes, and pants…

When the pilot aired in 1997, the team never could have imagined the staying power of a 2D cartoon TV show about a yellow sea sponge who lives underwater, works at a burger joint, and spends all his free time with his best friend, a starfish named Patrick.

“[The show was] that rare harmonic convergence of a character that I loved immediately, a bunch of people that I loved working with, and it’s stayed popular enough that we can keep on making new ones,” he says.

Unlike other ’90s animated favorites that were retired and eventually rebooted years later—Blue’s Clues, Rugrats, Rocko’s Modern Life—SpongeBob has soldiered on without wavering. It has never been off the air. And not only that, in 2021, the show got not one, but two new spin-offs. It’s a testament to the award-winning creatives that put it together, making both kids and their parents laugh, but also its ability to appeal to a new generation of viewers without alienating OG fans. 

“SpongeBob stays relevant by just staying SpongeBob,” says Kenny, “and I think that has more to do with the audience’s relationship with the character and the show, you know—like we’ve never felt a need to update him.”

Kenny compares his busy work life to a game of ping pong—always bouncing back and forth. But others might use another term to characterize the voice actor: “workaholic.”

“Maybe I kind of am [a workaholic], but only because I love what I’m doing and I want to do more of it,” he says. “So maybe I’m not so much a workaholic as a stimulus junkie.”