VAM 216 | Interview with Mara Junot, Part 1
Welcome to episode 216 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 first part of my interview with the vocal shape-shifter, Mara Junot! Before we begin, I want to acknowledge here that Mara identifies as non-binary, but accepts both “she” and “they” pronouns. For the purposes of this podcast, I will be using “she/her” when referring to Mara so as to avoid pluralization confusion during these episodes. Now, you may be familiar with Mara’s work in animation where she’s played Marlene in Curious George, R&D Baby Simmons in Boss Baby: Back in the Crib, Superhero Narrator, Tiger Statue, and Betty Blueprint from Blaze and the Monster Machines, and Shoola in the hit show, Arcane. In Video Games she’s played Ikora Rey in Destiny 2, Evelyn in League of Legends, Sindel in Mortal Kombat and Storm in Marvel Rivals. In Anime she’s played Elea the Red Tag in Ishura, Helena in Tezuka’s anime, Pluto, and Mara and I have the great pleasure of working together on Pokemon Horizons where she plays Orla, the chief engineer of our airship the Brave Olivine.
In this episode, Mara and I begin our discussion with the question I ask all of my guests: how did she get started as a voice actor? Mara’s path to voice acting is a bit unique because she actually began her career on the microphone as a Radio DJ! She was living in a town called Houma in Louisiana, about an hour southwest of New Orleans, working a corporate job that she hated. She then found an opportunity to audition for her local radio station. She reached out to a friend of hers who had some experience in radio, and he helped her put together a recording demonstrating her DJ skills. The station liked what they heard, and she was fortunate enough to get hired to host one of the shows on their county music station. She eventually expanded into DJing at two other stations owned by the same company: a classic rock station, and a soft rock station. Working as a radio DJ was a dream come true for Mara and she thought she was on top of the world!
Unfortunately, after about 7 or 8 years, Mara began to feel like she had stopped growing. She was working all the time, but didn’t feel like there was any more career advancement for her in radio. There was also a change of management at the company which resulted in some personality conflicts amongst the employees, and Mara realized she needed to switch careers.
She had always enjoyed acting as kid in school, but had never felt comfortable embracing what she thought was the acting lifestyle. Mara is an introvert who values her privacy. She didn’t know how to pursue acting without having to become a public figure. That’s when she realized that voice acting might be a way for her to pursue her acting ambitions, retain a sense of anonymity, and still work from her current location in Louisiana. It wasn’t going to be easy, but she was determined to figure out a way to make it work.
Mara began by finding out everything she could about pursuing a voice over career. She scoured websites for information, she started signing up for pay-to-play sites like Voice123.com where you can pay a membership fee to get access to auditions for certain types of voice over work. She even listened to this podcast to help her find out more about the industry! Early on, Mara knew that she wanted to become a household name in voice over. She wanted to have similar name recognition to someone like Morgan Freeman. She also understood that such an ambitious goal would require a lot of commitment. She would spend all day studying voice over, sometimes 16 to 18 hours a day, doing everything she could to expand her knowledge and her skills.
All of that hard work started paying off. She began getting work, building up a list of repeat clients, and discovering that she could in fact have a career in voice over outside of her experiences in radio. However, in order to become as recognizable as Morgan Freeman, there were some major hurdles she had to overcome. Initially, she had to learn to overcome her reluctance to meet with industry people in person, especially at big voice over conferences. Once she overcame that hurdle, she then realized that in order to get her voice acting career to the next level, and work on the types of projects she had always dreamed of, she was going to need to move to Los Angeles. After moving to LA, she still had more work to do: looking inward to come to grips with who she really was as an artist, and how best to share her authentic self in her performances. It’s a compelling and heartfelt journey, and I’m grateful to Mara for being willing to share such very personal details with us. Let’s get started!
VAM 215 | Interview with David Errigo Jr., Part 2
Welcome to episode 215 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
I’m back with the second part of my interview with the ridiculously talented David Errigo Jr.! David has worked on animated shows like Tiny Toons Looniversity, X-men ’97, Phineas and Ferb, and Ridley Jones where he was nominated for an emmy for his performance as the character Dudley! In video games, he’s been in Disney Speedstorm, Disney Dreamlight Valley, Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions, and Shin Megami Tensei V and V: Vengeance. In anime he’s worked on Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon, Tezuka’s anime Pluto, and the new production of Ranma 1/2!
In the previous episode, David shared with me how he got started as a voice actor. In Middle School he began taking acting classes and singing in his school choir. He studied acting in college, taught acting at a Children’s theater company after college, did a tour as an actor on a Disney Cruise Ship, and worked at regional theaters around the country acting and singing in plays and musicals. When he finally got to New York to pursue a career on Broadway, he discovered his love for voice acting in animation and realized that’s what he was meant to do in life. He knew then that he would need to move to Los Angeles in order to work on the kinds of animated shows and games that fascinated him. By 2016 he had arrived in LA and was making as many connections as he could to further his voice acting goals. With his prodigious talent, his breadth of experience, and the connections he had developed in the entertainment industry during his time as a stage actor, it didn’t take long before he signed with an agency and was working on some of the most high profile projects in Hollywood.
In the second part of our talk together, I ask David what inspired him to become a performer in the first place. He refers again to his experience watching his father’s face light up at a Bruce Springsteen concert and how that made David want to bring that level of satisfaction to as many people as possible through performance. I dig a little deeper to try and discover why it was so important to him to inspire that level of delight in others. This opens up a number of fascinating topics about how rewarding it can be to bring joy to other people, as well as how David’s father taught him values that helped shape who David is as a person and as an artist. We then discuss David’s fascination with mimicking the voices he heard in the cartoons from his childhood. He considers exposure to those shows to be vital to his voice acting education.
David has said in previous interviews that his brain is “beautifully broken”. I ask him to explain what he means by that. He tells me that he feels compelled to study, classify, and internalize cartoons and the voice acting performances in them. He just can’t help himself. He knows that the brains of many of his colleagues work the same way and the knowledge they’ve amassed is invaluable when they’re portraying their own characters. After I ask David for his advice for aspiring voice actors, he then actually applies his extensive knowledge of cartoons, by combining it with his impressive acting skills, to demonstrate in real time the difference between simply imitating the voice of a character, and actually embodying that character and portraying them in an authentic way. Listen closely, because’s David’s performance is not only an impressive display, but it’s also a mini-master class in professional voice acting. I’m truly honored that I get to share it with you!
VAM 214 | Interview with David Errigo Jr., Part 1
Welcome to episode 214 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
I’m eager to share with you the first part of my interview with a voice actor who has played many iconic characters in animation, video games, and anime: the super talented and emmy-nominated, David Errigo Jr.! His roles in animation are numerous including Hampton J. Pig, Plucky Duck, and Arnold the Pit Bull in Tiny Toons Looniversity, Mojo, Leach, Gladiator, and Banshee in X-Men ’97, Ferb in Phineas and Ferb, and he was nominated for an emmy for his portrayal of Dudley in Ridley Jones! In video games, he’s played Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in Disney Speedstorm and Disney Dreamlight Valley, Victor Krum in Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions, and both Gustav and Oberon in Shin Megami Tensei V and V: Vengeance. In anime he’s played several characters in Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon, Detective Henry in Tezuka’s anime Pluto, and Boy Ranma in the new production of Ranma 1/2!
In this episode, we begin our conversation with David telling me how he got started as a voice actor. He recounts to me the story of when he was working as a theater actor in New York City, and he had an interview with a Theatrical agent. During the interview David expressed interest in voice over and the agent decided to introduce David to a voice over agent in the same office. David and the voice over agent hit it off, and David was ecstatic to begin auditioning for voice over work.
I then ask David to go back in time a bit in order to explain to me how he began pursing acting in the first place. When David was young, he was not initially interested in performing. He thought he might become a visual artist, but while attending a Bruce Springsteen concert with his Dad, he glanced over and noticed the immense joy and excitement that he saw on his father’s face. David wanted to inspire that same kind of joy in others and he believed the best way he could that was by becoming a performer.
So he immediately started taking acting classes at his school and also joined his school choir. He continued to study acting and to perform in shows throughout college. After graduating, he worked numerous acting jobs including: a 6 month tour with a Children’s Theater company, he did summer stock theater, he performed at the Arizona Broadway Theater, and he even did a tour performing on a Disney cruise ship! All of this theater work inspired David to eventually move to New York City to pursue his acting career in the Big Apple.
While he was in New York, he not only had the opportunity to meet with a voice over agent because of his theater experience, but he also was able to audition for animated projects that were being recorded in the city. Going on his first voice over animation audition was so exciting for David that he called up his father afterwards and told him that he believed that he had found what he was meant to do in life. All of his hard work and passion had lined up with his fascination and he knew deep down that he wanted to be a voice actor.
He realized that moving to LA was a necessity, especially since his obsession was animation. Through serendipitous means, he was finally able to move to the west coast and pursue a voice acting career in Hollywood, where he has succeeded admirably. David is a fantastic combination of both wild enthusiasm and rigorous discipline. He can be playful and practical at the same time, and his ability to combine these seemingly disparate aspects into a cohesive whole has contributed greatly to his success. His journey is a wonderful lesson for all of my listeners, and I hope you learn just as much from him as I did!
VAM 209 | Interview with Zeke Alton, Part 2
Welcome to episode 209 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
Get ready for the second part of my interview with the hardest working actor I know, Mr. Zeke Alton! Zeke is a multi-talented performer who does voice acting, performance capture, and also works on-camera. He’s been in major AAA game titles like Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, Starfield, and the Callisto Protocol. He’s also worked on TV shows like S.W.A.T and movies such as My Dead Friend Zoe starring Morgan Freeman and Sonequa Martin-Green. Zeke is not only a member of the actor’s union, SAG-AFTRA, but also serves on many of their contract negotiation committees helping to secure artistic rights, fair wages, and safe working conditions for his fellow union members. In addition, Zeke is also a founding board member of NAVA, the National Association of Voice Actors, who work tirelessly to promote the interests and protect the rights of all voice actors regardless of union affiliation.
In the last episode, Zeke outlined for us the fascinating journey of how he transitioned from being a pilot in the Navy for 20 years, into becoming a working actor in Los Angeles. It’s a very inspiring story and if you haven’t heard it yet, I strongly encourage you to listen to the previous episode before continuing with this one. Even though he decided to purse an acting career later in his life, Zeke didn’t let that dissuade him from breaking in to the entertainment industry. In fact, knowing that he might be at a disadvantage, he made sure to be methodical and diligent in his approach. This focus and determination served him well. It not only allowed him to develop the necessary skills to be professionally competitive, but more importantly, it helped him hone a mindset that gave him the resilience and the resourcefulness to deal with the challenges he faced. One of the resources he found helpful at the time was this podcast! He started listening to my episodes back in 2015 and he thanked me for the helpful advice he found on my show. I’m so honored to have contributed to his success!
In this episode, I ask Zeke what inspired him to become a performer in the first place. For Zeke, the moments when he’s acting feel like absolute magic. He goes into what some describe as a “flow state” where the rest of the world falls away, and the only thing that matters is him performing as the character. He finds this state so compelling that he’s willing to manage and deal with all the more mundane aspects of an acting career in order to experience it. Zeke also shares with me his advice for the aspiring actor and how important he thinks it is for actors to understand that if they want to be commercially successful, they need to think of themselves as contributors to an entertainment business enterprise. We then talk about Artificial Intelligence, a subject I dearly wanted to discuss with Zeke because of his extensive knowledge about not only the technology of AI, but also the current business practices of the companies trying to use AI in their creative projects. There’s great advice in this episode, both about developing your performance abilities, and about protecting those hard won skills from being exploited by technology. I hope you find it as insightful and useful as I did!
VAM 208 | Interview with Zeke Alton, Part 1
Welcome to episode 208 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
I’m very pleased to present the first part of my interview with one of the most industrious men I know, Mr. Zeke Alton. Zeke works in many different areas of the entertainment industry including voice acting, performance capture, and also on-camera. You may know his voice acting work as Terrell Wolf and William Peck in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, Quantum in Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, Mike Abadio and Lendel Green in Starfield, and his amazing performance as Elias Porter in The Callisto Protocol. Zeke also works on camera and has been in The TV series S.W.A.T. as well as the movie My Dead Friend Zoe starring Morgan Freeman and Sonequa Martin-Green. Zeke is a member of the actor’s union, SAG-AFTRA, and serves on many of their negotiation committees helping to secure artistic rights, fair wages, and safe working conditions for performers. As if that weren’t enough, Zeke is also a founding board member of NAVA, the National Association of Voice Actors, who work tirelessly to promote the interests and protect the rights of all voice actors regardless of union affiliation.
We begin our discussion with Zeke telling me how he broke into the world of show business. His journey is incredibly unique. His father was in the Air Force and stationed in various places in Europe. Zeke was born in Italy and raised in England where his mother’s family resided. Eventually his father moved his family back to the U.S., and after spending his early childhood overseas, Zeke ended up going to High School in America. While he did study acting in elementary and high school, he didn’t act in college, but instead got a scholarship through the Reserve Officer’s Training Corps, commonly known as ROTC, and focused on pursuing a military career.
After graduating college, Zeke joined the Navy as a pilot and subsequently achieved the esteemed status of test pilot, flying new and experimental aircraft. He ended up serving in the Navy for 20 years. He knew that after those 20 years were up he had some options available to him: he could choose to stay in the Navy which most likely would have led to a distinguished career being promoted up through the ranks, or he had the option to retire and enter civilian aviation as a commercial pilot which was another common career path for Navy fliers. Zeke did neither, however. Instead he chose to pursue a career as an actor. It was a momentous decision, and one that he did not take lightly. He knew that if he was going to pursue a career in entertainment, that he would need to approach it with the same focus, dedication, and commitment as he would give to any goal that he attempted in the military.
Zeke took years to study, plan, prepare, and train as an actor before he finally decided to make the move to Los Angeles. He arrived in LA in 2019 and has made great progress in his acting career ever since! The story of how he went from being a Navy test pilot to deciding he had to pursue a career as a performer is a fascinating study not only in what steps you can take in order to be successful as an actor, but also in how important it is to adopt an effective mindset so you can achieve your acting goals. Zeke attributes the bulk of his success to the professional attitude he adopted, which helped him approach his acting goals in a reliable and effective manner. I hope my listeners can take inspiration from his journey, as well as adopt his practical approach to pursuing an acting career. So without further ado, here’s Zeke!
VAM 206 | Interview with Lauren Mayfield, Part 2
Welcome to episode 206 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
This is the second part of my interview with an accomplished voice actress who just happens to be a former student of mine and one of my class assistants, Lauren Mayfield! Lauren has gone from studying with me in class, to helping me coach my students, to booking work as a professional voice actress, and even securing representation at one of the most prestigious agencies in Los Angeles, Sutton Barth and Venari also known as SBV. I was delighted when she told me that we were both working on the same video game together, providing voices for characters in Starfield by Bethesda. You may also know Lauren’s work in games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III where she plays Raptor, Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising where she plays Societte, and Tower of God: New World where she plays Po Bidau Blanc. It’s always so satisfying when I get to watch one of my students navigate the transition to becoming an accomplished colleague of mine in the voice acting world and I’m so proud of Lauren’s achievements!
In the previous episode, we talked about how Lauren got her start as a voice actor. She had loved acting and especially musicals when she was young. Then she’d had the opportunity to work at both Disney World and Disneyland, which she enjoyed thoroughly. However, it wasn’t until she was passed over for a position at Disneyland that she decided to focus more of her attention on voice acting. She took classes in Orange County, California where she was living, and she also took classes with me at Voice Acting Mastery. She was a dutiful actress who tried to do everything right and follow what seemed to be the conventional wisdom at the time about how one could break into voice acting. This included booking parts in anime dubs at first, and then moving on to other projects after that. This was certainly my experience when I started as a voice actor in the late 90’s. Lauren discovered, however, that her path was going to be different. After struggling to make much headway in anime, she finally found her niche in video games which is where her career really took off. Her success in games helped her secure agency representation, which has opened even more career opportunities for her!
In this episode, I ask Lauren what inspired her to become a performer in the first place. She revisits how she loved performing and especially musical theater from a young age, and shares how she had a passion for fantastical, larger than life storytelling. She was eager to explore how she could pursue a career as a performer. Over time, she began to realize that a musical theater career would not give her the kind of stability she desired, neither financially, nor in terms of lifestyle. She didn’t want to have to travel for work, and the life of a theater actor tends to be very nomadic. Voice acting became a way for her to pursue acting, apply her vocal and singing techniques, and still remain close to home. This subject leads quite naturally into a discussion about how important it is to be always checking in with yourself to make sure that you’re pursuing goals that are truly what you want and that you aren’t working towards some accomplishment that won’t give you satisfaction. Lauren and I also discuss how competitive voice acting has become in recent years due to the rising popularity of games, animation, and anime.
After that, I ask Lauren to share her advice for the aspiring voice actor. While she knows that teachers and coaches will often stress how much work it takes to be successful as a voice actor, and Lauren herself can personally attest to the amount of time, effort, and dedication she has put towards achieving her voice acting goals, she also says that it’s important to know when to relax and trust that you’re doing good work, so you can avoid trying to force things to happen. One way to achieve that balance between effort and relaxation is to make sure that you’re as well rounded a human being as possible, with activities and interests outside the field of acting. Another method is to take the pursuit of voice acting less personally and to decouple your own value as a human being from your professional accomplishments. Ironically, the less personally you take things in the voice over industry, the more relaxed you’ll become, and the more authentically you’ll be able to share your own artistry with others. These insights from Lauren are a lovely way to wrap up our discussion, and I’m so glad I get to share them with my listeners!