John Di Maggio says being the voice of both Futurama's Bender and Gears of War 2 protagonist Marcus Fenix is "a double-ended nerd boner." Whoa wow TMI there, bro. In a two-part 20 minute interview with WJFK-FM's Chad Dukes (second part on the jump), Di Maggio holds forth on being the it voice for two disparate sets of supa-fanboys, among other topics.He says he's famous enough now that despite doing very little on-camera work, he's getting spotted and accosted in public. "People recognize me for my voice, but they see my face — I'm not even on camera for stuff. People see my face and go hey you're John DiMaggio, you're Bender, you're Marcus Fenix. I'm like, dude you haven't even seen my face, how the hell do you know this?" Other highlights: He gets very zen about the kerfuffle back in January when he let slip word that 360 players would get to duke it out with the Brumaks, an experience previously enjoyed by PC gamers only. "I was sitting on my couch, no pants on, listening to myself and talking to myself, when I got a phone call," from his agent, he says, who was a getting heat from Microsoft that he'd spilled the beans. From his reply, I half expected him to also shrug and belch flames. "Well, sorry about that, you're gonna get to fight the Brumaks," DiMaggio said. He also talked about the weirdness of meeting Microsoft types after having played Steve Ballmer in 1999's "Pirates of Silicon Valley", and no one noticing that. "I'm the guy who did your boss in a made for TV movie." Di Maggio said. "I did the shakey dance and the Ballmer scream. They said they couldn't wait to tell the boss when they got back." Good stuff throughout. Dukes and his on-air partner The Big O also talked to GoW2 lead dev Cliff Blezinski in another piece, which is available at the first link following part 2 below.
Big O and Dukes Show Archive [for Blezinski interview, WJFK 106.7-FM, Washington, thanks Ianni] Exclusive Interview with John Di Maggio [The Fukerton]