A member of the talented voice cast behind Sonic The Hedgehog 2‘s non-human characters is reflecting on the comparison between the playable source material and its live-action, feature-film counterpart. Colleen O’Shaughnessey has been portraying the twin-tailed fox, Tails, for eight years, starting her Sonic the Hedgehog journey with Sonic Boom back in 2014. Now, Tails is gearing up to make his long-anticipated cinematic debut in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (post-credits scene in the original movie excluded) and she couldn’t be happier to see Tails on the big screen.
Speaking to GamesRadar+, O’Shaughnessey made some comparisons to purely game-based Tails and the alternate version about to make a theatrical appearance. When asked to describe the dynamic between Sonic and Tails in Sonic the Hedgehog 2, she spoke briefly about how the friendship had only just begun, how Tails is in the early stages of recruitment for Team Sonic, and how he’s about to take up the position as Sonic’s BFF.
I was just going to say hero worship. He feels compelled to warn him and find him, there’s that give and take. Without giving anything away, he’s nervous and this is his idol: ‘What, you want me to go on this journey with you? I’m just the warning guy. Good luck, I’m gonna hit it!’
Likewise, when asked how the live-action Tails differs from what fans have come to know and love in the games, O’Shaughnessey speaks on Tail’s relationship with Sonic and compares the time period as more of a prequel that dives into the history between these pop-culture icons as opposed to the origins being implied.
It’s just different scenarios, different situations. We’re meeting him at a different stage of his relationship with Sonic, we’re just getting to know him. It’s more like a prequel, if you will, to what I’ve worked on before. Because all of those relationships were already established in things I worked on previously.
Furthermore, O’Shaughnessey touched on the recording process, explaining that the approach to Tails felt more grounded rather than heightened like it is in the video game series.
I was given the script ahead of time [and] we did talk a little bit more about having more of a grounded performance, as opposed to something a little more heightened like we do for the video games.
Fans of Sega’s long-running franchise can see Tails in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 when it hits theaters everywhere on April 8.
