Nicolas Cantu

In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023), Nicolas Cantu's Leonardo bickers about pizza and who gets to do the flip. Alongside Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr. and Brady Noon, he sounds like a brother with a grievance, not an actor waiting to deliver a joke. We laughed because the four make these small disputes sound worth the trouble. Leonardo is the leader, but Cantu does not make him sound as though he has outgrown the others.

The recasting in The Amazing World of Gumball (2011) tests a different skill. Cantu took over as Gumball Watterson for the fifth and sixth series, from 2017 to 2019, after Logan Grove and Jacob Hopkins had voiced the character. Teresa Gallagher's forceful Nicole and Dan Russell's idle Richard give the household its familiar comic habits. The family survives the change of Gumball's voice without losing those habits or its rhythm. That is a useful achievement in a programme whose characters already differ so much in how they are drawn.

His earlier work included Rowan Freemaker in Lego Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures (2016–2017), so the busy animated ensemble was already familiar territory. Live action brought Elton Ortiz in The Walking Dead: World Beyond (2020–2021) and Hark in Steven Spielberg's The Fabelmans (2022). The change of medium is worth following, though those credits alone are no reason to declare him equally persuasive in everything. For us, the stronger recommendation remains the voice work.

His Mutant Mayhem audition was recorded on video, with his whole body visible. That seems a sensible way to cast a film whose best idea is to let the turtles behave like adolescents. Jeff Rowe gets the benefit in exchanges that feel impatient and untidy. The plot is predictable, and Cantu and his fellow actors cannot make it otherwise. Start there for the brothers; expect to work out where the story is going before they do.