There is a wonderful little interview with long time voice actor Peter Cullen over at USA Today's Pop Candy. In it, Cullen discusses his introduction to voice acting, his early roles, and his years of work with the Transformers series which ultimately resulted in a voice role in the new Transformers film. Cullen said he was never really aware of the show's popularity back when he first worked on it, and apparently never saw a single piece of fan mail. He isn't suggesting fans didn't send them, of course, he just doesn't know who at the studio took them in and dealt with them. Ergo, he was shocked and extremely pleased when the geek cry went out across the nation for his casting in the new film. He'd heard of the film happening, and the next thing he knew, his name was being championed all over the internet. This lead to a meeting with director Michael Bay, and once he convinced Bay he could in fact act, Cullen landed the role of Optimus Prime for one more time. I personally feel as though we geeks on the web have done a very good thing here, so give yourselves a big round of applause -- you brought the real Optimus Prime back.