Jesse McCartney first made his voice known as a pop singer in the group Dream Street in the early 2000s before embarking on a successful solo career. However, he also can be heard as a voice actor in— he stars as rotund chipmunk Theodore in the CGI/live-action Alvin and the Chipmunks movies and voices a character in the animated Tinker Bell straight-to-DVD franchise. His newest project is the most fanboy-friendly yet: In Young Justice, he stars as Robin, Batman’s sidekick who teams with other up-and-coming superheroes such as Aqualad, Superboy, Miss Martian, Speedy, Kid Flash and others to defeat supervillains and keep the world safe. The Young Justice pilot premieres on the Cartoon Network Friday before the series begins its first season in January. In addition to McCartney, the cartoon also features Danica McKellar (as Miss Martian), Bruce Greenwood (Batman), Phil LaMarr (Aquaman) and Alan Tudyk (Green Arrow). McCartney says it was a “cool feeling” to finally see his character of Dick Grayson, aka Robin, fully animated recently. “It looks everything like what I grew up watching when I was a kid,” says the 23-year-old, who releases his new album Have It All on Dec. 28 and voices a character in the movie The Clockwork Girl next year. I caught up with McCartney to talk about being one of the main heroes of Young Justice, so read below for the interview and check out this clip from Friday’s premiere.

Art courtesy of Warner Bros. Animation

Are you a comic book fan?
I was never a huge comic book fan growing up but I was a big superhero fan. I enjoyed watching Batman and Superman and Spider-Man and all the big superheroes as a kid. I was specifically just a fan of cartoons in general, and that’s why I was so excited to be part of the project.

Did they come after you to play Robin?
I had worked with the director before on some other projects, and he gave me a call. He’s like, “We’ve got this project. You’ve gotta come in and put your voice down to see what you sound like as Dick Grayson. You may be a little too old because it’s the young Justice League and your voice is kind of lower.” So I went in there and put a little bit more of a pre-pubescent voice on the track. [Laughs] They called me and said they wanted me to play the role. I’ve done a lot of voiceovers for cartoons before, and it’s something I really enjoy doing.

What aspect of voice acting keeps you coming back for more?
Just the fact that you get to work with a lot of really great people, people who have been doing it for a lot longer. I’m the youngest guy in the room, and there are guys who have been doing this for decades. They can do and every voice you can think of. That’s really the fun part, getting to absorb that information and being able to just play around with your voice and create new sounds and voices. It’s still very much a learning experience.

You do so much else with your voice, too, with your singing and other on-screen acting. Does it affect it in any way to add that pre-pubescence for an extended period of time?
I enjoy it and I feel like over the years I’m getting better at it. Going higher is not the hard part – it’s coming up with different accents, like if you’re playing some Russian Soldier No. 1 in an episode or coming up with different dialects. Sometimes, that can be tricky. And there’s a lot of language that comic book fans all know about. There was this one paragraph I remember, and word after word after word was just a whole other language I had never heard of. [Laughs] It took a good 10 minutes to get the line out. I was having the hardest time. Those are the biggest challenges. The higher Dick Grayson voice, that’s been pretty easy.

Do you remember the tricky line?
I forget what it was exactly, but I was saying, “Something something beyallion Russian vladachorkan.” It was weird. I don’t usually use that dialogue in my everyday life. [Laughs] And it was one of those days, too, where it was super early in the morning, I hadn’t necessarily had my coffee yet and everyone else in the studio was having a great time watching me try to tackle this line.

Other than early morning coffee, do you have a regimen for caring for your voice?
Certainly for singing. I’m a singer as well, and for me it’s an instrument and you have to keep it in tune. I sing every day — I sit down at my piano and I literally play my scales and use my voice. A lot of times, I’m not using it. Right now is a prime example – I just finished my album and I’m getting ready to go on tour and I’ve been traveling the last couple of months not really using my voice. Whether it’s in the shower or in front of my piano, I’m constantly keeping it warm and keeping it tuned up.

Dick Grayson’s the original Robin, but he’s grown up in the comic books and has now taken on the mantle of Batman. Even though you’re playing him as a youngster, do you throw in a little gravitas to the role foreshadowing that future strength?
Absolutely. He aspires to be the next Batman. He looks up to those people, and in certain places throughout this season, you’re going to see that Robin is given the chance to really lead the team at certain times. You’ll see how he deals with that, when he’s faced with literally life-changing or –altering or –ending situations, how he deals with it. You can see how he’s still green — he’s still a kid and still trying to figure it out. As time goes on throughout the season, even in the first season, you start to see a little bit of growth and at some point in the future he could potentially be someone as great as Batman. There’s a really cool relationship with Batman throughout the season that they kept intact, where you can see he’s this fatherly figure and he’s very hard on him. But Robin puts it to good use.

Do you get to work with Bruce Greenwood directly when recording those Dynamic Duo scenarios?
When we’re recording we’re altogether for the most part. You can imagine, there’s 15 actors and everyone has a different schedule. A lot of times, it’s hard to get everyone in the room, but for the first few episodes, we’re all in there and everyone got to hang out, meet each other, look at the characters, read the first few scripts together, and then once in a while it would be broken down. I remember I had to go away for a while and I had to do an entire script by myself, but it’s really nice when all the actors can get in the room together because you can really bounce off each other and you don’t have to listen to a prerecorded voice of the session a week prior.

Does Robin get his own showcase episode? Do we see some of his origin with his acrobat parents?
I won’t give too much of the storyline away, but he certainly has some key episodes where he is the man and it’s all about Dick Grayson and Robin. There are a few episodes where they really just focus in on him, his story and where he could potentially be. That’s something the writers wanted to make sure was there for the first season.

What cartoons did you grow up watching when you were a kid?
I was a huge Mel Blanc fan, and I was really interested in how somebody could voice that many characters and each one of them sounding completely different. I was really into the acting side of it. The animation was awesome, but I was really after those voices and tried to emulate them as a kid all the time. I watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Captain Planet. I grew up in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, so I watched all the cartoons that were around that time. Every Saturday morning, I’d sit there with a bowl of Cheerios and I’d be watching Alvin and the Chipmunks, and little did I know 10 years later that I’d be playing Theodore in the franchise.