VAM 213 | Interview with Nancy Linari, Part 2
Welcome to episode 213 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 back to the second part of my interview with an actress who has worked in almost every different kind of acting environment you can think of: the talented and versatile Nancy Linari! She’s worked on animated shows like Hanna-Barbera’s version of the Addams Family, as well as Animaniacs, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Ben 10. In the world of video games, she’s worked on Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, Legends of Runeterra, and Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance. She’s also working with yours truly on the new Pokemon Horizons anime series! However, Nancy is probably most famous for playing Aunt May in both the Disney XD Spider-man animated series, as well as the Sony Playstation series of Spider-Man games from 2018 and 2023.
In the previous episode, Nancy shared with me how she got started as a voice actor and how it grew organically out of her pursuit of an acting career in Chicago. After graduating college with a degree in theater, she started working at a theme park in the Chicagoland area while also pursuing theater and commercial work. One of her theater shows toured the country with one of their stops being in Los Angeles. This allowed Nancy to explore the acting marketplace in LA and to make some industry connections. She eventually decided to move to Los Angeles in order to grow her acting career there.
As she booked theater work in LA, she began to meet influential people in the entertainment industry including Gordon Hunt, who was the head voice director at Hanna-Barbera. He started auditioning her for animated projects, and this led to her booking some smaller roles in animation, and eventually booking a lead role as Morticia in the Addams Family animated series. Nancy also became curious about performance capture work for video games. She started taking classes for it and eventually booked the part of Aunt May for the Playstation Spider-man video games, which just happened to be her very first performance capture audition! Nancy’s journey is one of curiosity, versatility, and resiliency. She knew that to survive as an actress, she would need to be able to act well in a variety of different performance environments. This has allowed her to continue working in various fields of the entertainment industry whenever there’s a slow down in other areas.
In this episode, as we continue our discussion, I ask Nancy what inspired her to become a performer in the first place. She shares with me a story about the first time she got laughs from an audience. She found the experience exhilarating, especially since she was only 7 years old at the time! That moment instilled a love of comedy in her that has served her well throughout her career. It also helped her understand what her strengths were as a performer. She realized that her archetype as an actor was more comedic, and less serious. That didn’t mean she couldn’t play serious roles, just that her competitive advantage was that she could “find the funny” in whatever project she was working on. That’s a very valuable skill to have as a performer!
After that, Nancy and I talk about European clowning, a style of acting that I also discussed in my interview with Darin De Paul. While Nancy has never done European clowning personally, she did study it academically in school. European clown training can really help an actor discover what their inherent nature is as a performer, as well as how to embrace one’s essential archetype. Nancy also talks about how important it is to become proficient with recording technology as an actor, since so often these days actors are expected to be their own engineers and camera operators.
And then, to conclude our conversation, Nancy shares her advice for the aspiring voice actor. Like so many before her, she says that believable acting skills should be a voice actor’s highest priority, so I ask her how she learned acting. While she is a self-admitted acting class junkie, she also acknowledges that she’s often learned the most about acting from actually doing it. She compares it to an athlete having to continually train physically in order to be in peak condition to perform. There’s no substitute for experience, and as an actor, the more opportunities you have to practice your skills, the better you will become at them. This is also why Nancy enjoys doing theater so much. It allows her to practice and test her skills night after night. Each time she gets up to act, she may try something a little different to see what works and what doesn’t. This iterative process of curiosity, exploration, and discovery, is what has helped her sustain such a long and varied career. I hope my listeners can benefit from her mindset and I’m so glad I get to share her wisdom with all of you!
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 199 | Interview with Sara Secora, Part 2
Welcome to episode 199 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 honored to share with you the second and final part of my interview with the resourceful Sara Secora. You may have heard Sara’s voice acting work in games such as Genshin Impact, Warframe, and Fallout 76. In animation and dubbing she’s worked on Enchantimals, Boonie Bears: Back to Earth, and Rumble Garanndoll. Sara also works as a casting director and voice director on games like Smite, and Paladins. She’s also written a book on voice acting called The Anywhere Voice Actor about what it takes to work as a voice actor no matter where you live. You can find her book on Amazon, and you can even get private coaching sessions with Sara by going to Jennifer Hale’s amazing website, skillshub.life.
In the previous episode, Sara shared with me how she got started as a voice actor. Her journey was quite unique since she has a disability that keeps her homebound. She was gracious and courageous enough to talk about her agoraphobia in detail and explain how it prohibits her from traveling to a recording studio in order to work. Despite this challenge, she has been able to develop both her acting abilities and her business skills to a professionally competitive level. Sara got her start in the world of independent video games and has expanded into commercials, American Animation, Anime and AAA video games. I’m very impressed by her bravery and tenacity in the face of such difficulties.
In this episode, we begin by discussing what inspired Sara to become a performer in the first place. In fact, I ask Sara to go back to the time before she decided to pursue voice acting, and to explore why she originally wanted to become a YouTuber. She explains that her love for games and her wanting to share this enthusiasm with others helped motivate her to create a YouTube channel. The more she and I discuss this, the more she begins to realize that she has always had a deep desire to entertain other people. Even prior to becoming a YouTuber, Sara would share silly videos with her friends just to make them laugh or smile.
I then ask Sara how she began working as both a casting director and a voice director and to share some of the challenges she faces in both of those pursuits. Then, we wrap up our discussion with Sara’s advice to the aspiring voice actor. She always begins any of her coaching sessions by asking her students what they want to accomplish as a voice actor and even more importantly, why they want to do it. If her students express the desire to pursue voice acting professionally, Sara has a lot of practical advice to share with them from her own time “in the trenches” so to speak. She always wants to make sure her students have realistic and actionable plans that can make their voice acting goals practically achievable and not just dreams that never come to fruition. I love Sara’s no-nonsense approach to voice acting and I think my listeners will really benefit from hearing more of her journey and insights.
VAM 198 | Interview with Sara Secora, Part 1
Welcome to episode 198 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 resourceful and multi-talented Sara Secora. You may be familiar with Sara’s voice acting work in games, where she voices Dunyarzad in Genshin Impact, Mathila in Warframe, and Pat Myers in Fallout 76. In animation and dubbing she’s played Radia Rainbowfish in Enchantimals, Avi in Boonie Bears: Back to Earth, and Hayate in Rumble Garanndoll. Sara has also worked as a casting director on games like Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, Smite, and Paladins, and she’s voice directed the games Smite, Paladins, and Overload. In addition to all of that, Sara has somehow found the time to write a book on voice acting called The Anywhere Voice Actor about what it takes to work as a voice actor no matter where you live. You can find it on Amazon. Sara has been so successful that she was invited to be a coach on Jennifer Hale’s amazing website, skillshub.life where she’s available for private coaching sessions.
One of the reasons I was so eager to get Sara on the podcast is because she has built her entire voice over career without leaving her home studio. Sara has a disability that keeps her homebound which we discuss in detail in this episode. Despite this challenge, Sara has not only been able to book voice over work that would normally be possible to do from home, such as commercials, independent games, and narration work, but she’s also been able to break into areas of voice acting that have traditionally required performers to move to the city where such work was being done, such as animation, dubbing, and AAA video games. Sara’s ability to achieve so much while negotiating her limitations is a testament to her ingenuity, her determination, and frankly her courage in the face of adversity. What she’s accomplished is truly admirable and I hope my listeners can gain some inspiration from her journey.
Sara and I begin our discussion by talking about how she got started as a voice actor. She was initially a YouTuber who enjoyed playing horror games and decided to create a YouTube channel where others could watch her play. Many of these horror games would have letters or notes that the characters had written, revealing information about the world of the game. Usually these important pieces of text did not have any voice acting associated with them, so in order to keep things interesting, Sara would read the letters aloud to entertain her audience. Her impromptu performances became very popular with her fans and many of them encouraged her to pursue voice acting. After receiving enough of these supportive comments, Sara eventually decided to reach out on twitter to a voice actor whose work she had admired. He was kind enough to respond and to give her suggestions, including some advice on getting training as an actor.
Sara took these suggestions to heart and started applying herself diligently to creating a voice acting career. While her success speaks for itself, I’m very eager to let her share her story with you in her own words!
VAM 186 | Interview with Lucien Dodge, Part 1
Welcome to episode 186 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 share with you the first part of my interview with voice actor and voice director, Lucien Dodge! You may be familiar with Lucien’s voice acting work in anime including Zoisite in the Viz Media dub of Sailor Moon, Amuro Ray in Gundam: The Origin and Mobile Suit Gundam: Hathaway, Keita in Sword Art Online, Akaza and Kazumi in Demon Slayer, and Waver Velvet in Fate/Zero! In games he’s played Dust, in Dust: An Elysian Tail, Mega Gnar in League of Legends, Buzzard in Mad Max, and Dr. Vanus in Smite. Lucien also voice directed me in the dub of the anime Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon where I played the main antagonist, Kirinmaru. I had such a great time working with Lucien on that dub that I thought it would be a good idea to have him on the podcast to talk about his own voice acting experiences and his approach to the art form.
Lucien and I share a lot of similarities when it comes to our voice acting journeys. We both have a great appreciation for anime, we both were incredibly shy when we were young, and we both became fascinated with what it took to be able to share the most authentic and believable acting performances with our audiences. Lucien grew up in Ithaca, NY where he went to a private school with very small classes. While his school didn’t have an acting program per se, they did encourage all of their students to participate in a play every year. You might think that since Lucien was so shy, he would not have any interest in participating in the school play. It turns out that the opposite was actually the case. Lucien found that playing a character gave him permission to be more courageous and assertive than he would be if he had to perform in public as himself. I had a similar experience when I was young! Acting as a character gave me an opportunity to build up my own courage and confidence without feeling like I was making myself personally vulnerable to criticism.
Fortunately, Lucien’s mother noticed how much acting seemed to be helping him overcome his shyness. She encouraged him to pursue more acting opportunities, and helped him to attend acting classes based on Sanford Meisner’s techniques. She also helped him attend a convention for radio dramas known as the National Audio Theater Festival. But it wasn’t until a family friend gave Lucien the video box set of the anime series, The Slayers, as a birthday present, that Lucien discovered his love for anime. Coincidentally, that was the first anime show that I ever worked on! After Lucien saw it, he was hooked. For his next birthday, his father gave him a microphone and a small 4 track cassette recorder so Lucien could start practicing his voice over skills. Lucien became obsessed with trying out different kinds of voice acting with his new tools. Fun fact: I also had a 4 track recorder when I was young and actually recorded some of my earliest attempts at voice acting on it!
After high school, Lucien decided to pursue voice acting as a career. He spent a year in college, but quickly realized that it didn’t serve his purposes very well, and decided to dive into the voice over industry in New York City. I too began my voice acting career in New York. Lucien and I even got our first New York anime dubbing jobs from the same studio, TAJ Productions where I got my start on The Slayers and he first worked on an episode of Pokemon. Lucien faced many challenges pursuing voice acting in the Big Apple, and during his eventual move out to Los Angeles, but I’ll let him tell you all about his adventures himself!
VAM 179 | Interview with Feodor Chin, Part 2
Welcome to episode 179 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 Feodor Chin. You can hear Feo’s voice over work in games like Overwatch, Ghosts of Tsushima, League of Legends, and World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria. He’s worked on the Regular Show for Cartoon Network, and on-camera he’s worked on TV shows such as Nash Bridges, The Mindy Project, and Jane the Virigin. He’s also narrated or contributed narration to over 100 different audiobooks!
In the previous episode, Feo outlined the steps he took to become a professional actor. There was no single moment when he “broke into show business”. Instead, Feo diligently studied to improve his acting skills and then consistently took the actions necessary to find acting opportunities. This included regularly marketing his skills to producers and casting directors who were hiring actors. This is the unglamorous homework that it takes to book regular work as an actor. No one in the industry suddenly discovers you and then paves a path to success for you. If you want to get paid to voice act, you need to master your art, research your industry, and then market your professionally competitive skills to producers who are looking to hire top notch acting talent for their projects. Feo never shied away from putting in all the behind-the-scenes work that was necessary to help him become a working actor both in voice over and on-camera.
In the final part of our discussion, I ask Feo what inspired him to become a performer in the first place. In the previous episode, Feo had mentioned that in high school, he had seen Dustin Hoffman’s performance as Willy Loman in the movie, Death of a Salesman. Hoffman’s acting had made a huge impression on Feo, so in this episode, I ask Feo to outline in more detail what exactly was so compelling about that performance. Feo explains that after watching Hoffman perform, he became fascinated with diving deep into the emotional life of a character. He talks about the satisfaction he gets from fully embodying a character, especially when a character’s psychology is incredibly rich or nuanced.
After that, we discuss Feo’s background in improv and sketch comedy. He explains to me the differences between full improvisational performances and the sketch comedy writing that he works on most often. We then talk about how we both apply our improv background to the challenges we face as voice actors, especially when we’re given very little information about a character or the story they come from, and yet are still expected to deliver authentic and believable performances. We also discuss the challenges Asian-American actors face in the entertainment industry and how Asian representation in media has changed over the past 20 years or so. We wrap up our discussion with Feo’s advice to the aspiring voice actor, and how important it is to be open to different career opportunities because you never know where you’re going to find success.