So here's what it's really like being a voice actor.
So I became a voice actor a little bit before
Kim Possible.
I had some strange jobs prior to that
where when I was in New York, before going to California,
I read some books on tape when I was super young.
Looking back now, hey,
I guess I was a pretty good reader, but I was like, ten, something like that.
I did some books on tape.
I did some just very basic kids'
voices in radio commercials and that's about it.
Animation opportunities, especially for people who were younger,
weren't really that prevalent.
There was like Stuart Little, but that was Jonathan Lipnicki,
and he was a star,
so he was a kid star, and they made him a little voice of the mouse.
So it's one of those things where it wasn't like popular
to be a young person succeeding in the voiceover world.
My first foray into working in animation was with Kim Possible.
I've talked about how, you know, the audition came to be.
And I met Mark and Bob
and I saw the animatic and I was like, Wow, this would be fantastic.
And I do think that there was some synergy there because I was on Even Steven.
So there was multiple reasons why I was hired for KP.
It wasn't just because I was the perfect, perfect, perfect, perfect fit.
I think that when you're talking about casting that it's very, very subjective,
especially when we're talking about voice acting.
There's a lot of books and a lot of amazing people
that will teach you techniques to be a voice actor.
I am not the person to necessarily do that.
I'm just a person who's going to explain to you what it's like to be a voice actor.
I actually ended up getting an Emmy nomination for Kim Possible,
and I have a little bit of imposter syndrome because of that.
I didn't really feel like I deserved it.
I look at like my costars who are these huge names
in the voiceover world and had been for years and years
and years, and I felt like I didn't deserve it.
And of course, I did not get it.
Henry Winkler actually got the Emmy that I was nominated with that year.
Clifford the Red Dog’s amazing. He deserves that 100%.
But I do struggle with the fact that I have a little impostor syndrome
when it comes to being a voice actor because of all the amazing voice actors
that I know.
See, when you're a voice actor, your voice is what you're being hired for.
If you want to be hired multiple times in multiple different ways
and keep working and working and working as primarily a voice actor,
but not like a star voice, that's completely recognizable.
Like, Oh, I know that’s
Seth Rogen. I know that Seth Rogen is Seth Rogen.
Whenever he speaks, there's just certain people whose voices are undeniably theirs.
I have a voice that's just a female voice.
I had some really bad nodules.
I didn't really realize that over time, I would be worsening them
and worsening them.
So when I had my open throat
surgery, it helped me get back to being a higher voice to Kim.
But for a while, if you actually watch KP,
I start to have this, like, gravelly voice that's exhausted.
And probably smoking cigarets and doing too many late nights
and like stuff like that.
So admittedly, I wasn't
taking care of my voice when I was KP and because I had the nodules
and the lifestyle when I was able to get the nodules clean,
I think I was able to get back to the Kim voice that everybody knows
is kind of like more bubbly and hey, what's up?
You know, I have imposter syndrome when it comes to being a voice actor,
because when I look at someone like Will Friedle, he's amazing.
I mean, he's got a writer's mind.
He's extremely sharp, and he can turn a character
into this like iconic part of a franchise.
There's a rumor that like, John Cena,
like, was going to audition to play the voice of Ron Stoppable.
And when you think about that, John Cena, got to love him, has a great baritone,
muscular voice, but like that voice coming out of Ron Stoppables
body would not have been fit.
You know, there could have been anybody playing these characters.
And what ended up happening was I think that there was synergy
for me to play Kim, and I was Age-Appropriate
and I was really excited and enthusiastic about the part.
And then from there, she was sort of built in to what we see and hear of her.
Right? So, like, that's how you know Kim. That's how I know Kim.
So I'm kind of like
merged in
with her, and I love her very much.
When you’re a VO actor and if you're talented like Will
you have what it takes to be working all the freakin time.
He can do so many different voices.
He's batman. He's Ron. There you go. Look at that.
Look at that range. Right there. He was in Thundercats.
He ended up writing on Thundercats.
If you're in the room with him, like when I say the room, I mean the booth.
I wasn't able to be in the booth with him.
And I'm super sad about it because I would have learned so much.
I came in having one voice, my voice as a 16 year old girl.
And so for me, I was learning so much in like the first season
about what it meant to be a voice actor that even to this day I'm
a little insecure about really only doing I can do like five voices.
I can do like a little boy voice, which is not my main thing.
I can do more of that, like Princessie, bubbly, sparkly voice, lots of dialects,
I think I can actually do lots of voice matching.
Voice matching is like I have voice match for Angelina Jolie at one point
for the Kung Fu Panda video game and that was very, very cool.
I've done some Marvel characters.
I have also a unique skill where I can do
books on tape, which is not the same as doing voice acting for animation.
Reading books on tape is extremely tiring and extremely time
consuming and doesn't pay that great.
That's something that I don't think people understand,
is that you actually don't get paid that much to be a voice actor versus
if you were on camera.
There's not just like an endless well of money in a budget for an actor.
You know, I was worried at one point that they were going to like try
to replace me because my voice was like so gravelly in those second seasons.
But I remember somebody telling me, like, they can't really replace you
if your voice is attached to a character unless I think you're not
willing to come back to do it.
So, like, when Angelina
Jolie didn't want to do the Kung Fu Panda video game because she was in Cambodia
doing some charitable thing, they look for a voice match.
And so it's I think it's
more of a consensual replacement rather than you're not given a choice.
Let's hope that's the case. But that's what I've been told.
So the other kind of protocols with voice acting is you will get a day rate
essentially where you could play anywhere up to like three characters.
Sometimes it's more I think like it's part of the contract
that they make you sign when you come in to report for your recording.
And so sometimes they'll ask you like, hey, can you do this
kind of like extra voice or extra character?
We just need extra voices in this in the editing process.
We need what they call Walla.
You're like, Okay, sure, yeah, I'll be a baby or I'll be this or I'll be back.
And over time, you get to grow your repertoire.
If you're working a lot on the voices that you have fun with and can do
now, eventually what'll happen is you will need to create a demo reel
for your portfolio of like your voice,
your voice, and everything you're able to do with it.
That's your talent right there.
It's not about what you look like.
So sometimes you'll see like little boy voices coming from like, E.G.
Daily and Tara Strong, and it's like, that's crazy.
How fun is that?
Or Nancy Cartwright, who's amazing.
And she's Rufus and to watch her work was so much fun because she managed
to bring a little ugly, hairless, naked mole rat to life.
The job of a voice actor is really fun, but it's a certain set of skills.
And I go to Comic-Con and I'll take panels,
and I'll talk to people who are enthusiastic about
the animated world to the point where they're, you know, huge fans.
They want to become a part of it.
And I'm saying to myself,
how can I possibly encourage
someone when I know that I have this imposter syndrome?
And that I feel lucky to have just gotten the job that I got?
I'm still struggling with it, but I think that I should give myself
some grace because I do have many several different voices that I can do.
There's many aspects to a person's talent that if you just tap into it
and you kind of work your muscles and you kind of dedicate yourself
to trying to figure out where your strengths lie,
there's amazing resources for people to work on their technique.
Nancy Cartwright actually has a masterclass that now
I really want to watch.
There's other ones like Edge Studio.
They have like dozens of instructors, and they do things for teens and kids
as well.
I think you can figure out your relationship
towards your talent and your instrument, and you can figure out
if you're going to be the type of actor that excels in five or 50 voices.
I mean, look, voice acting is extremely competitive.
Maybe people don't understand that.
So when people are asking me about how to break into it, it's extremely difficult.
You know, people ask me if they can break into the on camera work
and I'm like, yeah, like pretty much all you need to do
is get into like film school, like shorts.
And they always need free talent and, you know, like, I always have
like very similar ways of telling people to start the process of that.
And eventually, if it's not going to be for you, you shouldn't go forward with it.
But voice acting is really tricky.
People who are really great actors and like I said, are having the improv
training and they're doing the On-Camera acting go for the voice acting too.
Don't limit yourself to not doing it because you think that it's
a completely separate set of skills. It's not.
One thing that I think that my mom instilled in me as my momager was
that we were going to multi-hyphenate, train me for any opportunity at all times.
And while that's a lot of work, I do think it's worthy of your time
because if you're going to do this make sure you do it all the way
and have the most fun that you can possibly have
because you know that you have confidence in your talent.
So I wish you the best of luck of breaking into the voice acting industry.
It is competitive, but I know it's a lot of fun and I think
you can have fun with it too.