AJ Michalka on Steven Universe: Stevonnie, Fusion and Greg

AJ Michalka on Steven Universe: the NYCC 2016 interview

New York Comic Con ran from October 6 to 9, 2016, at the Javits Center, and the Steven Universe panel there brought two voice actors who rarely share a stage: AJ Michalka, who plays the Steven and Connie fusion Stevonnie, and Tom Scharpling, who plays Steven's father, Greg Universe. The conversation that followed covered fandom, performance technique and the odd shape of Greg and Steven's family.

Steven Universe is a Cartoon Network series created by Rebecca Sugar. It premiered on November 4, 2013, and ended on January 21, 2019, after five seasons and 160 episodes. A film, Steven Universe: The Movie, followed in September 2019, and an epilogue series, Steven Universe Future, ran from December 2019 to March 2020. When the interview took place, the show was in its fourth season and had a very visible fandom.

AJ Michalka on Steven Universe is a useful voice to hear, because she joined late. Stevonnie debuted in the episode "Alone Together", first broadcast on January 15, 2015, and the character is built on a single idea: Steven and Connie dance together, fuse for the first time and become a new person. Michalka, who is also one half of the pop duo Aly & AJ and has played Lainey Lewis on The Goldbergs, has voiced the character since 2015.

Tom Scharpling brings a different background. Best known for hosting The Best Show on WFMU from 2000 and for writing on the detective series Monk, he has voiced Greg Universe since the show began and carried the role into Steven Universe Future. The two actors cover the show's range, one working in a single fusion and the other in the show's most human relationship.

The setting matters too. The 2016 convention marked the tenth anniversary of New York Comic Con, and local reports expected as many as 180,000 attendees across the weekend. For a cartoon aimed at young viewers, a crowded Javits Center is a measure of how far the audience had grown beyond its target age, and Michalka's surprise at the scale of the room is easy to understand.

A short primer for readers who do not follow the series: the title character, Steven, is a boy raised by three Crystal Gems, and the show's central metaphor is fusion, in which Gems combine into larger beings. Garnet is a fusion of two Gems and embodies a same-sex relationship, while Stevonnie is the human-Gem version of the idea. That is the territory this interview covers.

On fans, Tumblr and a first convention

Michalka said she had been a member of the fandom for a short time, but what she had seen already stunned her. Most of what she had seen was online, and the attention the show gets on Tumblr, in her words, is something she had never experienced. The panel at New York Comic Con was her first convention, and she called the audience reaction a gift.

She also described the show's draw in simple terms: people of all ages and backgrounds can watch it and feel that they belong. That reading matches the way Rebecca Sugar has talked about the show's themes. At a 2016 Comic-Con panel, Sugar said the show's LGBTQ themes were largely based on her own experience as a bisexual woman, and Stevonnie, a they/them character, is one of the clearest examples.

How Michalka plays a fusion

Asked whether she plays Stevonnie as a character of their own or as a blend of Connie and Steven, Michalka said it came naturally. Sugar liked that Stevonnie was their own character, but Michalka also studied the mannerisms of both original characters, including the way Steven talks, to keep the fusion believable. The voice sits close to her own speaking voice, which she said made it easier to find.

She also benefits from where she records. Based in Los Angeles, she can stand in the big circle with the other actors, so she is physically between Zach Callison's Steven and Grace Rolek's Connie while performing. In her description, she feels the energy of both actors and builds her performance out of what they give her.

Fusion as innocence, and the U2 joke

Michalka described fusion as something close to a spiritual awakening for the two kids, a pure and innocent love. She pointed to the first fusion scene in "Alone Together", when Steven and Connie look at their new body and ask what they have become. In her reading, the moment is honest and specific, almost angelic.

Asked whom they would like to fuse with, Michalka chose Bono, and Scharpling chose The Edge. Scharpling then offered the title for the result: U2 Steven Universe squared. The joke is minor, but it shows how comfortable the two are with each other.

Scharpling on Greg Universe

For Scharpling, Greg is the audience's anchor. Every show about magic needs one person without powers so the viewer can see how strange the magic is, and Greg plays that role in a world of Gems. He is also, Scharpling argued, a parent who realizes his child is different from him and has to learn how to love the child anyway.

On the question of Greg and Steven's unconventional bond, Scharpling said that the father has one foot in the past and is never negative about the unfamiliar, only trying to figure it out. He called the relationship the one stable thing in the show: everything Greg feels for his son is never up for question, even if he struggles with the half of Steven he cannot relate to from his own life.

Quick facts from the interview

• Event: New York Comic Con 2016, October 6 to 9, at the Javits Center.
• AJ Michalka: voices Stevonnie, the Steven and Connie fusion, which debuted in "Alone Together" on January 15, 2015.
• Tom Scharpling: voices Greg Universe, Steven's father.
• Dream fusions: Michalka picked Bono, Scharpling picked The Edge.
• Season status: at the time, the rest of season four was set to resume in November 2016.

What the interview adds to the show

Interviews with voice actors usually repeat the same few points. AJ Michalka on Steven Universe, together with Scharpling's answers, is better than most because both actors speak about craft and about meaning, and neither retreats into publicity phrases. Michalka explains how a performer creates a character from two others without copying either, and Scharpling explains why the least powerful person in the cast is also its moral center.

The result is a useful companion to the episodes themselves. Anyone who has watched "Alone Together" will recognize the language Michalka uses for fusion, and anyone who finds Greg a puzzling dad will see what Scharpling thinks the show is doing with him. Tom Scharpling later worked on another comedy covered on this site, serving as a co-executive producer on What We Do in the Shadows in 2019, which gives readers of the Grand Opening recap a small connection back to this conversation.

Steven Universe was always a show that rewarded close listening, and the voice work was a large part of that.

One more note on how to read the answers. Michalka and Scharpling were speaking mid-season, with a hiatus ahead and a fandom waiting for the next episodes. That timing gives the conversation its slightly anxious warmth, and it explains why both actors keep returning to the audience: the answers read as thanks to the people in the room as much as replies to the questions. Read now, AJ Michalka on Steven Universe works as a snapshot of the show at the height of its first run, before the film and the epilogue gave the story a longer ending.

Sources

• Steven Universe, Wikipedia — cast, characters and episode list