Wallace and Gromit’s comeback features many familiar faces – apart from one missing key player amid its BAFTA nomination.
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, which was a festive hit as it aired over Christmas, has been nominated for several major awards including Best Animated Feature at the Academy Awards and in three categories at the BAFTA Film Awards for Animated Film, Children’s and Family Film and Outstanding British Film.
In Vengeance Most Fowl, our favourite cheese-loving inventor and his loyal dog find themselves dealing with a ‘smart gnome’ that starts to show signs of independent thought. Meanwhile, their old nemesis from The Wrong Trousers, Feathers McGraw, is plotting revenge and aims to thwart Wallace and Gromit’s plans as they launch a new business venture.
The film marked not only the first Wallace and Gromit feature in 16 years but is also the first without the original voice of Wallace, actor Peter Sallis. Ben Whitehead took over the role in the 2010s after Sallis’ declining health made acting increasingly difficult, and he has voiced Wallace in shorts, exhibitions and features since then. Actor Peter sadly died in 2017.
Peter Sallis was a celebrated TV actor, best known for his role as Norman “Cleggy” Clegg in all 295 episodes of Last of the Summer Wine. He also had a successful stage career, sharing the stage with Judi Dench in Cabaret, Sir Laurence Olivier, and Orson Welles. In 1983, Nick Park approached him to voice a clay character named Wallace, a role which Peter accepted in exchange for a £50 donation to his favourite charity.
It took six years for the first Wallace and Gromit film, A Grand Day Out, to hit the screens. Creator Nick said: “He was my first and only choice for Wallace. His silliness started the moment he greeted you at the door and didn’t stop when the mic was switched off. He had naturally funny bones and was a great storyteller.”
The film received an Oscar nomination, and its sequels, The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave, went on to win Oscars in 1993 and 1995, respectively. Sallis continued to voice Wallace in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) and A Matter of Loaf and Death (2008), as well as in various smaller Wallace and Gromit projects.
In his later years, Sallis struggled with macular degeneration, an eye condition, and relied on a specially designed, illuminated scanner-equipped talking portable typewriter to continue working. His final voice role as Wallace was in the 2010 production of Wallace and Gromit’s World of Invention, and he eventually retired from acting due to declining health.
Speaking at the 25th anniversary of Leith School of Art in 2014, Nick revealed: “He’s not too well. It’s a big question for us, whether to keep going. We have got an understudy who has stepped in sometimes, Ben Whitehead, a young actor in London.”
He added that Whitehead had initially taken on tasks Sallis didn’t want to do, such as video games and exhibition voiceovers, and even filled in for Sallis during the production of The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Peter Sallis passed away from natural causes at Denville Hall, a retirement home for actors, on June 2, 2017.
Nick Park had previously expressed the challenges of creating a Wallace and Gromit film without Sallis, and in the lead-up to the release of Vengeance Most Fowl, Park reflected to the BBC: “It has been quite emotional (doing this production) since we lost Peter, he was such an original, unique voice.”
“So it’s very hard for anyone to step into his shoes. But we have been blessed with a youngish actor whom we’ve known for many years who can do a fantastic Wallace impersonation. He’s stepped in very kindly, and is just great. It’s hard to tell them apart.”
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