VAM 203 | Interview with Crispin Freeman, Part 4

Welcome to episode 203 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 fourth and final part of an interview of me, hosted by my good friend and fellow voice actor, Julie Nathanson! As I mentioned in episode 200, Julie had offered years ago to turn the tables on me and interview me on my own podcast! I thought it was a great idea and I’m so grateful that she agreed to take over as interviewer for this 4 episode series!

In the previous episode, Julie and I talked about how I began my voice acting career working on anime dubs in New York city in the late 1990s. We talked briefly about my demos before we dove into a longer discussion about AI and whether I think artificial intelligence and machine learning can create meaningful storytelling. She then shared more questions from our voice acting colleagues, including one from Steve Blum about whether or not my deep analytical knowledge about storytelling ever gets in the way of my spontaneity as an actor. This gave me the opportunity to articulate my personal acting process with more specificity and nuance than I’ve ever done before. It was a very satisfying conversation and if you haven’t already, I would suggest that you listen to the 3 previous episodes of this interview before continuing with this final segment.

We begin this episode with some more questions from my voice acting colleagues. The first is from JP Karliak who says that even though voice actors may be facing some new and daunting challenges recently, he’d like to know if there’s anything about the voice acting industry that makes me optimistic and excited for the future. The next comment is from Stephanie Sheh who talks about how my willingness to admit my shortcomings as a director allowed her to be more honest and trusting with me as an actor. The final contributor is Jennifer Hale, who wants to know if there’s any question that I’ve never been asked, but that I’ve always wanted someone to ask me.

Jennifer’s query prompts me to share with Julie three stories or wisdom fables about the artistic process. While I’ve occasionally told one of these stories in previous interviews, I’ve never told all three of them at the same time. The stories were originally told to me by Rinde Eckert, a virtuosic theater artist and composer, and they are educational metaphors that are densely packed with wisdom. Furthermore, they encapsulate some of the core pieces of advice that I would want to impart to any aspiring voice actor. These stories also segue quite elegantly into my definition of the word “mastery” and how it applies to the artistic process. It’s a wonderful way to bring my time together with Julie to a satisfying conclusion and I’m so glad for the opportunity to share these insights with my listeners!

Download Voice Acting Mastery Episode #203 Here (MP3)

VAM 202 | Interview with Crispin Freeman, Part 3

Welcome to episode 202 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 part 3 of an interview of me, hosted by my good friend and fellow voice actor, Julie Nathanson! As I mentioned in episode 200, Julie had offered years ago to turn the tables on me and interview me on my own podcast! I thought it was a great idea and I’m so grateful that she agreed to take over as interviewer for this 4 episode series!

In the previous episode, Julie asked me to tell the story of how I got started as a voice actor. While I’ve recounted this story in earlier episodes of the podcast, this time around, Julie wanted to talk more in depth about how my emotional responses to my personal experiences shaped my acting journey. This included how my childhood experiences in Soviet occupied Czechoslovakia helped me relate to the Romanian director of my graduate acting school. Julie and I also talked about how influential J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy literature had been on my psyche and the lessons I took from the values he expressed in his stories about Middle Earth.

In this segment, Julie asks me to describe the next steps that I took to further my voice acting career, and I discuss how I got started working on anime dubs in New York city in the late 1990s. Julie asks about my demos, when I made them, and how they helped me make progress towards my voice acting goals. She then asks me to share my opinions about AI and whether I think artificial intelligence and machine learning can create meaningful storytelling. After that, she continues with more questions from my voice acting colleagues, including one from Steve Blum about whether or not my analytical skills, which have helped me develop a deep knowledge of storytelling, ever get in the way of my spontaneity as an actor. In order to respond to that question, I end up articulating my personal acting process with a level of specificity and nuance that I don’t think I’ve ever done before. Julie has to reframe my explanation twice just to make sure that both she and my audience can understand my thought process as clearly as possible.

Julie is very good at asking me questions that I had not considered in the past, which gives me the opportunity to figure out my responses to these conundrums in real time. I find it very satisfying to tease out my opinions on these topics with her as my sounding board, and I think my listeners will both enjoy and benefit from gaining a deeper understanding of how I approach both acting and storytelling.

Download Voice Acting Mastery Episode #202 Here (MP3)

VAM 197 | Interview with Josh Petersdorf, Part 2

Welcome to episode 197 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 and final part of my interview with voice actor and theme park voice performer, Josh Petersdorf! You may know Josh from his work in games like League of Legends, Fire Emblem: Engage, World of Warcraft: Shadowlands, and Overwatch. He’s worked on the English language dubs of anime shows like Aggretsuko and on live action shows like Project “Gemini”. He’s also the voices of both Megatron and Optimus Prime at the Universal Studios Theme Park during the live action show that takes place before the Transformers 3D ride.

That last time we spoke, Josh shared with me how he became a voice actor. He was inspired to pursue performing at a young age after watching his sisters perform in dance recitals. However, during high school, he focused more on athletics, and it wasn’t until after he was living on his own that he realized that he wanted to pursue voice acting as a career. He moved to LA, started taking classes, and was fortunate enough to be able to book work at the Universal Studios Theme Park and to also get agent representation. He started booking voice over work, but when he landed the role of Roadhog in Overwatch, it definitely took his career to a new level.

In this episode, I ask what inspired Josh to become a performer in the first place. He shares with me how much the artists from his childhood influenced him to try to create things himself, and how his love of pro wrestling and his nostalgia for 80’s cartoons still inform his artistry today! The characters from the entertainment he consumed often served as role models for him and helped shape not only his creative sensibilities but his personal development as well. He and I also talk about how the most successful voice actors are always looking to expand their capabilities and grow into different areas or niches of the industry. And finally, Josh gives me his advice for the aspiring voice actor, which at its core seems to contain a paradox: He suggests that actors both be ready to work hard and also be easy on themselves. He thinks they should both be demanding when it comes to their own skills, but forgiving as well. It’s a fascinating contradiction that I actually think you’ll find very insightful as we explore it in this episode.

Download Voice Acting Mastery Episode #197 Here (MP3)

VAM 195 | Interview with Yuri Lowenthal, Part 2

Welcome to episode 195 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 incredible Yuri Lowenthal! You may know his voice acting work in animated shows like Legion of Superheroes, Ben 10, and the 2021 version of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. In games, he’s worked on Prince of Persia, Sunset Overdrive, and Marvel’s Spider-man series. In anime, he’s very well known for playing Sasuke in Naruto. Yuri and his wife, Tara Platt, also have their own production company called Monkey Kingdom Productions where they develop and produce their own original shows and projects. They’ve also written the well known book Voice Over Voice Actor, What It’s Like Behind the Mic.

In this episode, Yuri shares with me what inspired him to become a performer in the first place. This may come as a surprise to my listeners, but he’s not really sure! This uncertainty is actually not uncommon among artists. Often what inspires someone to pursue a career in the arts is not an intellectual or rational motivation, but rather a gut feeling that they need to explore a field of expression, like acting, in order to fulfill some need for psychological or spiritual satisfaction that can be difficult to articulate. Yuri does admit that he loved storytelling on a deep level and that drove him to explore it first as a writer, and later as a performer.

One huge influence on him when he was young, was when his father gave him the Dungeons and Dragons basic game set and then sat down and taught Yuri and his friends how to play. Yuri credits playing D&D for contributing to most of the things he likes about himself today. D&D inspired him to read more, to learn about mythology and history, to develop his critical thinking skills, and most importantly, to practice storytelling improvisationally, in real time! While playing D&D, not only did Yuri have to use his imagination to visualize the entire world of the game in his mind, but he also had to play as a character in that world as believably as possible. He found that the skills he developed while world-building and playing characters in D&D were directly applicable to the challenges he faced as an actor.

Yuri is a huge fan of genre storytelling such as Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Horror, etc. His appreciation for these genres also helped contribute to his desire to try pursuing a career in the arts. However, he knew that simply loving storytelling was not enough, and that he also had to develop professionally competitive acting skills in order to have something to contribute artistically to the stories he so admired. In this segment, he and I talk about how he balances his fandom for the projects he’s working on with the need to approach each project as a consummate professional. Since so many of my listeners are often avid fans of the games and animated projects they want to work on, it’s an important topic to explore!

After that, we end our discussion with Yuri’s advice to the aspiring voice actor and how vital he feels it is for someone just starting out to get as much practice acting as they can, even if it’s just reading out loud every day to develop your cold reading skills. He also stresses how important it is to actually finish projects that you may be working on. Bringing a project to completion and moving on to the next one will teach you far more than tinkering with the same project endlessly. It’s a very practical approach to pursuing a career as a voice actor, and I’m looking forward to sharing it with all my listeners!

Download Voice Acting Mastery Episode #195 Here (MP3)

VAM 194 | Interview with Yuri Lowenthal, Part 1

Welcome to episode 194 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 incredibly prolific Yuri Lowenthal! Yuri’s voice acting work is definitely wide ranging! In animation, some of his most famous roles include Superman in Legion of Superheroes, Ben Tennyson in Ben 10: Alien Force and Omniverse, as well as He-Man in the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe 2021 Animated series. In Games he’s played the Prince in numerous Prince of Persia games, the Male Player Character in Sunset Overdrive, and probably most famously, Peter Parker a.k.a. Spider-Man in Marvel’s Spider-Man series of games. In Anime he’s well known for playing Sasuke in the long running anime series Naruto, where I play his older brother Itachi. There are even multiple news articles about how Yuri has played so many characters in games, that chances are you’ve probably fought and defeated one of his characters if you’ve played any games involving fighting. Yuri and his wife, Tara Platt, have their own production company called Monkey Kingdom Productions where they’ve developed and produced their own original shows including the web series Shelf Life, and Topsy McGee vs. The Sky Pirates! Yuri and Tara have also written a popular book on voice acting, Voice Over Voice Actor: What It’s Like Behind the Mic.

Yuri and I have some interesting parallels in our acting journeys. We both spent time in New York City doing theater before we came to LA. We both arrived in Los Angeles within months of each other, and we both started working in anime around the same time. On the surface, Yuri’s journey seems very simple: he and Tara moved out to Los Angeles back in 2002 to become movie stars. When they arrived, Tara suggested they explore voice acting as another means of generating income. They took a class and made friends with the teacher, who later had the opportunity to direct the dub of an anime. Yuri auditioned for the show, got hired, and the rest is history, right? Well, it’s not that simple. What that story doesn’t illuminate is how much time, effort, and focus Yuri had spent developing his acting skills before he took that voice over class in LA. In this episode, we dive deep into what Yuri did to build a solid foundation in acting so that when he took that LA voice over class, he was able to fully capitalize on the opportunity.

Yuri’s path wasn’t completely linear either. He’s always had a passion for Japanese culture and language. He majored in East Asian studies in college and he even spent a couple of years after college working in Japan as an interpreter for the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program (also known as the JET program) helping place native English speaking teachers into Japanese schools. Yuri’s Japanese language and cultural skills gave him the opportunity to apply for a job with a Japanese Bhuto dance company in New York City, at the same time when he was looking to move there to pursue an acting career. Yuri’s acting journey demonstrates how there is no single recipe for becoming a voice actor, but rather each actor must discover their own alchemical formula for success. Yuri’s formula is wonderfully eclectic and I’m so glad that I get to share it with you! Let’s get started.

Download Voice Acting Mastery Episode #194 Here (MP3)

VAM 193 | Interview with Greg Chun, Part 2

Welcome to episode 193 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 voice actor and voice director, Greg Chun! You may be familiar with his acting work in games like the Judgement series, World of Warcraft, Mists of Pandaria, Ghost of Tsushima, and Overwatch. In anime he’s worked on shows like Demon Slayer and Neon Genesis Evangelion. In American animation, he’s played Barbie’s father, George Roberts, and he played the main character in the highly acclaimed English dub of the hit Netflix show, Squid Game.

As we continue our discussion, Greg shares with me what inspired him to become an actor in the first place. Unlike many voice actors I’ve interviewed, Greg was not initially passionate about being an actor. He confesses that he’s only truly fallen in love with acting in the past few years. Regular podcast listeners will know that many of my guests discovered that they had a passion for acting, before they decided to dedicate a significant amount of time and effort to pursuing it professionally. Greg’s process was very different. For him, voice acting began simply as a fun activity that held a certain fascination for him. The more he pursued voice acting, the more his fascination grew. Instead of committing to achieving a voice acting career and then doing whatever it took to achieve that goal, Greg instead did his best to follow what he felt was fun to do. Those enjoyable experiences compounded over time until his fascination with voice acting became a true passion for the art form. It’s a very different approach to pursuing a voice acting career and he and I dive deep into the psychology of his approach in this episode!

After that, Greg also shares with me his advice for the aspiring voice actor. He’s started teaching voice acting classes himself, especially classes on dubbing live action TV shows. He admits that he’s learned a lot by having to articulate to his students his own process for approaching voice acting, and he takes great joy in helping them succeed. He loves striving for greatness with all of his students and I share that passion for helping aspiring voice actors become the best that they can be. I love Greg’s uplifting and positive approach to creating authentic performances and I’m so glad I get to share it with you!

In this episode, I mention that I will be compiling a list of Recommended Media that I think exemplifies nuanced, believable acting. You can find that list in the Recommended Media section of this website.

Download Voice Acting Mastery Episode #193 Here (MP3)