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Video Game Voice Actor Roundtable Cherami Leigh, Josh Keaton & Patricia Summersett as Galaxycon 2025
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May 25, 2025
Three iconic voices. One stage. A whole lot of insight. This GalaxyCon Oklahoma City 2025 panel brings together video game voice acting powerhouses Cherami Leigh, Josh Keaton, and Patricia Summersett for a thoughtful, hilarious, and inspiring discussion about acting, adaptation, and navigating the ever-changing world of performance in games. 🎮 Featuring: 🎤 Cherami Leigh – Voice of Makoto Niijima in Persona 5, Asuna in Sword Art Online, and Gaige in Borderlands 2 🎤 Josh Keaton – Known for Spider-Man in Spectacular Spider-Man, Shiro in Voltron: Legendary Defender, and Young Hercules in God of War: Ragnarok 🎤 Patricia Summersett – Best known as Princess Zelda in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom Topics discussed include: • Training and transitioning between stage, screen, and studio • Recording solo vs. ensemble in animation and games • Funny voiceover mishaps (Penalope lives!) • Cross-medium skills: dance, singing, theater, and how they shape VO performance • Acting across genres: performance capture, dubbing, and how subtlety plays a role • The pros and cons of remote recording post-COVID • Viewer Q&A with stories about Cyberpunk 2077, Zelda, Spider-Man, and more Whether you're a gamer, a voice acting hopeful, or a fan of these performers’ work, this is a must-watch panel packed with laughs, career advice, and behind-the-scenes stories.
View Video Transcript
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now without further ado I'm going to introduce our guests you know our first guest as the lovely Princess Zelda from
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Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom please give a warm welcome to Patricia
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Somerset this this beautiful like overcoat thing is so cool good you
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should you look great thanks next up we have the fantastic the
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amazing school council president Makoto Nicha for Persona 5
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charm so we got we got the the Jacket the Overcome game this is what's up this is what's up right and finally from Iron
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Man to Spider-Man in every Marvel video game you've just about ever played it's Josh Keaton
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y'all see this is good everybody I don't know what the memo is of the the overshirt or the jacket gang we all got
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it and I'm so proud i think layers yeah you also never know how cold or hot it's
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going to be at a convention and you're like I have to bring a thousand layers because you're just not prepared i'm
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right under event so I should have brought one more oh my gosh i mean I feel like there's got to be especially this I mean this is from I think Box
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Launch but they've in the artist alley they've got like the most incredible like handmade cardigans everything
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handmade all the things i actually had somebody give me this amazing hoodie with young Hercules on it because I'd
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always complain that they have merch for like the older Hercules but they never have any merch for the young Hercules and they made me a young Hercules hoodie
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they made it for real cool so now I now I don't have to be hot or cold yeah i can be warm either way maybe it's kind
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of it's got a breeze in the middle you know yeah yeah these fans represent yes
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[Applause] okay so in the schedule this is labeled
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as um video game VO round table so if at any point during this panel you guys
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have questions for each other and just want to chat and discuss I encourage you to do that because I think that is
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really cool to kind of really delve into specifics of acting especially coming from different backgrounds and stuff that I mean selfishly that's also what
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I'm interested in doing so I would love to get into that so let's go one by one and just walk us through your training
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acting like where you started with acting when video games started becoming a thing walk us through so we know kind
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of where everybody's coming from okay uh my name is Josh Keaton uh I have been an actor since I was like four years old so
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I was a a child actor i did um and I kind of started at the bottom there i did like extra work and commercials and
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stuff like that and there was there wasn't really a lot of voiceover work for kids at that time they used a lot of
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adults to do children's voices but there were still some projects that insisted on having a uh like actual children
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voice them so my very first thing was I was Lionus and a Peanut Special that's which was amazing yeah um so I got to do
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that um there were some other things like uh the Back to the Future animated series and Peter Pan and the Pirates got to work with Tim Curry on that he was
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Captain Hook um but aside from that it was mostly mostly on camera that I did
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and it wasn't until there was like this big writer strike in like the early 2000s where a lot of the parts for just
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working actors dried up and so at the same time I started getting a lot of BO work and so I just kind of focused on
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that and then fast forward a bunch of years and I haven't really done much on camera but I kind of want to go back to
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it because we don't really have a lot of um in-person like cast records anymore
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which is kind of depressing and I really I really enjoyed that aspect of it but in terms of training you know I I I took
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acting classes when I was younger i I trained as an on camera actor i didn't really I didn't really do a lot of like voiceover specific training um
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everything that I did came from that um I was in a boy band for a while so I I sang um yeah
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but um and singing has actually helped me a lot in in voice over like it's it's
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been kind of an integral skill for everything from um from being able to
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come up with new voices to actually singing in parts and and even things like ADR and dubbing like the sense of
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timing that singing ingrains you with has been massively helpful so um I'd say
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most of my formal training if anything has just been acting classes um and uh and yeah just child acting and and
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growing up to here i'm also curious to know how much um group recording were you able to do back in the day all the
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time like that's everything that it was when we did Spectacular Spider-Man when we did Green Lantern it was all group records so we would go in and for those
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of you who aren't familiar everybody goes into the studio you kind of go through the episode like it's a radio play and um even with Voltron we did
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that and so if we had really emotional scenes it was great because like the other actors right there and you can
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literally play the scene with them um as as if it's on camera and and feed off of
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their reactions feed off of like what they're doing in between the lines so you're not just throwing out lines like you're they're reacting to you in the
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moment and I feel like the chemistry is so much better that way and now since co
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um when we were in lockdown we had we we everybody I've had a studio for many years but like a lot of actors had to
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put in studios if they wanted work and so everything kind of shifted to home
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studio record where you're just kind of recording by yourself with the voice director and so it puts a lot more work
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on the voice director but it's also just for me kind of depressing like every day I just go into my hole and and that's it
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and and you know I don't I don't really see my other actor friend um there there's it's less social like a lot of
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that there's a lot of energy that's in one of these sessions when you're there like even just kind of coming up to this
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this panel like we were all just kind of chitchatting and all that all of that builds rapport and all of that really
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builds a relationship between the actors which fosters into more of a relationship between the characters and
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and I feel like so much of that is lost when you're just recording by yourself amen
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uh my name is Jeremy Lee uh similarly I started acting when I was five got an
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agent at six uh my goal was to be on Barney that is kind of what I thought
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all you could do uh my mom's a dance teacher she did not want me to be in this business she took me to open calls
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and put me in acting classes with kids a lot older i I know she actually went on the first day of my first acting class
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and said if she could just stay for a couple hours I'll come pick her up just like make it really hard uh because she
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wanted to like kill the dream for me to be like h it's hard i don't want to do it and my mom came at noon and she was
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like she's great and like she keeps asking for more pages to read so she can
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stay and my mom was like this is not going well um they've been very supportive but they
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they definitely said like you have to get A's and B's in school if you want to be able to work because it is a lot of
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um time management and balance to be a child actor um but I I didn't mind it i
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thought it was great i loved the the aspect of well if I get this job then I
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can leave school and I could still turn my homework on time i felt very accomplished that I was at five and six
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that I got to say I had a job and also I was just a weird kid um so I started
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doing voiceover around seven i grew up in Dallas i did a lot of commercials
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um they told me they wanted me to do voiceover because I had a very high pitched voice but I could read very well
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so I played every precocious 3 to fouryear-old child and then they would just keep calling me back to come do
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voiceover so I would leave school during lunch go do like a voiceover job during
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lunch and then come back and uh I went out to LA a couple times for pilot season um but my mom had said if she
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doesn't get a job we're not staying and I would only be out there for like a month at a time so I worked for Radio
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Disney growing up i had my own radio show when I was 19 and um so voiceover sort of found me
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and I would do on camera along the way what's lovely about voice over is you
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can keep working on camera there are times I have found where your look is in
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demand and there are times when it is not um you you might there there are
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people that work a lot at 12 and 13 that don't work at 16 and 17 um I was somebody that did not work at 12 and 13
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but worked a lot at 16 and 17 and worked a lot at 21 to 25 so um it's very
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difficult to to be uh not desirable at a
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certain time in your career and that can really mess with I think um a child or an adult's self-esteem um but that's
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just kind of an element of the business and uh it's nice to have voice over where you don't have that constraint of
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what you look like your voice is your voice which is kind of lovely um so uh
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training was a lot of on camera training as well my mom's a dance teacher so I always grew up going to dance and I
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think that uh dance and music also really helps with dubbing like the timing is great just like when you have
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to uh count music or learn a tap combination knowing the sounds seeing the lip flaps you can see the rhythm
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really well so that's uh very very helpful um I started getting into video
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games uh around 17 18 when I graduated from high school and then I was able to
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uh start working at Funimation and doing anime and then I kind of found video games when I moved out to Los Angeles in
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my early 20s uh that's when video games exploded there just aren't as many opportunities in Dallas for video games
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um but yeah I I didn't get to do a lot of group records in Dallas everything
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was always done separately and then um as soon as I started finding my way into
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uh group records everything kind of shut down with co and like you said the the
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everybody always wants like an element of improv it's impossible to anticipate the improv without the other people
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there um you can totally improvise but if somebody who has the line before or after you is already recorded they don't
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have the ability to create a response um which is kind of disappointing because there were a lot of fun magical moments
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that expanded into other things that would show up in later episodes and became inside jokes and the writers
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would be inspired by that and we'd be inspired by what they were creating so uh that is an element that I would love
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to see come back and I feel like we're on the precipice of maybe we'll see how that goes but uh I agree with you i miss
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that a lot
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oh I love this it's so interesting to be on stage with two other voice actors who are also you guys started your actors
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and then also singers and dancers and everything so we're all that's what we all do really um so my name is Patricia
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Somerset uh I'm American and also Canadian and I guess the way I I grew up
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in rural Michigan and so kind of similarly to what you guys were talking about there was uh performance elements
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as a child and dance and song um mine was a little less formal it was like for
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people on a stage in the woods you know a lot of the time but we got you know like but it's also a great training
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ground for really like like free play a lot of practice a lot of um inspiration
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from nature so that's very much uh very much a theme of of my creative world now
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um eventually after so I started kind of doing drama in later high school but
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also my background was figure skating so my family was doing a lot of that it was
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a way to not do hockey or just basketball in our rural area so it was like this really nice way of traveling
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and seeing big cities like Madison Wisconsin and you know like stuff like
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that when we were when we were children had a huge effect on me um and eventually that led back to theater um
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but after high school I pursued ice dancing first which eventually led me to
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Quebec uh in Montreal where I'm still mostly based out of i do LA and and Quebec uh and that uh eventually led
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back to acting in the end because there was a lot of parallel i thought the bigger shelf life is acting not figure skating so eventually I found my way
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back into theater which seems so weird now like the shelf life is higher in theater uh but it was um and I found
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video games in uh in school so I was doing a drama program at Concordia
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University and discovered voice acting that it was something that you could get paid for and you could do alongside
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other acting training and I instantly was riveted and I'm like I'm definitely going to be doing this uh alongside my regular sort of theater training and a
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little bit of TV film now I do all of it um but in a big roundabout way kind of started voice acting relatively close to
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the same time as all the other acting skills in my early 20s really um so not not particularly early uh but you know
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um at the beginning of the at the beginning of the whole journey it was all it was all a part of it um and I
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think Montreal was a very interesting place i I did live in Toronto i lived in London i went back and got a masters of
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classical acting because I was really into theater um but video games were always like this fascinating forum and I
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thought I I you can use all these things from classical acting in video games and it's also got a longer arm it's where
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the innovation is happening so I found it so compelling things like that performance capture work so I found my way back in there uh in Montreal and
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eventually went to LA feels like this long journey i don't even know how long I've been talking right now because like
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oh god uh but that that's sort of it um I also have a band and we've released two albums and we we it's sort of like a
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classical folk thing and I find it really interesting for uh doing dubbing work and and really all the kinds of
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voice work that we do it really really helps to do um cross trainining and other forms of uh performance like dance
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and music so yeah I can relate very much to that yeah that's sort of it so cool
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i'm so happy that literally all three of you brought it up because that was one of the questions that I had for y'all was about singing training and how that
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translates to voice over and especially doing theater having so much experience specifically like on camera or in
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theater can you talk about each of your experiences like when you had like let's say you had a gig on camera or in
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theater and then you had to go do voiceovers sometimes you could be a little bit too big like did you find any sort of obstacles with that and then you
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found you were really strong in specific as aspects can you talk a little bit about that
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yeah I mean basically the you you kind of hit the nail on the head right now because when you're when you're acting
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on camera you have so many other things to inform your performance you have you have wardrobe you have props you have a
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set you have you know the other actor you have you have so many other things and there's other things that you do
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that inform that performance your movement your your facial expressions uh your your pacing and timing all of that
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kind of stuff whereas with voice over that most of that is drawn so or or
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somehow animated so you can inform some of it but a lot of it is still going to be through somebody else's lens and yeah
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I mean there's there's times where when when you're doing on camera you absolutely have to simplify it you absolutely have to pair it back a lot
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and it's hard for a lot of people to make that transition like I've seen a lot of on camera actors come and try to
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do voice over and they might be fantastic on camera actors but they can't necessarily heighten what they're doing
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to match the format without it feeling overacted or hammy because it's a weird line it's a weird line that's there
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where you do have to heighten it but it can't sound heightened it's it's and and
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a lot of people have trouble with that so um it's it's definitely it its own discipline um and and some people are
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able to to go back and forth with it seamlessly uh other people have a harder time other people have a harder time simplifying it for like when I was just
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watching and it's it's different i'd say that it's it's almost a similar comparison to like theater versus film
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like I know that um Cynthia Revo in in Wicked um I've never seen her in any in
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any theater stuff and and I didn't really know how much on camera stuff that she's done she's incredible like I
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I wasn't expecting her to be as nuanced and as subtle as she was in Wicked the the film because you know I was like oh
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she's a theater person so but I was like oh my god she's incredible um like she she's easily able to just walk back and
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forth between the two things um but yeah I mean it's I I I see exactly what
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you're saying i totally forgot what the original prompt was no I someone was talking to me about it and they um
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they're a competitive dancer and so they were trying to understand you know what it was like doing that and I said it's
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really like switching between ballet tap jazz like you're changing your shoes but
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you still have to you know the the foundation is the same like we all do we all do a ballet bar we all know how to
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act you always have to create a character from the same thing it's a relationship you're having conversation so uh with a microphone your the
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person's ear is going to be right where this is so sometimes you have a lav mic sometimes you have a boom mic and the
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distance is going to change and that informs the performance also where the camera is cut like all of that kind of stuff and I had a an on camera teacher
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that was telling me when I I went back and did a a class recently and he said
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uh your eyes are enough to indicate cuz he was like don't shake your head don't use your hands as much but while we're in the booth like we're always gesturing
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and and I talk with my hands as uh just in my daily life but if I'm cut in a
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very tight closeup or a wide shot my hands moving or having too much jewelry is going to be incredibly distracting on
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a giant screen or on a TV screen so just being mindful of how much you're moving your head and how the performance is and
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it's not impossible uh for somebody to be able to do one or the other but for
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some people like you said it's just they're like I I know what I love to do and I want to just be able to relax into
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the performance and enjoy being with the other person i don't want to have to switch shoes i just want to like walk in
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and know what I'm doing and there's nothing wrong with that um there's also nothing wrong with being like I want to do a little bit of everything uh it just
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takes a lot of for me I I know that sometimes I I get a little in my head of
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knowing that I have to switch and so I just kind of want to go to a class and know how to hone my skills or know like
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I just got to ground myself and know where I am and as you're growing and changing um sometimes you just have to
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go check in and go back to the basics and and figure out what works for you at this time in your life when you're switching between all of the different
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genres or styles that's a good point too because especially like with some like as specific as they can get with these
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different things where you were a year ago even can be it's a totally different instrument right now because it's your body yeah and and and PCAP and and and
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mocap they want you to move your eyebrows like so much and when you're on camera they're like "Don't you dare move
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those eyebrows you are cut so tight we can see everything." But I remember I was doing it was such a weird
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conversation but I was doing a a performance capture and the woman was putting the dots on my face and she goes
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"Oh my god you haven't had Botox bless you." She was like "It is so hard when
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somebody comes in and they've just gotten Botox done." She said "But we're having a lot of on camera actors that
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are like celebrities coming in and I'm like we can't see any eyebrow movement
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we can't see any wrinkles." She's like "But that's necessary when we're going in for video game and we're creating a
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character that we want to be able to see the expression." Like every part of your face is necessary for us to create the
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most realistic portrayal um and on camera they're like "Please the less indicating the better." We've got a DP
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who is indicating where the zoom in is that's doing part of the work instead of you pointing your finger or glancing
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your eyes so everything feels a little overkill so it's just like knowing what they're looking for and and I think a
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lot of it comes from the confidence of being an actor sometimes when you just start you're like I don't want to ask too many questions i don't want to be
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the difficult actor but sometimes being the best actor and helping in all aspects of production is saying you know
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what is how tight is this frame what do you guys need from me so that you could give them exactly what they need without
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them having to direct you out of what you're already doing and then you have a lot of theater
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experience Patricia i want to know about like Yeah well I was actually thinking when you mentioned Cynthia Revo these are all like I love how round this
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conversation is we could go all day long on this kind of subject of like uh jumping genres is such a fascinating
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thing and that yeah some people can do and some people uh struggle with more i I think for me it took years to learn
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how to I think as a I had a dance background first and so I actually found it hard to get out of a really held form
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when I first started acting and they're like "No I'm acting i'm doing all the right things." But I couldn't soften very well uh which was interesting i had
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to sort of like reverse a lot of the training that I had in my 20s um by that point I'd been I was like really you
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know holding tight you're skating too you said right i'm sure like even more so hard or you could die like you know
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yeah well I don't know about that well you know it's all the wrong way you know
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very dangerous things yeah little toepick in the partners area you know like things like that can happen when
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you're speeding across the ice for sure um but I was thinking about um estole
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training and some of the some of the kinds of training that can bridge gaps uh that sort of go from nuance of vocal
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performances and Cynthia Revo uh she she trains in ESTL which uh I just started
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training in like two years ago and it's amazing it sort of pulls apart all the anatomy of the voice and the different
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ways that you can use the nuance not just of the vocal cords but all the different apparatuses and you learn how to sort of release tension and um and
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you just kind of you can visualize your anatomy as you're doing it differently and I was thinking of even just the
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difference this last week of thinking of um because Cynthia Revo was talking about this too sometimes she can access
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really big belts but then she has to find a way to cheat it when when she's not and what do you do on camera when
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you have to pull it back and the breath support changes how do you technically create an intense sound like to have
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that kind of mastery over your apparatus so fascinating but Estel can help with
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that and she she does that and I was thinking even the differences between something called like a thick fold where
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you're like this would be a thick fold sound this would be a thin fold sound using the back of your vocal cords it's
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like your vocal cords and then you thin them out so only little bits of it are touching and just doing exercises where
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you go back and forth um and you're like "Oh my gosh it opens up this whole new range and it's really small and soft but
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on camera or on stage it might make a huge difference um in how you are able
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to yeah express and just and and stamina basically time." So yeah I don't know
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what I just went what t that was I was like oh yeah Cindy Revo and um moving
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your face and body tie it all together there wait my
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friends we've got some people in line let's go ahead and get started my friend what's your name uh I'm Mike hi Mike i
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actually have a question for one of each of you that's perfect go ahead my friend uh let's start with Josh okay uh which
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do you prefer voicing Iron Man or Spider-Man spider-man's always going to be my number one i mean I've had a
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really good time voicing Iron Man and they they're both quippy characters it comes from a different place but um man
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Spider-Man was my favorite character just to read in comics since I could pick up a comic book uh it's been the
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one character that I've consistently read since I was a kid and um yeah I mean I've been such a huge Spider-Man
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fan for my entire life that I don't think anything could ever dethrone him in in my eyes awesome
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uh Jeremy when you did uh Cyberpunk did you get to work with Kiana Reeves and
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what was it like i got to work with Keanu's voice uh like Josh was saying we
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all record separately and I know a a a major reason for not having us record in
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person is scheduling um in order to get all of the actors together especially for the amount of content that was
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needed for that game it would have been impossible um I know specifically for Keanu's schedule he would be training in
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the morning um I I don't know if it was for John Wick or what other but he had
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to train in the morning so he always had an afternoon session so I would have the morning um because he was working on so
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many projects and and in order to get all the projects done that's one of the great things about voiceover versus on
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camera when you're on an on camera series they kind of own you because the schedule can change at a moment's notice
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and so you kind of it's really hard to commit to a a voiceover gig when you say "Oh I was supposed to have Thursday off
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now I have Tuesday off because the location changed." Um so uh my schedule
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was a little more locked in so I could do other voiceover projects and they would Cyberpunk would say at the top of
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a month this is how many hours we have to get for Sheremy and we just pick the days and then everybody else's schedule around because they knew what Keanu's
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training schedule or filming schedule was so that was how they build a schedule i got to see him in person uh I
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remember it was Halloween because for the entire month of October I am dressed
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very much in theme of Halloween so I definitely looked like a witch from the craft on the day um and I remember that
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because the first thought in I was like who is this cool dude he like flipped his hair back to put on a helmet on his
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motorcycle and I was like it's Ker Reeves um and I thought like do I park
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and get out of the car and be like "Hi it's so nice to meet you." And I panicked and I thought "You can't meet
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him dressed like a witch." Um so I put the car in reverse and let him uh pull
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out down the alley he waved very nicely uh this was one of the few times I had a very late night session so I was going
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in as the sun was setting and he rode off on his motorcycle and so it's a very
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poetic way that you first experience Kiana Reeves did I speak to him not at all uh but I I showed up in the studio
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and they're like "Did you and Keanu talk?" And they had scheduled us at overlapping so that they would hope we
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would meet and I panicked uh which is very true to form for me um so he was
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very kind and he uh he wrote a post-it note for me the next time he was in he
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was like "Sorry we we we missed each other hope to see you soon." Um last convention I was at uh it was in Vegas
26:28
and somebody I was signing something for someone dressed as Johnny Silverhand and they said "Have you gotten to to talk to
26:34
him?" And I said "No we haven't gotten to meet." They're like "Are you going to a show tonight?" I was like
26:41
"What he's in Vegas?" So we just have this a constant pattern I guess that we
26:46
can be in the same place at the same time and never see each other or speak yeah i was I was also going to add uh I
26:53
personally always choose female V oh thank you because I am team Sailor Venus for life oh
26:59
amazing female V and Sailor V i I it keeps following me and I don't mind at all
27:05
uh and for Patricia um we we had talked earlier at your booth uh did you did you come up
27:13
with the Hierelian dialect for Zelda or was that something that they coached you on and said you're going to sound like
27:19
this oh that's what somebody said are people doing our pure mid-Atlantic or are they doing
27:27
um so when I when I I'm a voice
27:32
actor with a theater background
27:37
uh yeah um so when I first auditioned for that I had no idea what it was and
27:43
so I came up with an idea based on some specs and then uh from there went in did
27:50
the audition auditioned for a few different things and then eventually got that princess role and then found out
27:56
what it was and at that point I said "Oh my god uh should I add some highleian do I need to learn like is there a high
28:03
spoken language?" And they're like "Nope we got exactly what we want and you're moving forward with this." And I was
28:09
like "Okay I'll do uh do my best." But um so it was pretty similar to what
28:14
existed it's just that I didn't know what it was that I was auditioning for so that was like my my fantastical
28:21
offering and and that is why I learned written high because I have such um yeah
28:28
I don't know say not FOMO but um you're missing out on on being a high
28:36
thank you guys thank you so much friend come on for my friend what's your name uh my name's Clint hi Clint what's your
28:43
question just had a question for all three of you guys i love it let's go what's one been one of your favorite
28:49
lines to read if you recall if you can remember because there's about 1.5 quite a few um I I'll actually do
28:58
this as an embarrassing story which it wasn't my favorite line to read but it's kind of hilarious now um back when I was
29:07
doing Hercules I there was this um there was
29:12
this he they had this donkey before he be you know really figures out who he is and the donkey's name is
29:18
Penelopey and I I'm familiar with the name and I was familiar with the name at the time i'd never seen the name written
29:25
down so I'm here in the studio and um with all of the confidence in the
29:32
world I say "Come on Pedalope i love that and then just silence
29:38
silence and then they come over on the the behind the glass and they come over like it's Penelope and immediately I was
29:46
just like all the blood drained from my house of course it's Penelopey of course it's Penelopey who the hell is Penalope
29:51
nobody's named Penalope and um it's a new Greek creature you watch someone
29:57
come to his table or two hens go and run away and get married they kind of That's
30:02
lovely but yeah so that um but that's now become one of my favorite lines just because it's like I remember that it was
30:08
embarrassing now it's funny um but yeah yeah that's special if there's something more along the lines I was going to say
30:15
I I have a very similar experience um it was one of the first like big video
30:21
games that I got to work on and I was voicing Gage in Borderlands 2 um I went
30:27
in we did all of the uh echolologs and they asked me to to add lib and I was
30:33
like "Okay I'll add lib and then we'll finesse." No they took my first pass with all of my rambling madness and I
30:39
was like "Okay." Uh so then we started doing all the the the battle lines and all the short form lines and we got to
30:45
this one section where they said "So um just do some guitar riffs because as her
30:51
stacks increase her power increases she gets off the wall and she does guitar riffs and I was like
31:01
"Okay." Um and I'm like in my head I think I was
31:06
like 21 or 22 I was like "This is a very exciting thing do not get fired but your
31:12
guitar riffs suck." Um and I So I said "Um do you have like a like a a specific
31:19
you know sound that you want like some specific notes?" hoping they'd be like I'll demonstrate and I'll just repeat
31:26
what I hear and the director knew me very well and he was like you know just whatever you want to do and I was like
31:32
he is baiting me and he goes uh I go okay
31:39
uh man I'm not I'm just like drawing a blank like you guys want to play a
31:44
famous guitar riff for me and then it'll give me some inspiration he goes do you know how to do a guitar riff i go I mean
31:51
yeah I just don't think it's going to be very good they're like share me it can't be that bad i did it and they the writer
31:58
goes that was legit awful i was like I know right i could do
32:03
it better and it just progressively got worse so then the writer goes hold on a
32:10
second what if the more powerful she gets the worse the guitar rifts get just
32:17
do it with more confidence each time and I was like that's actually what I thought would be fun and so I don't
32:24
think they put it in the game like I think it was that bad um but that was the most So when you're like the color
32:31
drain from my you're like in the booth they have a camera on you and you're like going "Oh man play it cool don't I
32:38
was like this is going to be the saddest story ever about like I got fired over a guitar riff because I'm not an
32:45
instrument since I'm a human um but you know it worked out and uh they were like
32:50
"Yeah we you know what the awkwardness of her we'll just lean into it." I was like "Cuz we must right it would just
32:56
feel unauthentic if she was good at it it'll be fine." Uh but I don't think
33:02
they put it in the game that's awesome i don't know what these stories are so amazing like I don't have any stories at
33:09
all i was like "What lines do I enjoy reading?" I like lines lines are awesome
33:16
yeah lines man no I I was actually thinking about one when like when the color drain I was like "Oh yeah." When the color drains from your face which
33:23
happens all the time I was like "What did I do?" But there was this one time where I was like "Too far Patricia." Um
33:31
where you know like people are like "No you know make yourself um indispensable on set do all these And I was I was
33:38
stuck into this situation where I was doing um this amazing thing but it was uh puppeteering for Smurfs 2 like on set
33:46
for like 40 days and somehow I got cast to do this while I was also doing a full-time theater production in Montreal
33:53
and they they brought everybody else from like New York and LA and they needed one like Smurfett representative
33:59
who did like Smurfett Vexi and then a bunch of other stuff with the Smurfs and like we had to run on set and I didn't
34:04
know what I was doing and I thought I was going to get fired for two weeks with overlapping performances and so I started to become bold like you know
34:12
maybe 3 weeks in four weeks in and at one point Hankazaria was there and he's off he's often just like you know he's
34:19
amazing and I'm like I felt completely out of my league which I was you know and I was sitting there with like
34:25
Smurfett and Vexi i think it might have been Vexi but Vexi was like an evil Smurf and he would do his Gargamal laugh
34:31
and at one point I just thought I'm going to laugh right back at him so he did like
34:37
a and I went and he just looked at me like too
34:43
far and I was like "Oh my god oh no." Like I like am I going to get fired
34:49
like I like I was like I don't don't kiss him like he's the nicest guy ever but I was like you like I didn't know
34:55
what rules I was breaking but I think I broke a rule or something that was like the mysterious line like he's so nice
35:01
and he's like you laughed at him yeah yeah like I was imitating him like too much or something and then it was like
35:07
too much and you're just like okay it was too much onto the next so how did you get into puppeteer like what was the
35:13
audition process it wasn't puppeteer weirdly it was like an onscreen uh it was an onscreen audition cool yeah it
35:19
was really weird and and I researched Katy Perry like for hours and hours before I went in and then came up with
35:25
some random stuff and just tried everything uh and then they they picked me and I was like okay so cool it was
35:31
really weird weird one really really interesting i'm still not a puppeteer I will say but but it's on your resume of
35:37
course there you go that's very cool thanks guys thank you so much my friend i like that we said
35:42
"What's our favorite line?" And we went from when did I think I am never going to work that
35:49
sometimes favorite and most mortifying it basically interchangeable
35:57
yeah yeah we all learned so much when we got it wrong yes absolutely which is a great lesson failure is Well I guess
36:03
that's the that's the thing is like go big every everybody will every director that I have worked with is always like
36:08
we can always pull you back just just shoot for the back uh and we'll we'll
36:15
pull you back if we need to and I guess those are moments where we were like "Yeah be bold they'll always pull us back." And they were like "Okay yeah
36:21
that was we should have been more clear you need to penalope yourself."
36:27
There you go bring it back bring it back i mean look it happens all the time somebody told me that Benedict Cumberbatch did a documentary about
36:34
penguins oh penguin penwing and And he did the whole thing calling them penings
36:40
and the team was like "We're just lucky enough to have Benedict Cumberbatch we won't correct him." He knew how to say
36:46
it it's just one of those days it got tongue tied and he thought surely he goes "I heard it." And I was like "I
36:53
said penwing the whole time why didn't anybody say anything?" They were like "We thought it was a choice
37:00
that's building enough respect and like a much of a Yeah that everybody's just like sitting there like like oh my god I
37:05
think he I think he changed the web maybe we've all been saying it wrong maybe it's not magical changing
37:13
dictionary change i I I my husband told me cuz when I thought that was very funny so my daughter loved penguins
37:18
she's now almost two so I was calling them pen wings with her cuz I thought it was funny my husband was like "So you're
37:24
going to need to not do that otherwise she's going to learn how to say penguin calling it a penwing and then
37:30
everybody's going to be like "Interesting choice." Uh and I was like "You're that's fair." She has to become like a prolific actor and then convince
37:36
everybody else correct yeah yeah i'll just She'll have to meet Benedict Cumber and be like "You were right sir." Yeah
37:43
and ride off into the sunset yeah yeah hi my friend what's your name hi my name
37:48
is Chris hi Chris hi Chris great um thanks so much we really appreciate this panel um before I go into a capital
37:54
Zelda question for Patricia I have a question for the uh the rest of the panel that's so kind of you thank you oh
37:59
no problem no problem well you know you see the shirt you're like "Oh you guys are like "Oh this isn't it for me at all." It matches the shoes too i get so
38:07
much you can't see it's like a neon green action from head to toe the shoes have a separate story that nobody wants
38:12
to hear but you can find me afterwards oh I love the shoes so thank you i appreciate that um you guys obviously
38:18
have wonderful personalities and I just want to know Oh well now now you're going to answer my question this is
38:24
great um so I want to know a time where you influenced these characters that we're talking about so they maybe they
38:31
gave you something to read or something about the channel about the character and you gave feedback to your voice
38:36
director or whoever it was you're working with and you're like I don't think this works i think I have an idea here to change it and it changed kind of
38:42
the course of the character or the way it was portrayed i'm just looking if there was a time where you supplied some
38:48
feedback and it came out in the character and then when you saw the performance you're like yeah that's me that's me showing up on the screen and
38:54
it's kind of like your proud papa moment from your character i mean I it's it's weird like I would
39:02
say that a lot of a lot of the stuff that we do will end up being kind of collaborative where um sometime and
39:08
again like a lot of times I'll rely on my voice director because they they kind of know what the overall arc of what they
39:14
want the performance to be is and so I'll offer it as a suggestion and
39:20
sometimes they'll still have a vision that they kind of want to achieve and so the suggestion just kind of gets you
39:26
know not no we want to this is what we want to go with but sometimes they'll let me do it um it's it's hard to really
39:31
just pick up pick out one thing because there there have been a lot of moments like that where I'll be like I I really feel like this would be this would be
39:38
more what he would do or or or whatever i would say the only it's it's hard i
39:45
I I'd say with stuff that's not really established like with Spider-Man yeah I
39:50
can get my own spin on it but there's a certain sandbox you have to play in for it to be Peter Parker otherwise it's a
39:55
different character um and with characters that are not really established like that you have a lot of that freedom where you can you can
40:02
impart a lot of your own ideas on that character i would say the only one that I really had that kind of freedom with
40:07
would be like Shiro for Voltron because even though that's an established character they specifically said from
40:13
the beginning it's not going to be Sven so don't worry you don't have to play it like that and so I kind of had free reign to really just make him how I
40:19
wanted to make him um and and then he ended up being this constantly evolving
40:25
character over the over the um over the time we recorded him and and
40:30
so yeah I mean a lot of those choices were mine a lot of them were the writers but um yeah I I can't think of like a
40:36
specific instance where where I where I did that
40:41
it's it's super difficult for me to pinpoint one as well i think when we get
40:48
the breakdown for an audition it it's it's so open to how do
40:53
we interpret what they think what they say they're asking for um and that's kind of when we get to put our spin on
41:00
it to see like hey do you like this um because everybody else is going to read the same 20 some odd words and interpret
41:07
them differently because we all have different backstories we all have different emotional experiences and so
41:13
when when you get the audition and and you're the one who gets the job uh that's kind of their way of saying like
41:19
we like your interpretation my I'm also a people pleaser so I'm trying to think
41:26
is there has there ever been a time where a director would say this is what we'd want and I would go no you don't um
41:32
I don't think so uh I think this one of my favorite things about being an actor
41:38
is uh when you are on a set or you're in a booth there's usually anywhere
41:47
from one to 50 people that you have to appease
41:53
with your performance and my favorite thing to do is being given four totally
42:00
different notes that often conflict and going absolutely and then in your head
42:05
you go okay how do I make this guy happy and this guy happy and this girl happy
42:10
and this girl happy and also stay true to what I've created and that's the that's the proud papa moment for me is
42:17
when I create something and they all go that was totally what I was looking for
42:22
which is they said something totally different and and I'm like "You all said totally different things." Uh so that's
42:28
my favorite is when I feel like I can make everybody happy while also holding true to what works for me and it doesn't
42:34
happen all the time and sometimes and that's what I'll tell people when they want to be an actor and they'll say like I'll just tell them I'm not doing it
42:41
differently um you you totally can do that and sometimes they'll say you know what you're right and sometimes you run
42:47
the risk of somebody saying we're not going to work with that person again um but it's the moments where you feel like
42:53
"Oh my gosh I got that." Or dubbing is a great example uh when the flaps are
42:58
absurd uh the script has to fit a certain way with the translation but the
43:04
performance has to match and you got to make this one producer happy and you've got to make this client from a different country happy and they all have
43:10
different expectations and then when the magic of it fits the flaps the translation's right the emotions there
43:16
and you feel like it all came together you feel like you just created magic and that's what I love most about my job and
43:22
that happens on set on stage uh oh you know what now you say that on stage i
43:28
will say my husband is a writer he's written a couple plays i've worked on um and I think because he is my husband I
43:34
was like you know what i had a thought um I was playing a character uh in a he
43:41
had a show a murder mystery we were all different holidays i was Halloween my character was dressed like a zombie
43:47
Britney Spears and um I showed up onto the stage for my entrance and I right
43:54
before I opened the door I thought "Oh my gosh I could say some of Britney Spears
44:01
songs but with a zombie twist." And I thought "You should run this by the other actor." And then I thought "No
44:07
time." Um and I went and did it live at the show which I don't recommend but I remember I remember the actor looking at
44:14
me like and then I saw the other actor who was on stage that was supposed to be frozen starting to shake because he was
44:21
laughing and I heard my husband in the audience go and then I started hearing him laugh
44:27
and I was like "Thank you." And then it backfired on me because he said "We're going to do an extended run and you have
44:32
to come up with choreography." So mad jokes on me oh my god I just got so deser What was
44:39
the question again so I was like that they said we want
44:44
this and you were like no you don't and then you made it i I feel like micro moments happen like that all the time
44:50
because it it every once in a while and you got to use that sparingly because let's be real people pleasers but also
44:58
you're on a time limit and you need to make sure that if you do have something to offer that it's really going to be
45:04
different from what they have and if they like what they have sometimes you just you have to kill your own baby and
45:09
say "Okay that's uh that's where it it's supposed to live they know what's going to get approved they know you know what
45:15
they want." But occasionally you get an opportunity where you can be like "Can I have one more?" And you go in and you
45:21
just charge it up with something that you really really wanted to try and you you take a little risk and they go "Oh
45:27
my god I like that even more that's so much better." Um and then you're like you know like small small wins happen i
45:33
live for those all right my friend and I'm going to have you pause for that Zelda question cuz we are running a little bit over time are you going back to your table i
45:40
am going back amazing so y'all can like have a face tof face conversation about it really get into it i highly encourage you everybody's going back to their
45:46
tables after this fantastic amazing thank you all so much we can give a round of applause
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