Freddy Fazbear voice actor Kellen Goff: ‘It’s been quite the roller coaster and I have adored every loop’ | Interview

One of the most recognizable faces in the modern horror AND gaming industries is Freddy Fazbear. The animatronic bear who entered the scene in 2014 found his voice with actor Kellen Goff after a few installments of the game series, as the lore of the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” franchise grew deeper in his first appearance in “Five Nights at Freddy’s: Sister Location.”

Over the years, Kellen has appeared in multiple “FNAF” games, including the iconic Glamrock Freddy in “Five Nights at Freddy’s: Security Breach,” and portrayed Overhaul in “My Hero Academia” and Floyd Leech the Disney+ anime series “Twisted Wonderland.”

How did you get into voice acting?

I got started in voice acting in I want to say 2007 when the advent of YouTube was starting to pick up and animation was starting to become a bigger thing. At the same time, I was doing theatre at elementary school. The two just started to overlap because I had my online friends and we would do our own animations, but we couldn’t hire professional voice actors, so we’d voice act for each other’s stuff.

More and more, I was like, “Wow, this feels right.” So my dad lawyered me into a Bob Bergen voiceover class when I was 16 and I just kept going to classes and hitting the bricks as hard as I could.

Finally my friend sent me an audition for “Scott Cawthon Untitled Project for costumed entertainer” and this would turn out to be “Five Nights at Freddy’s: Sister Location” and Funtime Freddy, respectively.

What is the audition process like for that when you’re auditioning for a role in such an iconic video game?

It was pretty standard. The email came my way from a friend. I saw the details, I saw the script, so I gave them two takes. I gave them the one you hear today, the sort of Krusty The Clown, Hannibal Lecter all over the place type. Then something closer to the medic from “Team Fortress 2” for the second take, which the fandom has come to affectionately refer to as “German Funtime Freddy.” Scott liked the first one that I did and said “Here are the lines” and I did them to the best of my ability!

Have there been any surreal moments for you since being cast one of the most iconic faces not just in gaming, but in the modern horror landscape?

Countless. I go to fan conventions pretty consistently, interacting with people who say that my voices, my characters have saved their life or they’ve helped their brother/sister break their nonverbal-ness. Or that they were there for them as a surrogate father figure during hard times like lockdown. Just hearing about all of that makes it so surreal to me.

Seeing how many people show up for the panels. … Of course, being part of movies about it now! One surreal moment after another. With Scott, the surreal-ness is often delayed because at first it is very casual. It’s just like, “Hey, can I get a couple lines for this?” and later on it ends up being on a big screen somewhere. It’s been quite the roller coaster and I have adored every loop.

Since your role in the movies was primarily voiceover work, were you able to visit the set while they were filming?

Yes! I was in New Orleans in January of 2025 for FanExpo New Orleans and I was at my table unassuming, just thinking it would be a run-of-the-mill convention. Then I got a few people come up to my table and say “Hey, are you part of what they’re filming down the road?” and I’m like, “What?” And they’re like, “Yeah, they’re filming ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’ down the road!” and I’m like, “No, they’re not!”

So I emailed Scott I’m like, “Hey, I hear you might just be down the road. Are you filming something? Would you mind if I visited the set?” and he’s like “Oh, yeah! You’re in town? Yeah, absolutely come on by!”

I headed over there, I met Scott for the first time in person. I went into the video village with him, which is where the producers and the directors watch all angles that the cameras are getting while it’s filming. Scott leans over and says, “Do you wanna be in it?” and I’m like, “YES!”

The scene they were filming was FazFest, which is this humongous fair basically dedicated and circulating Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria. Toy Freddy was actually in this scene and I got to walk behind Toy Freddy. They put me in a nice little camera view wearing a big old top hat, and this won’t translate well over text, but this very eccentric coat here that I had bought earlier in the day. They were like, “We don’t have anything left in the wardrobe. We weren’t expecting you.” I’m like, “I could wear this?” Thank goodness it was that thick because it was a cold, cold night but oh, it was so worth it.

To answer your surreal moment question from before, I can now say, personally in person in the same moment as a character I’m voicing walking behind them looking incredulously at my character, it’s pretty meta.

You did Foxy’s iconic hum in the first movie; that was featured in the Halloween Horror Nights house at the Universal parks. Were you able to go through that this year?

I was! I hold the rights to the sound [Foxy’s hum]. It’s sort of a music thing. I knew it was happening pretty early on. They asked me if they could license it out and I’m like, “of course!” They had it in there and I got invited to the red carpet VIP opening of Horror Nights that year, along with Piper Rubio, who plays Abby Schmidt in the movie. I got my own little tour guide and we went through all the mazes I wanted to, but of course we beelined it for “Freddy’s” first. It was a lovely night and I got some good pictures and video with my Foxy boy in there.

Have you ever thought about what a permanent “Five Night’s at Freddy’s” attraction would be?

Oh man, it would be so cool if it was like a dark ride. If you were going through the whole pizzeria and you start in the control room? That would be so cool. Or an actual Freddy Fazbear’s pizza in the park where they actually bake it the way Showbiz used to. Maybe even have some animatronics going in there, that would be so, so fun as well. There’s so much potential.

Are there any other projects that you’ve been a part of that you’d want to see in a theme park?

Recently, Disney’s “Twisted Wonderland” has been releasing on Disney+. We did the English dub. I play Floyd Leech in it. I would love to see some representation of “Twisted Wonderland” in the Disney parks themselves. They lend perfectly to Oogie Boogie Bash or any scary thing they really want to do. I mean, it’s a magic school! There’s so many places that could be. That could be in Fantasyland! There’s a whole campus they could do for that. Or just walk-around characters. I would just love to see representation of “Twisted Wonderland” in there.

You mentioned the “Twisted Wonderland” anime. What are some of the differences between, at least for you, voice acting for a video game but also bringing your voice acting talents to an anime? Is it about the same? Do you go about that process differently?

It’s interesting because the people separate anime and video games. Really the actual separations to make are the non-localized or localized, meaning something that was made here or something that we’re dubbing into English. Because either of them could be a video game or a cartoon.

When it comes to localization, anime and video games are very similar. For localization, you always have to hit a certain time range for each line. Have to make sure it fits within the flaps, fitting the feel of it, all of that. There is challenge that comes to that, but it’s challenge that I adore tackling. Any acting challenge I just love to prove to myself that I can do it.

Non-localized stuff like “Five Nights at Freddy’s” where we’re just doing it freeform, is just that, a lot more room to move and improv and all that. They’re two different beasts and they’re fun for different reasons.

What’s it like going from voicing one version of Freddy, like Funtime Freddy in “Sister Location” to Glamrock Freddy, who is a much bigger role when it comes to as many lines as you have? What’s the difference for you?

[Glamrock Freddy was] certainly a larger part of that story than Funtime Freddy was of “Sister Location.” It’s quite the jump, but it was a blast! In the first one, I wasn’t quite sure of the context of any of the scenes, which left it more open to interpretation. I could do as many takes as I wanted and I could take it a bunch of different ways. I was also not being directed directly. I was not in a session for “Sister Location,” whereas “Security Breach” I was in a session with a director, Jay Top [Jason Topolski], the best director a guy could ask for when it comes to just going nuts and trying anything, throwing anything at the wall and seeing if it stick. That was a lot more fun, a lot more work. It was about 10 hours of recording.

I had a blast with both for different reasons. I know that’s kind of the common recurring when it comes to “Five Nights” and voice acting in general: finding the enjoyment in any form it takes.

I’m sure you’ve seen “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” by now. Coming from voicing this character all those years ago in “Sister Location” and doing a role as iconic as Glamrock Freddy, seeing this world, albeit not those [specific iterations of the] characters, come to life for a second time, did it surpasses expectations the first one had set?

Oh my gosh, absolutely. They took notes. You can tell that they took notes on what the fans liked and what they were looking for in the first one. They delivered. It’s way more violent, it’s way scarier than the first one. The story has evolved tenfold, the character pieces are really engaging.

I love the Easter eggs that they put throughout it because there are quite a few of them, but I also love that these Easter eggs weren’t so blatant that they interrupted the flow of the story. It’s just something that you can pick out if you’re an eagle eyed theorist or “FNAF” fan otherwise. They leveled up pretty much everything from the first one.

Past bias, past having been in it myself, it was just such an enjoyable film to watch front to back. I think Scott, Emma Tammi, and everybody who’s worked on it has done a fabulous job making this game with relatively little lore on the surface albeit a lot of lore on the bottom of it, translating that into a theatrical form. I think they’ve done a bang-up job.

You mentioned that this one is a little bit more violent, maybe even a little bit scarier than the first one, but also keeping that PG-13 rating. It is a fanbase that has a wide variety of an age range, but you do see that it is primarily kids. I’m of the belief that it is important to have entry-level horror for younger kids and as somebody who voices a character that they look up to, how do you feel about being this entry point for a younger audience to explore this genre?

It’s an honor. It really is. It depends, of course what the character calls for, what the script calls for, what they do as characters, but for the most part, I try and have some relatable aspect and try to leave something like that in every character that I do so that kids and fans of all ages can find a bit of an entry point in there and maybe feel a bit more comfortable with the scares.

Or maybe even in that comfortability there’s also some discomfort. There is a bit of it rooted in reality, so I guess a bit of an uncanny valley when it comes to personality. When I’m in-person and meeting kiddos who have gotten into it, I do my best to show them, “It’s okay! It’s not real, they’re not going to hurt you. This right here is part of what creates it, but it’s not scary!” I have a bunch of googly eyes at my table at cons. “Do you want a google eye?” Anything that I can do to get them comfortable with it. I don’t want them to be scarred by this franchise in anyway. I think Scott and the teams that have worked on it have done a marvelous job themselves at making it accessible for all ages.

I super appreciate that as somebody who became a fan because of his younger brother who, when the first game came out, was like crying anytime he would see Freddy’s face. He was not a horror fan at all, but as he grew up, he got more into the lore. “Security Breach” with how friendly Glamrock Freddy was, that got him into horror, which allowed me to take him to his first big Horror Nights this year, so he could see “Five Nights at Freddy’s.” I do like seeing that other people also see that future of horror, there’s another generation in there and we have to give them their own Michael Meyers or Chucky.

Oh definitely, and who knows what they’ll create because of it. All we can do is the best we can with it!

Can you tell us about any upcoming projects of yours?

Past this and “Twisted Wonderland”? This is quite a right angle, but I do have a YouTube channel with my friends called “The Ink Tank.” We make exploratory content, fan content, about “Ben 10” and the universe at large! We’ve gotten well past 500,000 subscribers now! We’re working very hard on our series “5 Years Later.” It’s a motion webcomic, and I do the audio editing and casting and a lot of the voices for it.

We’ve gotten a lot of the original voice actors back for it: Yuri Lowentahl, Paul Eiding, David Sobolov. We even got Graham Phillips, who played young Ben in the first live-action movie! We’re trying to make something for the fans, cause for a long time we didn’t get a lot of “Ben 10” stuff! It was fun to fill the void for a little bit. Now we’ve got this new comic book run coming out in February!

Do you have any words of wisdom to those who are aspiring to be voice actors?

Be authentically you. Don’t try to be what you think they want you to be, because the greatest weapon in your arsenal is what you personally can bring to the table. Nobody can do it the same way you would approach it. Do the weird thing! That’s why there’s two takes! You can do it the standard safe way if you like, then you can do it the way you feel is going to stand out because it’s what you know. It feels like a bit of a cliché, but it’s so true. Be yourself, even if you’re being other characters. Be yourself at the core of them.

“Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” is in theaters now!

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