Although conceived as a corporate product, the makers of the “Transformers” TV show cared about their characters, and they cared about their actors. According to story supervisor Flint Dille, “Transformers” was one of the only animated shows of its era to hold table readings of an episode’s entire script, with the cast reading all their lines in character. Dille said that slight alterations, improv, and rewrites were permitted. On other shows, actors would often be given just their lines or were perhaps encouraged to focus only on pieces of the script. “Transformers” bothered to think about the script as a whole. Dille said:
“We’re gonna get the stuff that’s actually in the script, but if you have some idea that you really like, let’s hear it. And those guys were really good at it because they really knew their characters, they knew each other, they knew how they related to the other characters, and I think that’s why a lot of the Sunbow shows at the time had a feel to them.”
Sunbow was the name of the show’s American distributor. They also made the toy-inspired cartoons “Jem and the Holograms,” “G.I. Joe,” “My Little Pony,” and “Visionaries: Knights of the Magical Light.”
Evidently, allowing actors to do full-length table reads while being encouraged to improvise led to some moments of what might be called “competitive acting.” Dan Gilvezan who played the Autobot Bumblebee recalls the voice talent sparring. He said:
“You fill a room with a bunch of personalities like the ones we had on this show, actors and musicians, comedians, I mean it was Bedlam. With Michael Bell trying to top Frank Welker trying to top Peter Cullen, I mean, and everyone was in there doing their own thing, it was just crazy.”
