00:00And very seldom, when a new show up, I notice very seldom are they actually voiced by black actors.
00:07And as somebody who's interested in getting into voiceover and dubbing, what steps do you think I can take to
00:14change this?
00:16That's interesting. This is really strange, but I find in animation in general, sometimes that's like a niche that you
00:25wouldn't think it would be
00:25because you think there would have to be a lot of black voiceover actors.
00:30But you can kind of actually get work being black and being a good voice actor because there are certain
00:35roles that they do want somebody who's black to play that.
00:37And like with anime, I am black and I've auditioned for black characters and had white guys beat me out
00:43for them.
00:43So I mean, it depends. But how would you change that? I don't know. It's a tricky thing.
00:51I was going to say, I've been working with young animators who are doing short films because they want to
00:56tell their story.
00:58So I don't know if you know people who are in college doing animation or anything like that,
01:03but I've been voicing characters for friends in their little short films that are about Latina little girls
01:09because there's not enough of them. This came up in another panel as well.
01:14It's just this beautiful black woman who wants to do her animation. I said, go do it because we need
01:18more of that.
01:19And I know it sounds silly, but that short film could go to a film festival or it goes online
01:24and it goes viral.
01:25Or it doesn't, but you start your own little production company and this is what you're doing.
01:29And I know it sounds really hard to do, but just baby steps and you'll get there, you know?
01:33And then hopefully you can also dub some anime and be awesome at it.
01:36But I think that us creating our own work is part of adding to that, to this crazy business and
01:44making it more diverse.
01:45Yeah. And in voiceover too, I don't know that there's always a stress put on accurately casting so many different
01:53characters.
01:54I mean, it's like, oh, you have to be this to play this. So black actors play all kinds of
01:58different characters.
01:59They also don't make me play only black people. They don't, you know what I mean?
02:03Or only even men or only humans or only like we voice whatever.
02:07You too can be a chair.
02:08And so...
02:11Hashtag you too can be a chair.
02:13And so the opportunities are theirs. For me, where I see that there are issues in Hollywood with casting, it
02:19has to do with where the opportunities are not there.
02:22So there are opportunities for black actors to do voiceover, to play black characters, white characters, any character.
02:28It's kind of whatever you sound like.
02:30I do get in Hollywood when we can't get a lead Asian actor ever or we can't get a, it's
02:35harder to get like, it took forever to get like a lead, you know, black character in like Star Wars
02:39or a big movie or...
02:40And there's also a history behind that where white actors were playing black characters and white actors were playing Asian
02:46characters and Native American characters.
02:49So there's a past history that's not nice. It's not good.
02:52And so in Hollywood, there's somewhat of a problem and I definitely agree with that.
02:56With voiceover, I see it more as there are some shows where it's very important for the producers to actually
03:02have everything be true to what it's supposed to be.
03:04And there are other shows where the producers don't care so much, but they're not going to not hire you
03:08because you're black.
03:09You just might be playing not a black character. Do you know what I mean? Like an anime would almost
03:13hurt you more because there's less black characters.
03:15There really are. So in Japan, they have to start making more black characters, but there's not as many... I
03:21have no idea what the ratio would be, but you guys know.
03:23It's pretty low. So if you were forced to only play that, you would have less of a career. Does
03:28that make sense?
03:29So, but you know, hopefully...
03:31We want to audition for all sorts of things, you know, all the...
03:33If we can, if I can sound British, let's do it. You know what I mean? So...
03:38Yeah, because British people are not having a hard time working.
03:41Right, they're not. No, but I will say early on in my career, it's strange, early on in my career
03:46as a theater and as a TV actor, because there weren't so many Indian roles, it didn't matter that I
03:54was Indian.
03:55It just, I just went in and auditioned and it just, there happened to be, very rarely were they like,
04:00well, you can't do this because you're not white.
04:02Like I didn't have, I had that experience in high school, but I didn't have that experience in the professional
04:06world when there was zero opportunity.
04:10As we have become more, as we've become more careful, we've sometimes lessened our opportunities to remember that we are
04:18not defined by our race.
04:19And especially in voice acting, you are not defined by anything that this package that you are in has to
04:26offer.
04:26But if you want, if you want there to be more roles out there, then yeah, we have to create
04:30them.
04:31But if, because that's the only way they're going to get created.
04:34But if you're excited to use your voice for anything in the world as an actor, you know, as an
04:40excited actor would, then go for it.
04:42Be that chair!
04:44Boom!
