Boom in TV animation turns up the volume on voice talent
The most gut-wrenching challenge of Maile Flanagan’s long acting career was playing a boisterous teen ninja coming face to face with his long-lost mother, just a week after the actress had lost her mom in real life.
“It was the hardest thing to do and one of the best things I’ve ever done,” said Flanagan, a former Minneapolis-based comic whose credits include “Grey’s Anatomy” and “The Station Agent.”
The performance wasn’t captured on a movie set or stage. It happened in a sound booth while Flanagan, 53, was overdubbing English dialogue for Naruto Uzumaki, the Japanese animé character who’s starred in six films, 700 TV episodes and 42 video games.
Voice-over artists such as Flanagan are being heard like never before, leading to more work and more respect. Anyone who thinks voice acting is child’s play deserves a swift kick in the head from Flanagan’s most famous character.
“For ‘Naruto,’ I may have to kill somebody, grieve over it and then be funny in the next scene. That’s never going to happen in a half-hour sitcom,” she said. “I’m a middle-aged actress. I’m never going to be Nicole Kidman. But in a cartoon, I can play sexy. It’d be a sexy woman with a raspy voice, but I could do it.”
In the past, Flanagan split her time evenly between animation and live-action roles. This year, she expects to spend 75 percent of her schedule doing voiceover work. Demand has risen sharply, thanks largely to the rapidly expanding population of Toontown, as new animated shows pop up on streaming services.
Netflix, which offers the critically acclaimed series “BoJack Horseman” and “Trollhunters,” hopes to debut 30 Japanese animé series this year. “Harvey Street Kids,” based on the gung-ho girls of Harvey Comics, debuted June 29.
Hulu’s most streamed program of 2017 was Comedy Central’s long-running “South Park,” which helps explain why the company just inked a deal with DreamWorks Animation, with new series debuting in 2020.
“There’s more animation work now than ever,” Chris Prynoski, president and owner of L.A.-based animation company Titmouse, told Variety magazine last year. Half of the company’s assignments are for streaming shows, including Amazon’s Emmy-winning “Niko and the Sword of Light” and Netflix’s “Big Mouth.”
Actors who think they can take advantage of this deluge of work by rolling into the studio in their pajamas and getting home in time for “Judge Judy” are in for a rude awakening.
“You start to get these jobs and you feel cocky, like, ‘I am great at this,’” said “Saturday Night Live” veteran Bobby Moynihan, who broke into the animation business by contributing to Pixar’s 2013 film “Monsters University” and now has a leading role in “DuckTales,” Disney XD’s reboot of the 1980s cartoon.
“Then you look at someone like John DiMaggio (Bender on ‘Futurama’) or Mark Hamill (‘Batman: The Animated Series’) — I could talk about his Joker for hours — and you realize, ‘I’m nowhere as good as these people.’
“On camera, I can make a tiny little eye movement and convey what I’m feeling. You can’t do that in animation. It has to come through solely with your voice. It’s an amazing skill.”
Alyson Stoner, better known as Isabella in Disney Channel’s “Phineas and Ferb,” sometimes does more research for her voice-over duties than for live-action roles.
When she was reinterpreting a part from a Japanese video game, she poured hours into studying the subtle differences between that language and English, trying to maintain the integrity of Japanese culture while striving to please representatives from both countries who were judging her throughout a 12-hour session.
“On camera, the crew is far away from you. But in voiceover, the executive is staring right at you from the other side of the glass, giving you feedback at a rapid-fire pace. And if you don’t do it correctly the first time, you’re replaced,” said Stoner, who also starred in the “Step Up” and “Camp Rock” movies. “I honestly don’t think everyone can do it.”
Hank Azaria has made it look easy for 30 years as the voice of the Bartender and other characters on “The Simpsons.” But the actor, who appears in the flesh as IFC’s “Brockmire,” said that’s far from the truth.
“It might surprise you how much energy it actually takes to do a vocal performance,” he said. “You have to sort of act with your whole body or else it doesn’t come out good. ‘You do the Hokey Pokey and you turn yourself about.’ That’s really what it’s all about.”
You also have to be willing to make a fool of yourself.
“You can’t be afraid to look silly and try things,” said “Better Things” star Pamela Adlon, who started doing voice-over work at age 9 and played Bobby on “King of the Hill” for 13 seasons. “You have to be willing to be crazy and fail. That’s a huge discipline.”