Kiss Me, Princess Peach: Actor Based Super Mario's Voice on His Performance as Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew

Image from Game & Graphics.

In an interview with the BBC, the actor Charles Martinet says that he created Super Mario's voice by drawing on his performance of Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew:

[The producer] told me I was an Italian plumber from Brooklyn, . . . so my instinct was to try a gruff and coarse voice - 'hey you, get outta my face!' [But w]hat popped into my brain was a character I'd played in Taming Of The Shrew. I was Petruchio going back to get his wife in Italy . . . . So I thought I'd do something like that.