Welcome to episode 154 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 stunningly multi-faceted Julie Nathanson! You may recognize Julie from her performances as Samantha Maxis in Call of Duty, Silver Banshee and Jewelee in Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay, Jess Black in Far Cry 5, Captain Scarlet Turner in Elena of Avalor, and Crimson Widow in Avengers Assemble. Not only is Julie an accomplished voice actress, but she’s also a professional screen writer as well! She was a staff writer and then Executive Story Editor on the NBC TV Series, Just Deal, where she was nominated for a Writer’s Guild Award for one of her episodes! She’s written and consulted on games such as Guildlings, an RPG currently available on Apple Arcade, and Vader Immortal: a Star Wars VR Series! If that weren’t enough, she also has a Master’s Degree in Clinical Psychology! Julie’s interests are wide and far ranging which is one of the reasons I was so eager to interview her on the podcast!

In the first part of our discussion, we go all the way back to the beginning, when Julie was only 6 years old, to find out where her fascination with acting comes from! She shares with me the story of her first time on stage, and how the absence of one of her fellow actors in their first grade pageant inspired her to step up and save the show! We also talk about her parents and how their work in psychology influenced her. She absorbed a lot from their study of the emotional life of the human mind. In fact, her father even asked her to edit some of his writings on the subject! Julie’s parents always respected her intelligence, never talked down to her, and made sure to include her in their adult conversations. Her parents were very multi-faceted as well which helped inspire Julie to think outside the box when it came to making her own career decisions!

Not only is Julie a font of energy and enthusiasm, but she’s also put a lot of thought into her journey and you can hear it when she speaks!

Download Voice Acting Mastery Episode #154 Here (MP3)

Welcome to episode 153 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 previous episode, Maile and I discussed what inspired her to become an actress in the first place. Her international upbringing, her family’s penchant for wry humor, and her training to become a spy for the CIA were all big influences on her! These varied experiences helped her hone her observational skills which served her incredibly well when she was studying other actor’s performances. Each of these environments also provided her with opportunities to test her social skills and to learn how to communicate effectively with a wide range of people.

In this episode, I ask Maile what advice she has for aspiring voice actors. Maile teaches voice over workshops so she has lots of hands on experience working with students and helping them understand what it takes to succeed as a professional voice actor. She shares with me some of the common mistakes she sees her students make and she emphasizes how important it is for an aspiring voice actor to “do their homework”, as she puts it. We go into great detail about how voice acting homework differs from more traditional homework you may have been assigned in school. Learning how to immerse yourself in a character requires a different mindset than figuring out algebra problems and Maile has some great insights on what you can do to improve the believability of your performances!

Download Voice Acting Mastery Episode #153 Here (MP3)

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)

Welcome to episode 151 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 really excited to share with you the first part of my interview with the Emmy award winning voice actress and accomplished comedienne, Maile Flanagan! Maile has performed in theater, stand up comedy, television sitcoms, feature films, and numerous voice acting roles! She’s probably most famous for voicing the character of Naruto in the long running anime franchise of the same name. She won an Emmy for her performance in the animated show Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks. You may also recognize her as Principal Perry in the Disney XD show, Lab Rats as well as her many other roles in shows like Grey’s Anatomy, The Mindy Project, and Modern Family. Maile is one of those rare actresses who work just as often in voice over as she does on-camera and I wanted to share with you her unique perspective on the industry!

I’m actually fascinated by Maile’s approach to voice acting because it’s so different from my own! If you’ve listened to early episodes of this podcast, you know that I attended a lot of acting schools in my youth. I took theater classes in high school, college and even went to graduate acting school to get my master’s degree. By contrast, Maile jumped into acting with almost no formal training whatsoever! Her approach to learning how to act was based on her keen observation of talented performers as well as her international upbringing. Maile’s father was a spy! He worked in counter intelligence for the U.S. government during the 1970s and 80s which meant that Maile’s family lived in many different countries as she was growing up. She was born in Hawaii, but moved to Bangkok soon afterwards. Later she lived in Nuremberg and Munich and eventually went to college in Boston. All of this moving from place to place meant that she had to learn to adapt to many different social environments. In order to survive, she became a quick study of people and their behavior!

In the first part of our interview, Maile and I discuss how she became an actress. She initially planned to follow in her father’s footsteps and become a spy herself! However, while she was waiting for her first assignment, she decided to organize a group of her fellow classmates from college into an improv comedy troupe and perform in venues around Cape Cod, Massachusetts during the summer. That decision ended up changing the entire trajectory of her life! It’s an amazing story and I think you’ll find it very intriguing!

Download Voice Acting Mastery Episode #151 Here (MP3)

Welcome to episode 150 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 and final part of my interview with the inspiring Maryann Strossner! In the last episode, Maryann talked about how she got started as an actress in New York in the 1960s, even though her parents did not approve of her pursuing a career as a performer. We also discussed how she transitioned from stage work to voice over work when she moved to Los Angeles in 1977. After arriving in Hollywood, one of her first theatrical acting jobs was working with the Variety Arts Radio Theater Company of LA which produced old time radio dramas on stage in front of a live audience. She also started working on audiobooks for Scholastic around that time as well. During the 1990s she moved around to different places in order to take care of family members. Eventually, she returned to Los Angeles and picked up her acting career where she left off doing commercials, films, and TV projects. However, it wasn’t until she reached her 70s that she started pursuing voice acting in animation and video games. In 2016 she was cast as Granny Marl in Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft game franchise. Now, she is probably most famous for her work in 2018 as Scrollsage Nola, the kind, grandmotherly turtle creature who lives in the land of the Tortollans. Maryann’s journey really shows that it’s never too late to pursue your voice acting dreams!

In the second part of our interview, I ask Maryann what inspired her to become an actress in the first place. We discuss some of her early childhood memories of going to see Broadway shows with her mother and falling in love with the world of the theater. We also talk more about her parents objections to her pursuing an acting career and the fact that her mother had artistic aspirations of her own that she never fulfilled. Then Maryann shares some details about the acting training that she got from her cousin, a theatrical director, whose special method of teaching Maryann was very applicable to voice acting. And finally, Maryann gives us her advice for aspiring voice actors and about how important it is not to wait to do what you want to do, but to just get out there and do it! So without further ado, here’s Maryann.

Download Voice Acting Mastery Episode #150 Here (MP3)

Welcome to episode 149 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 a truly unique guest, Maryann Strossner! Maryann has acted on stage and done voice over work on both the East and West Coast of the United States since the 1960’s! She was born in 1940 and started acting professionally in her 20’s in New York City. In 1977, she moved to Los Angeles where she continued to pursue theater in addition to working with the Variety Arts Radio Theater Company of LA. While she received rave reviews in the New York Times for her stage acting, and worked in voice over not only in Los Angeles, but in North Carolina as well, she recently became famous for her voice acting work in the online video game, World of Warcraft! Her first character for the franchise was Granny Marl in 2016, but she became a fan favorite when she voiced the gentle and caring Scrollsage Nola in 2018! In the game, if you visit the land of the Tortollans who are a turtle-like race in World of Warcraft, you are greeted by Nola who asks you to protect newly born turtles from predators as the baby turtles crawl from their hatching places on the beach and work their way towards the safety of the ocean. When you succeed, she exclaims, “A turtle made it to the water!”.

Maryann’s performance as Nola was so charming, that she became a sort of grandmother figure to the players of World of Warcraft. In 2018, Maryann was a guest at Blizzcon where she recited her famous lines on stage to great applause. In fact, these lines have become such a meme that someone has turned them into a song. Here’s a clip of it from YouTube!

I first met Maryann back in 2014 when she took some of my voice acting classes. I was not only impressed with her work in class, but also with the fact that she was jumping into the world of animation and video games as an older actress. Most people who enjoy animation and games tend to be of a younger generation, and often my class is filled with these young people. However, recently at conventions, I have been asked by more mature adults whether I think they are too old to voice act. Now, if you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, you probably already know that my answer is that it’s never “too late” to pursue your voice acting dreams as long as you’re truly passionate about voice acting. But rather than simply trying to reassure any of you out there who are thinking of getting into voice acting later in life, I thought it would be even better to share a real-life success story! It is my honor to bring Maryann here on the podcast to share her experiences and talk about what it’s been like for her to start voice acting in animation and games in her 70’s!

We begin by exploring how she became an actor in the first place. While she discovered at a young age that she was fascinated with acting, her parents did not approve of her pursuing a career as an actress. They were immigrants to America who had weathered many challenges in their lives. They wanted their daughter to have an easier life than they had experienced, and they saw acting as not only economically unstable, but morally questionable as well. In the face of such resistance, Maryann had to find her own way to accomplish her career goals. She kept her dreams of being an actress to herself until she had the opportunity to move out on her own with her older cousin, Nancy, who just happened to be a theater director! Nancy coached Maryann privately as she began her acting career in New York City. From there, Maryann’s journey as an actress went to many interesting places and I’m eager to have her tell you all about it!

Download Voice Acting Mastery Episode #149 Here (MP3)