Emmy and Golden Globe-winning actor James Brolin is probably best known to readers of this website for his performances in classic 1970s movies Westworld, The Amityville Horror, The Car and Capricorn One, but it’s his role as narrator of Netflix’s number one show Sweet Tooth that’s opened up new opportunities for him. Brolin spoke to a handful of journalists on Zoom from his Malibu home and Nick Joy was there for Sci-Fi Bulletin.

What it was that drew you to this project?

It was an assignment. [Chuckles]. It was the Downeys who said ‘You’re doing this. Period.’ Robert and Susan said to Warners: ‘It’s Brolin’. So, they got their wishes because this was their project from the get-go and I’ve known them both for several years. We’d had a luncheon at their house not too long before. I don’t know if they had it in their head, but anyway, they insisted, and here we are.

I’ve auditioned for many vocals gigs and never got one. This is the first one. Now, suddenly, I’m flavour of the week, I’ve got my second one and other people are talking about doing others. I didn’t know that I wanted to be a voice actor. I thinks it’s very interesting and I wasn’t even aware of my voice until I played Clark Gable in the 70s and then Reagan later  You.can regulate your voice, you can do this and that. Even though my brother owned a major recording studio for a while, it just wasn’t a thing. I think I was afraid of getting up there too early in my life to pay attention to that stuff.

The series is based on the Sweet Tooth comic book. Did you go back to the source material to help you prepare for the role, or did you want to bring an entirely fresh perspective to it?

I did a quick search – ‘What’s this comic book?’ – and I couldn’t come up with much of anything. I think I found on eBay one copy for $470. But I was not supposed to know much about this. We recorded everything at home because of COVID with an amazing setup that they brought. I was all alone, connected by headphones and Ethernet with Warner Brothers sound. They would only play me on this video screen what they wanted me to record over. So I didn’t know much until last Friday when everybody else knew a lot about it.

Also, in doing that I noticed how rickety I was in the first show and then as the shows went on I got more solid about what I was saying and maybe I began to subliminally understand the direction of the show. I kinda liked that. I kinda liked playing in the dark and I’ve recorded some other stuff since then and I find that they try to direct you – do this, do that – and I say ‘Be quiet for a second and let me try a couple of things.’ And afterwards they go: ‘Oh, that’s pretty good. Do that again.’ It’s amazing what may come out of the top of your head – or may not – in sessions like this. They’ve got a basic idea of what they want but if they see something better they grab  it.

When I think back to the 1970s and the movies you were in like Capricorn One and Westworld, this was a period of speculative sci-if and paranoid conspiracies. Are you surprised that 40 years later there’s still that interest in shady governments and dystopian futures?

A shady government is my favourite subject. But it doesn’t surprise me. It did surprise me that there is such a thing as the Universal-owned Sci Fi Channel but this is something that has perpetuated. I tried to read Dune by the way because Josh [Brolin] just did Dune and I couldn’t get through it. Other people say ‘Wow, what a book.’

My interests can go anywhere. I can’t say they have to be well-written, they just have to be written in my area of conception. I’m not surprised that this show came along, but this is an oddball comic book that I’d never heard of and the only connections we all really have with it is the fact that COVID started up after the Downeys started dealing with this subject. They didn’t know about that.

The other thing is that we have two cloned dogs, which is weird in 2020/2021, but my wife [Barbra Streisand] was so in love with our little dog that we had for 11 or 12 years that  she just had the vet take a little sample and then later on said I’m going to do this and you hope to get the same dog and everything. They called up and said ‘Your litter has just been born – there are four dogs.’ I didn’t realise. [I thought] when you order a dog  you’re just going to get a dog. We ended up with two puppies and we’re just crazy about them.

As weird as it is, the world is changing. What a phenomenon. Art depicts reality many times. Sci-fi things we find out can happen 30 years later. We have the same thing with Sweet Tooth – it’s predicting possibilities. Who knows? Every day on this Earth is a thrill and I love it.

What do you think are the strongest moral messages that Sweet Tooth conveys to the audience?

To me, if there’s a through line it’s that whatever we’re hit with, even though we may hate our neighbour for some reason, what we all want is the love of friends, family and anybody that sees eye to eye with us. I think we all have that capability but somehow something gets in the way. This eight hour movie to me talks about all the things that can ruin your life and what you can do to get past that. What we really all want and seek deep down is love, whether it’s family love or friendship love or somebody that you just met and you’re going to be lifelong friends. Whatever this is – and it’s an oddball adventure – it turns out with a sweet ending that everybody seems to be very satisfied with.

What was the biggest challenge for you, particularly with this just being a vocal?

I’d been sitting home for 15 months and my wife was working on her 900-page true life story – because there are 25 books that are not true out there – and I’d been working on three scripts to direct. For this to kind of land in my lap, for someone to call to do my first vocal job, and then two weeks later have it turned into somebody else wanting to hire me for their job… I’ve just read three articles that talk about this ‘great voice’. Really?

I’ve been in an elevator and the guy at the front says ‘What floor?’ I’ll say ‘Five’ and they say ‘Oh, I thought that was you.’ People tell me that I have a recognisable voice, but obviously it wasn’t recognisable enough to hire before. I feel like I’m in a new area and can tweak and refine in areas I don’t even know about yet. The voice is the best tool to unlock you. The bottom line is that l love every day at work and this has been eight three to four hour days on this job. It has certainly paid off for everybody.

Sweet Tooth is streaming now on Netflix; click here for our other coverage.