Nintendo’s New Mario Knows How Lucky He Is: ‘If I Wasn’t Nervous, Then I’m The Wrong Guy’

Kevin Afghani stepped into the voice role of Mario, Luigi, and Wario in 2023. He took over the job after Charles Martinet, who voiced the fireball-throwing plumber for decades, was confirmed to be “stepping back” from voicing him to become a “Mario Ambassador.” This weekend, Afghani is making his first American convention appearance at Charlie’s Comic Con in Florida, and he did an interview with USA Today to talk about taking on the job of voicing Nintendo’s mascot. He had a lot of praise for his esteemed predecessor.

“Look, Charles, as far as I’m concerned, is Mario,” Afghani told USA Today. “He created something that is so unbelievably iconic. And he did it so masterfully. If I wasn’t nervous, then I’m the wrong guy. I’m the second guy who’s doing Mario. Charles is THE guy. There is such an unbelievable respect for Charles. He is amazing.”

Afghani says he’s a long-time Mario fan who spent a lot of his life “mimicking” Martinet’s Mario and Luigi performances, so these characters are “important” to him, and he views taking on the job as carrying them on so they can “keep being important to other people.”

“I couldn’t explain to you how important these characters have been to me my entire life,” he said. “I’m a really jokey person, and I’m a really silly person. But there’s just a part of me that can’t help but get teary-eyed when I talk about this.”

Though Martinet’s last credit as Mario was in 2022’s Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope, he did have a small cameo in The Super Mario Bros. Movie in 2023 as Mario’s dad. According to Martinet, he’s allowed to perform Mario’s voice for fans, but won’t improvise dialogue, so don’t expect him to open up a Cameo to record voice messages for fans as Mario anytime soon.