Welcome to episode 152 of the Voice Acting Mastery podcast with yours truly, Crispin Freeman!

As always, you can listen to the podcast using the player above, or download the mp3 using the link at the bottom of this blog post. The podcast is also available via the iTunes Store online. Just follow this link to view the podcast in iTunes:

http://www.voiceactingmastery.com/podcast

Welcome to the second part of my interview with the Emmy award winning voice actress, Maile Flanagan! Maile is probably most famous for voicing the character of Naruto in the long running anime franchise of the same name. She also won an Emmy for her performance in the animated show Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks. Maile is an accomplished on-camera actress and comedienne as well! She is one of the few actresses who works almost equally in voice acting and on-camera and I was excited to bring her on the podcast to share her experience with my listeners.

In the first part of our interview, Maile and I talked about how she broke into acting. Although she joined an improv comedy group when she was in college, her primary focus in school was training to become a spy for the CIA. After she graduated, and was waiting for the CIA to give her an assignment, she connected with some of her fellow improv classmates and decided to take a chance, form a group, and travel to Cape Cod to perform comedy for tourists over the summer. That decision changed the path of her life! After that summer, she realized that she wanted to pursue a career in acting instead of one in espionage!

In this episode, we discuss what inspired Maile to become an actress in the first place. While she did not receive any formal acting training while she was in school, her upbringing played a big role in helping her learn how to observe people and communicate with them effectively. Her father was a spy for the CIA and their family moved around a lot. This meant that Maile had a very international upbringing and had to learn how to relate to many different types of people. Her family was also very funny! They often used humor to interact with each other and the ability to joke around with her family members was an important skill that Maile developed at a young age. These experiences helped her hone her observational skills which served her incredibly well when she was studying other actor’s performances.

Download Voice Acting Mastery Episode #152 Here (MP3)