VAM 188 | Interview with Paul Castro Jr., Part 1
Welcome to episode 188 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
Regular listeners to the podcast may recognize the name and voice of my next guest from the lovely comments that he called in and left for my 10th Anniversary podcast episode. I’m talking about the talented, ambitious, and industrious Paul Castro Jr.! Paul has extensive experience performing on stage, on camera, and in front of the microphone! You can hear his voice acting work in the Square Enix game: NEO: The World Ends With You where he plays the lead character, Rindo Kanade. He also plays the character of Dragon in the award winning anime film, Belle. If that wasn’t enough, imagine my surprise to discover that Paul worked with me on the game Lost Judgement: The Kaito Files, where I played Kaito and Paul played Jun Sadamoto, a young man who believes he’s actually Kaito’s son! It was a true pleasure to hear Paul’s voice in our scenes together!
In the first part of this interview, Paul shares with us how he got started as an actor. When Paul was young and growing up in New York and New Jersey, he had no idea what acting even was! While he was a fan of animation and video games, he never gave much thought to how actors might be providing the voices for the characters that he watched and interacted with. He just enjoyed the content for what it was. It wasn’t until he was in college and trying to decide what he wanted to pursue as a career, that he stumbled across an improvisational comedy group and decided to give it a try. He was surprised to discover that not only did he enjoy acting more than any other subject he had tried in college, but that acting was a legitimate career choice that some of his fellow comedy troupe members were pursuing.
Paul made up his mind to commit fully to pursuing an acting career as quickly as possible. He decided to leave the college he had been attending, Monmouth University, and audition for NYU’s conservatory acting program known as the Tisch School of the Arts. He was accepted into the Meisner Studio and completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree there. During his time in school, he took every opportunity he could to develop his acting skills and to expand his understanding of the entertainment industry. He worked both in front of and behind the camera in film and TV productions. He assisted established professional actors with their film shoots and with their self-tape auditions. He read every book that he could about managing the business aspects of an acting career, and he jumped at every opportunity that presented itself so that he could learn as much as possible, as fast as possible. It’s truly impressive how diligent and tireless he was!
As much as Paul enjoyed acting on stage and on camera, he had a special passion for animation and video games. His love of those mediums inspired him to reach out to his professors to try and discover what it would take to work as a professional voice actor. They not only gave him great advice, but some of them mentored him as well. What’s funny is that a number of his mentors were actors and producers that I worked with when I was voice acting in New York City back in the late 1990s! It was around the time that Paul was working with these shared colleagues of ours that he started listening to my Voice Acting Mastery podcast, which he credits for helping him better understand what it would take to succeed as a professional voice actor. I’m so glad my podcast episodes could help him on his journey, and I hope that by sharing his story with my other listeners, all of you can be inspired to take what you learn here, put it into action, and follow Paul’s example!
Download Voice Acting Mastery Episode #188 Here (MP3)
What a great podcast, you really are a master of interviewing people as well!