SpongeBob has autism, ‘that’s his superpower’ says voice actor Tom Kenny in viral clip
American actor Tom Kenny is canonising a popular SpongeBob SquarePants fan theory.
Kenny, who has voiced the animated series’ star sponge since the show’s premiere in 1999 and received two Daytime Emmy Awards for his performance, recently confirmed that his character has autism.
“SpongeBob’s kind of on the spectrum, too, as a character,” he said during a May Q&A at Motor City Comic Con in Detroit. Footage of the Q&A reposted on July 23 on social media platform X, formerly Twitter, has since gone viral.
During a panel discussion, Kenny recalled the first time he was pressed on the subject: “A person who was obviously on the spectrum came up to me and said, ‘I have a question for you, Tom Kenny, is SpongeBob autistic?’”
He answered, “Of course!” and told the fan: “That’s his superpower, the same way that’s your superpower.”
Kenny previously spoke about SpongeBob’s neurodivergence in 2012 on a podcast, calling his character “a little autistic. Obsessed with his job, very hard-working, gets really really deep into something”.
Fans have similarly pointed to SpongeBob’s meltdowns, blindness to sarcasm and inability to read social cues as textbook signs of the neurodevelopmental condition.
“But once you put [a creative work] out in the world, it has different uses,” the voice actor said, “and the autism thing comes up so insanely often that I wish someone would write a term paper on it or a treatise on it.”
SpongeBob SquarePants is in its 14th season on Nickelodeon and has been renewed for season 15.
The series’ fourth spin-off movie, Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie – which follows 2021’s The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run – premieres on August 2 on Netflix.
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