Some weeks ago, on the weekend of July 7th, a new installment of Montreal’s Comic-Con took place at the Palais des congrès. As usual, it was a weekend full of activities and conferences, during which I had the chance to see amazing cosplays at the Comic-Con’s masquerade and spend some time with amazing celebrities. Among this year’s stellar list of guests, I had the opportunity to chat with actors Todd Haberkorn and Eric Vale—the English dubbed voices for Fairy Tail’s Natsu and My Hero Academia’s Tomura Shigaraki respectively—about their experiences in the voiceover industry.
The interview began with Haberkorn and Vale talking about their first experiences in the business. Haberkorn’s experience surfaced as a natural evolution in any actor’s career. “I started in theatre,” he said, “I did stage, which led to TV/film, and right as I was getting started, booking some movies here and there… the voiceover industry said ‘nah ah, we’re putting a stop to that, you’re gonna come over here and hang out with us’. They threw a hood over my head, put me in the voiceover van, and then here I am.”
Vale’s experience was also straightforward, albeit a little more sudden: he became interested in acting at age 10, went to drama high school, and graduated from his university with a major in theatre before temporarily working as a pizza deliverer, which is where he heard of his first opportunity: “Someone who I used to be in college theatre with came into the place and said, ‘Hey, I’m doing voiceover stuff, you should get an audition there, here is the number.’ I called up, I got the audition, and they said, ‘you can act, that’s great, we got nothing for you now, we’ll see you later.’”
And even though he didn’t hear anything back from this audition, he soon got a different offer: “they were casting for Trunks in Dragon Ball Z,” he explained, “and apparently they were up against a deadline, and [the manager] was like, ‘Can you come in on audition for this one role right now today?’ I went, and by the time I got back to my apartment there was a message on my tape answering machine telling me I got the role and ask[ing] me to be in tomorrow to record everything because they had to have it in like that week.”
Haberkorn chuckled as he listened to this story. “And that’s still how dubbing is,” he told us. “‘Hurry up, you gotta come in and record all of this right now!!’”
He had a similar story to tell when I asked them what their favourite characters to voice have been so far. Since voice actors never get the script in advance —as both confirmed during this interview— they don’t get the chance to learn the lines by heart but rather have to record all of a character’s dialogue in one take before moving on to something else. Because of this, Haberkorn remembered “favourite experiences” with fellow cast-members rather than the characters themselves. “When we record shows,” Haberkorn said, “they are in bite-sized bits. Although we have embodied a character for many years, within those years it’s short little visits into that character’s world.”
So unlike live acting for movies and TV, where actors have a prolonged contact with the scripts and retakes are not only possible but even necessary, the sheer volume of scripts and ongoing projects makes it impossible for voice actors to spend a long time with their characters. With this in mind, the feat of understanding one’s character quickly and producing a stellar voice work becomes even more impressive.
As we continued our conversation, I discovered that Haberkorn and Vale have also done voice work for video games. Curious, I asked them how big of a difference they find between both types of projects. Haberkorn’s answer was surprising: “I think there’s a disconnect in what people are looking for on the casting. We’ll always get this in the audition: ‘We don’t want this to sound like anime, we want it to be grounded in real.’ But that presupposes that, when you’re acting for anime, you’re not being grounded in real.”
Despite the recent surge of interest in anime projects—especially with Netflix and its live-action adaptations—this statement still proves there’s a discrepancy of expectations in the entertainment industry and even some prejudice in Hollywood and the big production companies towards animated projects. Haberkorn compared it with acting on stage versus a studio, explaining how the scope and spectacle—as well as exaggerated acting—of animated projects don’t necessarily make it any less grounded or representative of human emotions: “Both can be real and authentic, but one is for a bigger live space, and one is for a camera two inches from you. I think that’s the misconception with anime, that it’s big [in terms of scope] and therefore fake, when really it’s bigger but it doesn’t mean that it’s any less real.”
Haberkorn went as far as saying that animation can have an even bigger impact on audiences than other entertainment projects, an ever-present contradiction with the producers’ opinions on the market. “Rarely have I seen people come up and say ‘That video game got me through this and that’. But I have heard ‘This anime has gotten me through a dark time.’ It’s almost a switch from what the industry feels.” He didn’t expand on the reason video games don’t seem to have as much of an emotional impact as animation, but I suspect it’s related to the difficulty in keeping a continuous narrative flow: since the player has the freedom to either follow the main story or focus on other optional tasks, controlling the evolution of the story and ensuring continuous emotional tension and payoff becomes complicated. Animated series and TV shows, on the other hand, don’t have this difficulty since the narrative follows a pre-planned evolution and cannot be derailed by consumer interference. In any case, we can only hope that, in time, the directives of the entertainment industry recognize the importance and impact of animated shows and are willing to give them more protagonism.
I also took the opportunity to ask them if they have any advice for anyone interested in pursuing this same line of work. Haberkorn reminded us that it’s important to develop resilience towards rejection (solid advice for any artistic and entertainment-related career) and to be aware of one’s strengths and weaknesses, but also of how many factors could affect the decision for a role: “There are a thousand elements that go into casting: budget, time, availability, maybe your voice sounds like that of actor B that we just cast and we don’t want the similarity… Many different decisions influence a casting decision. It’s being able to understand that that might not have anything to do with you.”
Vale, on the other hand, talked about the role of voiceovers in the more general field of acting. His advice? Diversify your options. “Don’t cast such a small net,” he said. “If you want to be a voice actor, it means you don’t want to be a chef, you just want to be a cook and cook one particular meal. Being an actor is being an actor, anybody who wants to be a voice actor is someone who wants to do a very specific thing inside this world of acting… You may not be a voice actor, but you may be a movie star. Don’t limit yourself from being a movie star, just try to be an actor.”
This example was very revelatory because I had always seen voice acting as a separate entity from live-action acting, requiring a particular set of skills. As such, I thought that as long as you could modulate your voice and adapt it to every role, you had all the tools you needed to enter the world of voice acting. This interview made me realize my mistake, showing me that voiceovers can be as complicated as in-person acting—and sometimes more—and for that I am grateful.
Thanks to Todd Haberkorn and Eric Vale, I got an enriching peek into the world of voice acting. As media consumers it is always necessary to remember the importance of these artists in giving life and depth to our favourite animated characters, so hopefully this short interview will renew our appreciation of their efforts and talent. As for me, I’ll hold onto these insightful experiences as I wait for the return of Comic-Con next summer in all its colourful and geeky glory.