HERE IN HOLLYWOOD: Remembering Eric Bauza, the Filipino-Canadian voice who brought Bugs Bunny to life

There is something wonderfully fitting about the way Eric Bauza found his way into the world of cartoon voices. Long before he became the modern voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tweety Bird, Marvin the Martian and many other famous cartoon characters, he was a young boy making his Filipino family laugh.

His earliest performances took place around family gatherings, where an instinct for mimicry and an ear for accents became the beginnings of an extraordinary career. Years later, he would inherit some of animation’s most recognizable characters, carrying their histories into a new generation while leaving a distinctive imprint of his own.

When I interviewed Bauza in 2020, shortly after his casting as Bugs Bunny in “Looney Tunes Cartoons,” he was remarkably good-humored about the attention surrounding the announcement. The series had premiered in March, just as the pandemic was beginning to reshape everyday life. 

By the end of that year, the news of a Filipino-Canadian performer taking on one of animation’s most enduring characters had found a much wider audience. Bauza saw the timing through a characteristically generous lens.

“It’s really funny because the show, ‘Looney Tunes Cartoons,’ premiered in March of 2020. Right when COVID-19 premiered,” said Bauza at the time. 

“The news of myself taking over the role of Bugs Bunny just wasn’t, like, important at the time. But suddenly, everyone has seemed to have taken interest in me being the voice of this character at the end of the year, and I feel like it’s because they’re ready to hear anything else than COVID. And if I break up the monotony of any kind of sad news, and I can put smiles on people’s faces by saying (in Bugs Bunny voice), ‘Hey, what’s up, Doc?’ Then that’s fine with me.”

That instinct to bring joy was central to Bauza’s appeal. His work demanded an extraordinary understanding of characters whose voices had been embedded in popular culture for decades. 

Bugs Bunny carried the unmistakable legacy of Mel Blanc, while Daffy Duck required an entirely different comic rhythm. Bauza understood the responsibility involved in stepping into those roles, approaching the work with an affection for the characters and a deep appreciation for the craft behind them. 

His ability to move between personalities made him one of the most versatile performers in contemporary animation.

The roots of that versatility, as he explained during our 2020 conversation, were firmly planted in his Filipino upbringing. Growing up in a household with parents Elvira and Eddie, he found an early audience in his relatives back home in the Philippines. 

Before digital recordings and email became commonplace, his family used audio cassettes to send personal messages overseas, often packing them into balikbayan boxes filled with clothes, candy and other treats. Bauza’s contributions to those recordings became an unexpected source of entertainment.

“Back when I was only about nine or 10, of course every Pinoy household has a karaoke machine in it, we used to send messages back to our relatives back home via balikbayan box, so we would put all of the candies and clothes and all the goodies to send back home. And we would put a tape in there so they could listen to it,” he recalled.

“We didn’t have MP3 recorders back then, we didn’t have really even email back then. So that was the only way to hear a voice is through audio cassette correspondence, and they were laughing because every time I would talk about sinigang or lumpia or pancit palabok, they would laugh because I was getting the accent, trying to do the accent. If anything, that was my first introduction to character voices. It was studying the accent of my parents,” said Bauza.

There is a lovely sense of continuity in that memory. The boy studying the cadence of his parents’ voices would eventually become the man responsible for recreating some of the most familiar voices in entertainment. His introduction to performance came through family, language and cultural connection, long before the industry gave him a microphone and a professional recording booth. 

For Filipinos and audiences who rarely saw their own cultural experiences reflected in the animation industry’s most prominent spaces, Bauza’s success carried an additional significance. His achievements expanded the possibilities of representation in a field where the voices behind beloved characters have historically been less visible than the characters themselves.

That legacy was still being celebrated during the recent virtual junket for ‘The Cat in the Hat,’ where Bauza was among the additional voice talents featured in the film. He also stars in “Daffy Season,” the short film that opens ‘The Cat in the Hat”. 

His unexpected passing due to a heart ailment had given the conversations a more personal dimension, with cast members and filmmakers reflecting on the privilege of having worked alongside him. Quinta Brunson, who voices one of the film’s central characters, remembered meeting him at Comic-Con.

“I had come across Eric at a Comic-Con and met him there. Amazing person. Before the premiere, they played a cartoon, which I’m probably assuming now is gonna be one of his last voice acting jobs, and he does an incredible job and has for a really long time doing Daffy and Bugs Bunny and many other characters. He’s just incredible,” said Brunson.

For directors Alessandro Carloni and Erica Rivinoja, Bauza’s contribution to the production offered a particularly meaningful connection. Carloni pointed out that the Warner Bros. logo appearing at the beginning of the film features Tweety Bird, a character Bauza voiced. 

It is a brief appearance, though one that gives his presence in the finished movie an added resonance.

“Well, we like to mention the fact that he is in our movie. The logo of Warner Bros. is with Tweety Bird. And he was the voice of Tweety Bird. So for a brief moment, his voice has managed to touch our movie as well, which is fantastic,” Carloni said.

Rivinoja remembered the experience of recording him with unmistakable admiration: “Yeah, we got to record him, and he was just a force of nature. I mean, just every voice coming out of him all at once. He was really, really, really talented, and I loved his work in ‘Coyote vs. Acme,’ and it’s just a huge loss for the animation community, so we’re really sad about it.”

Their recollections speak to the particular magic of voice acting, an art form in which performers can fill an entire world with personality while remaining physically outside the frame. 

Bauza possessed an unusual ability to make that transformation feel effortless. His voice could summon a familiar character within seconds, drawing on decades of audience affection while making each performance feel immediate and alive. The people who worked with him recognized the technical brilliance, though the affection in their memories suggests that his presence in the recording room was equally memorable.

When I spoke with Bauza six years ago, the conversation eventually returned to the family that had first encouraged his talent. His story had come full circle in a way few performers could have anticipated. The laughter that began with relatives listening to a cassette sent across the Pacific had traveled into living rooms, cinemas and television screens around the world. His Filipino heritage was part of that story, woven into the earliest experiences that helped him understand the expressive possibilities of voice.

The Cat in the Hat now carries another small reminder of his work. For audiences watching the Warner Bros. opening, Tweety’s appearance and the short film he stars in may last only a brief time. For those who know the man behind the voice, that moment holds a little more meaning. Eric Bauza spent his career giving life to characters that generations had grown up loving. In the process, he became a beloved character in the lives of the people who knew him, worked with him and heard him bring a little more laughter into the world.