Not everyone can be a certified Mario Knower like Rosalina voice actor Brie Larson, but Chris Pratt, who plays the plumber in Nintendo and Illumination’s bajillion-dollar-earning films, really just…doesn’t seem to know much about the series at all, and keeps getting roasted for it.
Really, I don’t think an actor needs to have the Super Mario Wiki installed in their brain if they’re going to play a role in these films, but Pratt’s inability to string together a coherent thought about Mario as it pertains to the films he’s in sure is odd. This goes back to when he was first announced as the voice of Mario in 2022, and in a promotional clip he mentioned childhood hours spent “stomping…KOOPAS!” in a way that had people questioning whether he’d ever played a video game in his life.
Now, he’s done it again while promoting The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, and the film’s official social channels decided to post it where millions could see. While at the film’s premiere in Kyoto, Pratt was asked what he was excited for fans to see, and whether it was because of a brain fart or because man just doesn’t know what the Mushroom Kingdom is, he kinda fumbles the answer.
“I’m most excited for fans to see the worlds outside of Mushroom…the Mushroom planet,” Pratt says.
how do you larp as the voice of mario😭😭💔 pic.twitter.com/5IdJY8IKJ1
— chillaxin🍳 (@ChillaxinSonic) April 7, 2026
Oof. Part of me wants to be sympathetic because I try to give some grace to celebrities who are held to an unrealistic standard of having to be perfect and pristine every time they speak, but the laundry list of reasons to be less charitable to Pratt than the average celebrity is long, so I won’t spend a lot of time doing that. Both these instances of Pratt talking about Mario like he’s being fed information through an earpiece that’s losing signal have fans calling him a “larper,” or someone who pretends to be interested in something rather than being genuine.
It’s one thing to not know the source material but how do u not even know what’s happening in ur own movie https://t.co/f6xU8yXxvC
— Person108 (@PersonthePerso2) April 7, 2026
The fact that he was more passionate about Garfield than this https://t.co/eRlcJzSQUg pic.twitter.com/DEdAPEH5Yg
— #1 Space Jam 2 Lover (@JoshuaTookes) April 7, 2026
Starting to see why all the interviewers gave all their attention to Brie Larson. https://t.co/b8bP9Dy7vI
— CraftyAdrian (@CraftyAdrian360) April 7, 2026
Pratt’s performance as Mario in both films has been widely derided for mostly just sounding like Pratt’s regular speaking voice with an occasional Brooklyn inflection, and given that he’s voicing one of the most iconic video game heroes of all time for a massive audience, accusations that he might not actually care about the character and the job have followed him for years. Not that everyone needs to be passionate about what gives them cash, but it sure does come off worse now that Larson is in the cast and racing circles around everyone else in terms of passion and knowledge. Here, let’s watch a palate cleanser of her playing Mario Kart World before you go: