OR: What is the hardest part of being a voice actor?
XH: The hardest thing is probably the waiting in between jobs. It’s torture. It’s fun getting auditions when you get it, but when there’s nothing it gets a little nerve-wracking. You start to self-doubt. Like, ‘Why am I not landing any roles?’ ‘Why am I not receiving any requests for auditions?’ and things like that. And it takes everything to not become a little puddle of self-pity. It really helps to create a good network of friends and family around you that you can talk to about this and that will give you advice. And also, I think, to stay active and not just sit around.
I kind of went through something very similar – I go through cycles I guess – most recently I had like months where I wasn’t booking anything. And it was becoming a very dark time for Xanthe. I decided ‘I need to get out of this’ and I signed up for classes. And it really helps to speak with somebody who is kind of like your senpai in your field because they may have gone through similar experiences as you. It’s interesting to see the way they think, and the way they work and approach things.
So I think I’m getting really off topic, but I think it’s really important to stay inspired in whatever it is that you do, even if – for me in particular, it’s voice over- but in any job that you do, it’s important to remind yourself why you do what you do and why you loved it in the first place.
OR: Why do you do what you do, and why did you fall in love with it in the first place?
XH: I used to be -or I’m still – naturally shy. In middle school, even through high school, I’ve always been very introverted [and] quiet person. Almost like mute in class. And in middle school, I was put into an elective wheel where every quarter we took a class in something different. And one of them was theater. And I was like ‘Oh no, I don’t want to be in front of people, I don’t want them to look at me’.
But it’s interesting how much I actually LOVED it. Being on stage and in a sense you feel like you’re not being watched because you have the lights on you and everybody else is dimmed down. And then you come so into the role that you’re playing and you’re in the moment of what’s happening in the scene, but you’re having this private little moment even though everyone’s watching and kind of sharing that moment with you.
And that was what I really loved about acting in general. That’s why I wanted to keep doing it. Because, at the time, my way of connecting with other people because before then I was too afraid to really talk to anybody. But I think it’s really had a big impact on me developing as a person and really trying to understand the different characters I can use that in my real and everyday life trying to understand and place myself in other people’s shoes.
OR: When voice overacting is done, it is often piecemeal. You’re delivering the same line over and over again, multiple different ways. It is then up to the sound editor to arrange it for the public to finally see. When you’re doing theatre, you’re delivering the full [character] arc in one performance and you have final interpretation over the product that people see. There’s a stark difference. Do you still feel like you’re truly performing when you do voice acting, or are you just providing a voice?
XH: It’s never just about providing a voice. I think this is a really big misconception about voice acting. It’s true that the approaches are different because in theatre you have all this time to develop a character and in VO you often create a character in a shorter time frame, like [in] a couple of days to a couple of minutes. But besides a certain accent or pitch, it’s about the personality that you put into a character and how they interact within their world.
I’ve worked in a round robin setting where the actors are all in the booth at the same time reading from a script that they were all seeing for the first time – as I was [too]. And I got to watch and work with them. It was really [an] incredible experience. It’s so amazing to watch live because I know that it’s their first time seeing the material, but they make it sound so natural and so real and believable. And I get so irritated when people think [that] voice acting isn’t real acting because voice actors are so good that you don’t realize that you’re surrounded by it and you’re listening to it every day, like in commercials and such.
OR: What’s your favorite part of being a voice actress?
XH: I think it’s mostly getting to be a part of projects that I love. It’s really fun to get to be somebody else and act silly or serious and you get to play out all sorts of different lives and scenarios that I otherwise wouldn’t get to do in my normal everyday life because they are set in these alternate worlds where things are magical or creatures are coming to invade the Earth. It’s kind of fun think about ‘What would happen if that were to happen?’ and ‘How would I or this character respond to that?’. And I think it’s just a lot of fun to be creative.
“I do [still] attend cons as a regular attendee, because at heart I’m still just a fangirl. I love to cosplay and I like to go and gawk at other cosplay.”
OR: Do you ever hear feedback from fans who hear your voice work?
XH: I do, sometimes if people tweet at me on Twitter or the few times I’ve gone to conventions or on Facebook. And those are really nice. I’m very fortunate because I have really, really nice and really great fans. But otherwise I try not to look up on the internet for reviews and things. Sometimes, people will share things with me if they are positive and I’ll look through those. But in general, I try not to look things up on my own. Sometimes I do, because I’m curious, but I mostly avoid because I’m scared. I don’t care if it’s good or bad, I don’t want to know because I feel like if I find out – that somebody says something bad – then I’m going to take to heart even if it’s something minor. I’d rather focus on the feedback that I’m getting directly from clients and the director as I’m working to improve myself.
I feel like with the experience I’ve had, I’ve already grown in many ways and so I don’t want to listen to the feedback that people have online. And a lot of it, like some of my friends gets a lot of that negative feedback and sometimes I feel like it’s based on nothing. Like when [the] Love Live! trailer came out, people were bashing my other cast members and it was a really short clip where you can maybe hear each character say a line or two. But I feel like that’s not something to really base a whole series on. I feel like people should give things a chance before they really make an opinion that could really hurt someone else’s feelings.
And so, in general, that’s my approach to that.
Xanthe’s upcoming projects, con appearances, and advice to aspiring voice actresses and actors on page 4
