Attack on Titan star Michael Tatum breaks down Erwin’s last stand

Anime streaming service Funimation held its first virtual FunimationCon this past weekend, bringing together the cast and crew from a number of popular series to discuss their work — and boasting a few surprise announcements and premieres along the way. Among the anime featured at FunimationCon was Attack on Titan, the dystopian fantasy series that’s heading into its fourth and final season later this year.

The most recent season set the show up for a high-stakes ending, killing off some prominent characters and throwing a major reveal our way right before coming to a close. But even the knowledge that Titans were once human beings didn’t hit quite as hard as the fates of Commander Erwin and Bertolt Hoover, two characters who have been around since the very beginning.

We spoke with Michael Tatum, who played Commander Erwin in the English dub of the series — and also served as adaptive writer for the first two seasons — about the events of season 3 and his time working on the anime.

Tatum’s character died leading a valiant charge against the Beast Titan. It’s probably not a stretch to say that Erwin’s last stand was one of the most emotionally impactful moments of the entire anime, something that seems to have been the case behind the scenes too. Even having read the manga in advance, Tatum felt a great deal of emotion in voicing his character’s final moments — and, of course, in having to say goodbye.

“I’d known for a good, long while what was coming for him,” Tatum said. “I knew that Erwin was going to have that moment, and I was really happy for him because what a great [ending] … If you’re in a show where a lot of people die all the time, it says something about the impact of a character if their death can stand out, and I think his really did.”

"I knew it was coming, and I really wanted him to have a good ending. I wanted him to have an ending that really just kind of tore your heart out. And it did. I got really emotional myself."

Before leading his final charge, Commander Erwin rallies the troops with a speech that will easily give viewers chills, even on the second or third rewatch. Balancing Erwin’s complex mix of emotions was challenging for Tatum, particularly since Erwin isn’t one to put his feelings on display.

“Erwin is such a buttoned-up guy,” Tatum explained. “He doesn’t really show his emotions very often; I mean, it’s his job not to. So, for him to give that little … it’s right before the speech, when we kind of see his double-think about his role in all of this, and that he considers himself something of a con-artist having to rouse the troops when he himself may or may not believe what he’s saying. So it made that great, rousing final speech — that swan song — more complicated, more ambiguous because you’re like, ‘How much of this is for him? How much of this is trying to get his own courage up because he doesn’t have it right now but he knows he’s got to do this thing?'”

In order for the moment to work, Tatum had to convince both the troops and the audience, not to mention Erwin. “It was really challenging because there’s such a delicate balance of tone there,” Tatum said. “You have to sell it because the troops have to believe it. The troops are not going to go, get on their horses and ride into certain death unless Erwin gets that speech pitch-perfect. But at the same time the audience has to know, because of the little scene we see beforehand, that maybe there’s a little more fear, and even a little more cynicism, behind what Erwin is doing and saying than we’ve been led to believe. And that needs to be kind of captured in the speech as well.”

But while Erwin’s speech may have been the most powerful part of his farewell to Attack on Titan, it wasn’t his last moment onscreen. The show dangled his fate in front of us for a little longer, and Captain Levi had to choose which character on the brink of death he’d inject with the serum to turn them into the Colossal Titan, thereby saving their life: Armin or Erwin.

“It was such a great, dramatic moment,” Tatum said. “I think my favorite moment for the character of Levi — I adore that character, and I love Matt Mercer’s portrayal of him, it’s just flawless — but that moment when he’s kind of saying what he wants to say to [Erwin], and they’re on the rooftop, and Hange says, ‘Yeah, he’s gone,’ and he realizes Erwin may or may not have heard anything he just said before dying, and he just goes, ‘Huh.’”

Tatum named getting to work with voice actors like Mercer, Josh Grelle (Armin), Bryce Papenbrook (Eren), Trina Nishimura (Mikasa) and more as one of the many highlights of working on Attack on Titan. And beyond that, Tatum is just a big fan of the show. “It’s great to be part of a show that’s as big and popular as it is, but that’s also good,” he said. “And by that I mean, as an actor, you frequently are called to work on shows that you yourself aren’t the audience for. And it doesn’t mean that they’re bad shows, it just means, ‘This isn’t for me.’ … I’d be into Attack on Titan regardless if I had anything to do with the production. So its really cool to get to be a part of it as a fanboy.”

Perhaps being a fan even put greater pressure on Tatum to do justice to the character, and to real-life soldiers he represents. “Not to get too deep or dark or anything like that, but both of my grandfathers have been in World War II and were very proud veterans, who nevertheless had very problematic memories about what they had experienced when they were in their formative years,” he said. “And they shared those experiences with me, and it kind of gave me an insight of what a soldier’s life is or can be, especially in times like that. So, when I was given the chance to play this noble and very troubling character, I wanted to do him justice — I wanted to try to capture what I remember about my grandfathers telling me about their experiences.”

"I thought it was really important for the audience to see the burden that Erwin carried on his shoulders and why he was the way he was, why he didn’t emote very often, and how, in some ways, what’s going on in his head is a microcosm of what’s going in in the entire series as a whole. I mean, that entire series is about people that can’t say what they feel because there’s no time. And that’s a challenge as an actor because you feel all these feelings when you see the story, but you can’t express them."

After recording Erwin’s big speech, Tatum did get a brief moment to express his feelings offscreen. “It was intense, and when it was over, I had it a good cry,” he remembered. “I miss him terribly. But I think he went … well. He was cheated, he was so cheated. But it was a good death because it left such an emotional mark on the audience.”

As for what’s next for Tatum, he couldn’t get into too many specifics, but confirmed he’s been working on video games. The fifth season of My Hero Academia, where he plays Tenya Iida, is also on the horizon. Beyond that, Tatum “will go where the wind takes” him.

It’s also a safe bet that the voice actor will continue following Attack on Titan, despite not being involved with the production any longer. He wants to see where the series goes as much as the rest of us. “And as long as we do justice to everything, I’ll feel like I’ll have been taken on a ride,” he said. “At this point, I’m not even sure I know what I want to see … Of course, I would love for them to finally figure out the whole Titan thing, what’s going on with that. And I would love for humanity to finally stake out as a whole outside the wall. It’d be a great message, but man, it’d be really hard to sell because I don’t know.”

With things still looking grim for our heroes, that’s a sentiment most Attack on Titan fans can relate to. Luckily — or unluckily, depending how it ends — we won’t have to wait too much longer to find out how the anime concludes.

Attack on Titan season 4 comes out this fall!

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