Freddy Prinze jnr has fulfilled his dream of starring in a feature based on one of his favourite cartoon series, Scooby Doo. F.P: self-confessed comic book and superhero fan, Prinze may have missed out on Spider-Man, but as he cheerfully explained to Paul Fischer, Scooby was a nice replacement.

Paul Fischer :When I spoke to you last time about Summer Catch, you said that you like doing Scooby Doo but you’d rather not have done it in Queensland, Australia. Why?

Freddy Prinze: I loved being there. It was awesome and the people were nice and they had great food, which is always a plus, and the weather was perfect, but five and a half months anywhere besides America is just too much for me. I missed the NBA playoffs, I missed hockey, I missed American soccer.

P.F: What about television?

F.P: Oh, God, they do, and they have a satellite. And the satellite in Australia has 32 channels, and my satellite in my house has about a thousand. So, I didn’t get the sports and I missed baseball, and baseball is my – I mean I’m in a frigging baseball movie, so.

P.F: So did you contract for the sequel demand you don’t shoot in Queensland?

F.P: As long as they get me a satellite that can do the entire channels, I’ll film anywhere they want. I need my sports.

P.F: Are you signed up for the sequel?

F.P: Yeah, we all are. I don’t think it’s a big secret. Nobody really knows anything, yeah. Warner Brothers wouldn’t have let us in the movie if we didn’t sign up for like 27 sequels.

P.F: What kind of studying did you do of the cartoon characters to get a feel on the tone and the voice and everything that you did?

F.P: I was kind of the geek on set, so I have yet to meet a bigger fan and more obsessive fan of cartoons and comics in general than myself. Over the last 20 years, actually I’ve seen every single episode of Scooby Doo and there’s over 300 of them. Even when they re-did it in the 80’s, and they got rid of Fred and Velma and hired some Puerto Rican kid named Rudy. It was right on for Puerto Ricans, but it was horrible. I even had all those. So I had a very good template to start with and the fun part was I just sort of got to literally three ‘dimensionalize’ this character because I had more than 25 minutes to sort of develop my character.

P.F: There’s a talking dog.

F.P: Yeah, there is. My dog couldn’t talk and this one could, so he quickly became the clueless guy on the block. I think, for me anyway, I just – I wanted to be Scooby Doo.

P.F: Could you act the geekiness of this – when you say geek, I mean is that something that you took relate to?

F.P: Uh, yeah. I mean I like – there’s a certain world that I’ve lived in since I was – as far back as I can remember, and I’ve always sort of created things that weren’t necessarily real and had make believe friends, but they’re really good guys. And, so, I still do that to this day. So, to walk on set and to see the rest of these guys sort of come and do what I do every day of my life for five months was very – it boosted my credibility a little bit.

P.F: So do you still have make believe friends?

F.P: Yeah, man.

P.F: I know you wanted Spiderman real bad.

F.P: I did. I did.

P.F: Can you comment about the movie? Have you seen it?

F.P: It was unbelievable. I love what Hollywood’s doing with all these movies, you know.

P.F: Can you see yourself doing something like that in the future?

F.P: Good athletes, daredevils, so…

P.F: Have you ever done something like that?

F.P: I like Captain America a lot.

P.F: Would you like to do that?

F.P: Yeah. I would – are you kidding? I am a super hero in real life, so.

P.F: What are your super talents?

P.F: So apart from the Scooby sequel, what else are you up to?

F.P: Well, I thought we were going to go on strike, so I started writing, then I’d have a job and do something. However we didn’t go on strike and in the process of writing, it became something I feel in love with and I wrote two pilots and I’m in the process of writing a third, and I wrote a screenplay that I’m going to direct.

P.F: Oh, when?

F.P: You know, I want to act still but there’s other ways to communicate and I just like telling stories and this is the way for me to tell a story that I think is pretty cool. I happened to write it, but…

P.F: Have you sold these scripts?

F.P: Well, actually I am talking to two different people right now, so once I figure out exactly where the best place for the movie is, then that’s where I’ll go, but they both seem very interested.

P.F: Are you surprised that you have generated a new passion in writing?

F.P: I think I was surprised at the time, and now I’m just more motivated. Initially I tried to write a draft of X-Men years ago when they were first talking about it. I was approached because they heard I was a big fan and I got to page ten and that was about all there was, so I said, there you go, I hope you like it, and I didn’t think I could do it, so…

P.F: What kind of film are you writing?

F.P: It’s a family film. I don’t want to say too much about it ‘cuz it’s kind of – it’s just off center and I think people will be surprised by it.

P.F: Are you starring in it as well?

F.P: No, no. Just write it and direct it, but it’s kind of about a family and they start their own little miniature civil war with the business across the street, and it’s crap that we do…

P.F: With all this other stuff you’re doing, you’re also preparing to get married. I mean how can you cope with it all?

F.P: We cope with it because we don’t talk about it, so it’s very simple.

P.F: Scooby told the press recently that he was going to be best man at the wedding.

F.P: He probably will be. Well, it’s him or Scooby Dumb, so we’re trying to work it out.

P.F: Is this something you and Sarah talked about together, not to discuss your private lives, or was that something you all had made separate?

F.P: I just think we both feel the same about it. We have something that’s very special and it wouldn’t be very special if we constantly talked about it all the time and people would get bored with it very quickly; we would rather be excited about it and continue to be excited about it, so that’s what we do.

P.F: Did you like working with her?

F.P: Yeah, sure. It was exactly what I thought it would be, which was – I know her work – I know what she’s going to bring to the table. I know what I can expect from her. I know how hard I can push her, and vice versa. I see Sarah on TV and I see Sarah on screen, and I genuinely feel that she belongs on screen, in movies. She’s a movie star and what she does, you can’t always see on a little TV screen. Even on a big TV screen because she’s so sharp, she plays six things at every moment, and you need to be gigantic for an audience to see that and read that. So I push her maybe some times even too hard, but I know what she’s capable of doing, and I want her to have success so that I can retire, I mean, you know, not work.

P.F: Weren’t you also developing a comic? I mean where are you at with that?

F.P: I still am. I just have to – I can actually do it at any time. They said that it’s cool to do, I just have to get an artist, but I turned it into a television pilot. Also, that was where I started – that’s where I kind of started writing actual screenplays and things like that, and so now I want to sort of – I have a director who wants to be involved. This guy Paul Anderson who directed Resident Evil, wants to direct it, and then once I sell that, then I’d like to release the book and the movie, sort of come out around the same time so I can have as many people read the comics as possible.

P.F: Right, and can you define it more, actually tell us what the idea is?

F.P: Yeah, it’s a bunch of kids who at the same day, on the same time, they’re all born on the same day, March 8, which oddly enough happens to be my birthday. And they all become something. What, they don’t know, is that certain things happen and all of a sudden, the world sort of freaks out. So certain people convince us that this is a disease and it’s something that needs to be contained, whereas others say that this is simply the future. They’re called the templates, and that they’re the templates of what the future of humanity is all going to be, and so it kind of creates tension and this good guy’s name is Dr. Manual Brazen, he’s like a geneticist. He’s the one great pro template and he helps these kids like learn their powers and develop them and use them for good instead of evil and things like that. It’s very standard super hero story but one that I’ve always been fond of and a lot of my friends were interested.

P.F: Are there any plans for the sequels? Anything written now?.

F.P: That would probably be a question for the writers and producers.

P.F: How do you see the Scooby characters in the sequel?

F.P: I’m fairly confident in their ability. Well, the cartoon has been on since 1969 and is one of the most popular cartoons in the world. And the marketing of the toys and merchandise is unbelievable, so I mean we’ve basically had trailers running for three decades. And so I think we’re going to be okay.

P.F: Is it scary to see yourself in a toy store?

F.P: I was a toy before in this really horrible movie that Matt and I made called Wing Commander, and nobody bought it, so I don’t want to be; it was a dog of a movie, so I don’t want to be a toy.

About: Freddie Prinze Jr

Real Name: Freddie Prinze Jr.
Date of Birth:  March 8, 1976
Place of Birth: Los Angeles, Calif., USA

Filmography:

Scooby-Doo II (2004)

Release Date TBA 2004
All the original cast members (plus the CGI Great Dane, of course) will be returning for the sequel.
Starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze Jr., Matthew Lillard, Linda Cardellini
Directed by Raja Gosnell
Written by James Gunn
Studio Warner Bros.
Genre Comedy, Adventure