SpongeBob SquarePants gets profiled on CBS News Sunday Morning as Nickelodeon character turns 25

SpongeBob SquarePants was portrayed on CBS News Sunday Morning as the animated character who lives in a pineapple under the sea and turns 25.

CBS News correspondent and co-anchor Lee Cowan, 59, visited the Nickelodeon studios in Burbank, California, for a report featuring interviews with cast members of the long-running series, which officially premiered on July 17, 1999.

“SpongeBob SquarePants and his underwater friends have become a multi-billion dollar franchise for our sister network Nickelodeon, spawning countless video games, internet memes, action figures, three feature films and even a Broadway musical,” Cowan said.

“He’s got his freak flag flying. He’s who he is. It’s amazing that people who are adults now or even little kids find that so empowering,” said Tom Kenny, 61, who has voiced the title character SpongeBob since 1999.

Cowan noted that it’s the actors that really set SpongeBob apart from other cartoons.

“They’ve all been there side by side from the beginning,” Cowan said.

During a group interview with Kenny, Bill Fagerbakke, Carolyn Lawrence, Rodger Bumpass and Mr. Lawrence, Cowan said, “What a wonderful gift you have given to the people.”

“No, but we were given it as a gift,” said Lawrence, 57, who voices squirrel Sandy Cheeks, who wears a diving suit and lives underwater.

“It’s our first best shot, I always say,” said Bumpass, 72, who voices Squidward Tentacles.

Behind-the-scenes videos were shown of the cast filming a scene, and afterward Cowan told the voice actors he was surprised they were still laughing about it.

“That’s the beauty of it,” says Fagerbakke, who voices the dim-witted starfish Patrick.

“We’ll always laugh about it,” Bumpass added.

“Patrick still makes me laugh. I get a little lost in Patrick,” Fagerbakke admitted when a clip was shown of Patrick asking if mayonnaise was an instrument.

CBS News correspondent and co-host Lee Cowan, 59, visited the Nickelodeon studios in Burbank, California, for a feature featuring interviews with cast members of the long-running show that officially premiered on July 17, 1999

“SpongeBob SquarePants and his underwater friends have become a multi-billion dollar annual franchise for our sister network Nickelodeon, spawning countless video games, internet memes, action figures, three feature films and even a Broadway musical,” Cowan said.

“He’s got his freak flag flying. It’s amazing that people now experience that as adults or even little kids,” said Tom Kenny, 61, who has voiced the title character SpongeBob since 1999.

During a group interview with Kenny, Bill Fagerbakke, Carolyn Lawrence, Rodger Bumpass and Mr. Lawrence, Cowan said, “What a wonderful gift you people have given.”

“We’ll always laugh about it,” said Rodger Bumpass

Cowan told viewers how this “fantastically improbable world was dreamed up by a former marine biologist named Stephen Hillenburg.”

Kenny gave Cowan a tour of the ‘Nickelodeon archives’ with a brief impersonation of Igor.

“Hillenburg thought it would be funny if the sponge living in this tide pool wasn’t a true sea sponge, but a regular kitchen sponge,” Cowan said.

He added: “Hillenburg’s premise was simple. A carefree SpongeBob wants nothing more than to be the best fry cook in the ocean. And he has a pet snail named Gary.”

Cowan said that Ramsey Naito, president of Nickelodeon Animation, claims that SpongeBob has become to Gen Z what Mickey Mouse was to baby boomers.

“One of the things I’ve always loved about SpongeBob, personally, is that SpongeBob reminds us of the child in all of us, really. That sweet, honest, naive, lovable child in all of us,” Naito said.

“Patrick still makes me laugh. I get a little lost in Patrick,” Bill Fagerbakke admitted when a clip was shown of Patrick asking if mayonnaise was an instrument

The Nickelodeon show has spawned countless internet memes

A SpongeBob SquarePants show played on Broadway

“One of the things I’ve always loved about SpongeBob, personally, is that SpongeBob reminds us of the kid in all of us, really. That sweet, honest, naive, lovable kid in all of us,” said Ramsey Naito, president of Nickelodeon Animation

Kenny noted that sometimes SpongeBob gets discouraged and feels bad, but he always bounces back.

Fagerbakke said that a 15-year-old girl came up to him at a conference and said she had been going through a period of great depression and that the show had made her want to live on.

“That’s such an incredibly intense thing to hear. And I look up and there’s her mother standing right behind her, sobbing,” Fagerbakke said of the show’s impact on people.

Hillenburg, the creator of SpongeBob SquarePants, died in November 2018 at the age of 57 after being diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.