Two adults wearing suits, holding red balloons against a cityscape backdrop on 'The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon' set. 3:15
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Morgan Freeman's famous voice meets helium

Morgan Freeman has one of the best-known voices in film. On The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, he takes a breath from a red helium balloon, and the whole room holds its breath with him. more

This is a voice so well loved that people have had it read them driving directions on Waze. It's slow and low and sure of itself. Fallon is having the time of his life. Freeman looks like a grandfather who agreed to play a kids' game and is now thinking it over.

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Freeman is Fallon's guest, and everyone in the room knows what that voice sounds like.

Then he speaks, and the audience roars. Helium is supposed to make a voice squeak, but on Freeman it does something stranger. He sounds, more or less, like a regular person. It's still Morgan Freeman, just Morgan Freeman with the bass turned down.

Two adults wearing suits, holding red balloons against a cityscape backdrop on 'The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon' set. The headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
Morgan Freeman has one of the best-known voices in film.

The real show is his face. Fallon wheezes with laughter, and Freeman looks back at him calm and flat, not giving an inch. Plenty of viewers can't tell whether he is playing it straight or a little fed up.

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While Fallon laughs, Freeman keeps his expression calm and flat.

With the red balloon still in his hand and a night skyline behind him, he keeps talking in that higher voice. Every line lands, even the ones that aren't jokes.

An older man with gray hair sits holding a red balloon in front of a nighttime city skyline backdrop. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
Balloon in hand, with a city skyline behind him, Freeman keeps talking in his new voice.

At one point he tells Fallon he is never coming back. Fallon laughs. Freeman lets the line sit there, and nobody is quite sure he was kidding.