VAM 184 | Interview with JP Karliak, Part 1
Welcome to episode 184 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 excited to share with you the first part of my interview with the incredibly talented, JP Karliak! He’s played characters in numerous animated shows including Boss Baby in The Boss Baby: Back in Action, the Green Goblin in Spidey and His Amazing Friends, Dante Crescendo in TrollsTopia, Happy, Bucky, and Luke in Dogs in Space and Wiley-E Coyote in the New Looney Toons. In games he’s played N. Tropy in Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time, Wolfgang in Skylanders: Imaginators, and Vision in Marvel Avengers Academy. In anime he’s played Miruchi in Kuroko’s Basketball, Gawain in Fate/Grand Order the Movie, and Fuyutski in Neon Genesis Evangelion. He’s also the founder of Queer Vox a not-for-profit training academy and community for LGBTQIA+ voiceover actors and co-founder of the non-partisan voter action group, NerdsVote, which encourages all pop culture fans to get involved in American democracy. With all this going on, I’m not sure when JP finds time to sleep!
In the first part of our talk together, he tells me how he broke into the world of voice acting. While JP enjoyed watching Loony Toons when he was a kid, and had a special love for the character of Skeletor in the original He-Man animated series, he never thought that he would be able to voice those kinds of characters himself. He was familiar with the Disney animated film, Aladdin, where Robin Williams played the Genie character, and after seeing that film, JP assumed that one had to be a famous movie star in order to work on animated shows so he never thought it was a viable career path for himself. Instead, he decided to pursue more traditional forms of acting on stage and in front of the camera. He started college in the D.C. area where he focused on studying acting, but eventually transferred to the University of Southern California to finish his degree and pursue acting in the Los Angeles area.
At USC, a few of his classmates asked him to provide voices for some of their film and animation projects. He was happy to do so and was pleasantly surprised when he got positive feedback on his performances. He was encouraged to seek out Kelly Ward, a professor at USC who worked extensively as a director on many animated shows. Kelly suggested that JP take classes with working professionals in the LA voice over industry including voice actor Bob Bergen and voice director Ginny McSwain. While he did pursue some on-camera work in LA at the beginning of his career, JP quickly began to focus on voice over as the area where he felt most comfortable.
After discussing the origins of JP’s career, we then take the time to go over each stage of his voice acting journey in very close detail. I think it’s valuable to hear all the different small steps that someone took to reach their current level of success. When talking about someone’s experiences after the fact, it can often seem like the end result was inevitable. However, when you go back in time and look through that person’s perspective from moment to moment, you begin to realize that they were just trying to do the best they could,with the resources they had at the time, as well as the options in front of them! No outcome is guaranteed, and often the path forward can seem confusing or unclear when you’re trying to navigate it in the present moment. Hopefully hearing the challenges that JP faced and overcame as he was negotiating his career path will help inspire you to persevere in your own voice acting journey!
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