NEW YORK — It was Seth Green’s destiny to join the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” team.
This actor-writer-producer-director is unrivaled for popping up all over the place. So why not here? After all, he’s the 40-year-old show-biz ace who, as a youngster, played Woody Allen’s childhood doppelganger in the 1987 film “Radio Days” and went on to appear in the “Austin Powers” spoofs. He co-created the Adult Swim sketch comedy series “Robot Chicken.” He voices Chris Griffin, the deranged teen on Fox’s animated hit “Family Guy.” He starred in the NBC sitcom “Dads” last season. His latest film, “The Identical,” opened in September.
Now, with the start of Season 3 of “Ninja Turtles,” Green has claimed the job of voicing Leonardo, leader of this quartet of “heroes in a half shell.”
Green brings a lifetime of devotion to the task. He has followed the Ninja Turtles franchise since its comic-book birth three decades ago. Turtle Power, he says, represents everything a kid loves: “brotherhood and friendship and justice and ninjas!”
But just as he has matured through the years, so has his perspective on the Turtles.
“Early on, I related to Raphael, the wild one, or to Mikey, because he’s the childish one,” says Green. “But Leo is a really complicated character, because he is tasked with being the paternal figure for these brothers. He has a different level of responsibility, and I like being able to bring that kind of gravity to it.”
If he came to this shell game already steeped in the Turtles ethos, there was yet another reason why this seemed like a marriage made in heaven: the woman Green is married to. He explains that Clare Grant, his wife of four years, has long nurtured a secret crush on Leonardo. It’s a secret she confided by chance to a “Ninja Turtles” executive producer a while back, which, according to Green, may have set in motion his enlistment to step in for Jason Biggs, the voice of Leonardo for this animated series’ first two seasons.
So, to sum up: Green now gets to fulfill a lifelong dream while also bringing to life his wife’s fantasy heartthrob.
