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#45 Stephanie Roberts — Speaking Up

Introducing The Infinite Creative, a newsletter for those who are creative, curious and constantly looking for opportunities to learn and grow. Read what I’m learning and thinking about when it comes to being more intentional, productive and impactful as a creative - one idea per day.

My guest on this episode is the voice over artist Stephanie Roberts.

Stephanie didn’t grow up with the dream of becoming a voice over artist and she talks about the process of moving from one creative identity to another.

She describes her home studio vocal booth, the logistics of being the voice of Samsung’s virtual assistant Bixby, some of a voice actor’s tricks of the trade and we explore what it means to be a voice over ally.

While you might not have heard her name before, there’s a very good chance that this isn’t the first time you’ve heard her voice.

Find and follow Stephanie Roberts online:
website | instagram

Links and show notes from this episode:

Glossary:
auralex - acoustic foam panels and soundproofing solutions

Listen to:
Stephanie Roberts on The Dreaded Question podcast with Lili Torre Apple Podcasts | Spotify
Timothy Huang on Studio Time Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Learn more about Voiceover or Voice Artists:
The many voices of Jodi Benson
I Know That Voice - Voiceover Documentary Trailer

SHOW TRANSCRIPT:

Matthew Carey

Hi, Stephanie, and welcome to Studio time.

Stephanie Roberts

Hello, and thank you so much for having me.

Matthew Carey

It's a real pleasure. Where are you speaking to me from today?

Stephanie Roberts

I am speaking to you from New Rochelle, New York, which is in Westchester County, just outside of New York City.

Matthew Carey

Fantastic. Tell me and those people listening a little bit about what you do.

Stephanie Roberts

I am a voiceover artist or a voice actor, as some people like to call it. I primarily do things that involve me recording. That could be a commercial, it could be podcast intro, it could be an explainer video that lives on somebody's website that explains their product or service, internal corporate training, kids apps and games on your phone, pretty much anything. I think it's funny, especially now in this quarantine, Corona time, I've done a few podcast episodes and also workshops. A lot of times people just think of voiceover as movie trailers, Disney animated films, or big national car commercials, which are all totally valid ways to think about it. But voiceover is a lot more than that. The bread and butter of it is these little weird things that you don't even think of as voiceover and then when you hear somebody say, "Oh, you know, that video that you watch, when a website loads," you're like, "Oh, right, somebody recorded that." And it was maybe me.

Matthew Carey

Mm hmm. How many voiceover artists or actors are there? Let's say in New York State. Are there as many voice actors as they're a stage actors?

Stephanie Roberts

Gosh, what a good question. You know, I have no idea. The interesting thing about voiceover is that it's very individual. You can build a home studio and you can just go into your closet for literally hours a day and just record voiceover. If you never told anyone that you did that no one would ever see you do it. I have no idea. There could be 1000 of us, there could be 10,000. These days, everything is remote so even more people have built home studios or are utilizing their home studios more, because recording studios are closed for the foreseeable future. So yeah, I don't know. Maybe it's millions. I don't know.

Matthew Carey

I like the idea of millions of secret home recording voice actors.

Stephanie Roberts

I do too.

Matthew Carey

Tell me a little bit about the setup that you use when you record at home?

Stephanie Roberts

That's a great question. I've always had a home studio. Back in 2010 was when I really really dug my heels into voiceover. Home studios were just becoming popular and everybody was like, "Yeah, maybe that would be a good thing to have. You can do some work on your own." And my husband, which I always mention because I would not be where I am today without him, my husband is a sound engineer. So I got super lucky. He was able to help me build my first home studio, which, at the time was in the corner of our office in our first apartment together. So it was this tiny, tiny little office and in the corner, he used the corner of the room as two of the walls and then he built two other walls out of wood. We put a blanket over the door that he built, lined it with some auralex foam to absorb the sound and that was it. That's where I started recording voiceovers. The second incarnation when we moved to a new apartment was a closet. Not a walk in closet, but a small New York City closet. I'm very petite. I'm only five one so I fit in there perfectly. There was even a shelf that we didn't have to move or take out.

Matthew Carey

You could even leave the clothes there?

Stephanie Roberts

Yes! I just would watch my myself in that very, very tiny hot closet and record there. Now we live in a house and one of the factors when we were searching for this house was "Where is the booth going to go?" Because as we moved along, more and more jobs were being recorded from home studios and I have a daughter, she's going to be three on Sunday. So it was really important to me to have a home studio space where I could still work and be a pretty much full time stay at home parent as well. So now, the booth is in what used to be a walk in closet. My husband did so much planning and research to figure out the best materials and the best ways to build and he made a whole building plan. He actually built the booth within the walk in closet. So now it's kind of a room within a room and it has a door that closes and all of my stuff that I need is in there. I have a monitor that I can see my computer. I have the microphone obviously, a music stand on an iPad to read and I usually have a notebook with the notes of what I need to record that day, and a stand for my water and my headphones. And that's it. When we lived in the city, we were contending with police sirens and car horns and people yelling as they were walking down the street. Now in the suburbs, we're contending with leaf blowers, and lawnmowers, and all sorts of things that we never heard in the city. It was really, really important to build a soundproof space so that I could record professional sounding audio from my house.

Matthew Carey

I always find it really interesting that as soon as I turn my microphone on, I discover different sounds around the apartment or through the window from outside that I would have never noticed just walking around the house. It certainly gives you a different perspective.

Stephanie Roberts

Yeah, in the Astoria apartment, we did a test with a bunch of different microphones and we found that the top of the line industry standard microphone was literally picking up dogs barking across the street. We're like, "Oh, I don't think we can use this one." The mic I'm recording on right now, is more of a shotgun mic and not so sensitive for the outside noise. But I still would have to turn off my fridge when I recorded because there was some weird low end hum. And then we had signs literally all around the apartment that said, "Turn the fridge back on," because I did forget a few times and that was not good.

Matthew Carey

I've done the same thing. I've turned off the fridge. I've been able to use the battery power on my laptop so I've flicked off the power to the whole apartment sometimes. I've had to move clocks to a different room because the taking from the clock seemed thunderous through the microphone. It's always an interesting challenge, and I move around a lot. I'm recording from different locations often. And so each time I moved to a new space, I'm trying to decide which is the right corner to set up my recording system and what other noises are there? There's lots of things to think about that I hadn't ever anticipated. You mentioned that you've got a screen. Can you operate your recording system from within the booth? Or do you set it up in a different room at then go in and do all your recording?

Stephanie Roberts

A little bit of both. The computer and all of the hardware is outside the booth. So I usually turn everything on, make sure it's all up and running and then I'll take my wireless mouse into the booth with me. I can still click around and see the screen and make sure that the recording software is behaving and hasn't stopped. Because that has also happened when you record a three minute video and you're like, "That was so good. I feel so great about that." And you come out and you're like, "Ah, no, it stopped at some point. And I don't know when and now I have to do it all over again!" So having the monitor in the booth when you have your computer outside the booth is very, very important.

Matthew Carey

I first discovered you and your voice (s far as I know) through listening to Lili Torre's podcast, The Dreaded Question. In your conversation with Lili, you talked about your previous career in music theater before you moved to voiceover. You didn't necessarily grow up imagining you were going to be a voice actor. But I wonder now that you are, and you look back to your younger days, are there things that you can see in yourself as a young girl that suggested that maybe this is where you might end up?

I love that question and it's funny because the answer is yes. 100,000,000%. When I was a kid, I was obsessed with Disney movies. I grew up with Disney. I grew up in South Florida. So we went to Disney often. I remember as a little kid, just thinking, "I want to be the voice of a Disney movie." I mean, it's been one of my childhood dreams for as long as I could imagine. I think even before I ever said I wanted to be on Broadway. I was always so excited to learn about who these voice actors were. And some of them were not only the speaking voice, but the singing voice and oh my gosh, that really spoke to me. I could be Jodi Benson. I could sing and speak. To be a Disney character was the biggest dream of mine. I also used to love (and I still do), I love to do impressions of people. I love to listen to voices and kind of try to imitate them or repeat back a sound or a phrase. When I got older, I kind of realized, "Wow, okay. You kind of have to be a celebrity to be the voice of a Disney character." So I don't know...Theater was always a first love, and I never really had a chance to do voiceover as a kid. So I just focused on theater. Then when the economy crashed here at the end of 2008 into 2009, I thought, "Oh my gosh, I can't get an audition. I can't get hired. What am I going to do?" And something in me just said, "I don't know. What about voiceover? Maybe now's the time to give that a try." And I did and I think some of those old dreams and skills have fueled my passion for it now.

Matthew Carey

Isn't that incredible? to look back and realize that there was signs that said this was maybe what you were meant to do, and you were able to ignore them for as many years as you did.

Stephanie Roberts

I know. I think too, it's just a lot of the BFA theater programs in the United States just don't focus on voiceover or even on camera acting. Some do, and the program I went to was fantastic. I loved every second of it, but we only really learned about voiceover for like, two seconds. "Oh, yeah. And there's this other thing that you could do to sustain and make money as your side job while you audition for your Broadway shows." And I was like, "Oh, yeah. Voiceover that sounds kind of cool." But it was just not something that was as obvious as musical theater and the path wasn't so obvious. There aren't really any, that I know, of any voiceover majors or voiceover programs that you can study,

Matthew Carey

Talking about studying to be a music theater performer - it seems interesting to me that a number of guests on the show have said that throughout their acting programs people would say to them, "If there's anything else you can do, you should go and do that." Because it's understood that being an actor is not a secure path. There's very little that is secure about being an actor. Yet people go to acting training programs and then there is an ongoing professional development that actors do. They take singing lessons, they go to acting lessons, they take dance classes. It seems like a profession, where there is a lot of skills maintenance that you need to keep doing, even after you've done the initial training. Do you think that is peculiar to acting? Is there an equivalent in most other professions?

Stephanie Roberts

I don't know. I do think that it's a lot in acting. Part of why I never studied voiceover when I first moved to the city, even though my brain had kind of been open to it a little bit with hearing about it once I was here..."Oh, yeah, there are people who do voiceover." Part of it was "Well, I can't spend money on that." Because every month or every week, I had X amount of dollars to spend on training. And if I'm going to be on Broadway, I gotta be spending that money on acting classes, dance classes, and voice lessons to keep my stamina and keep my skills up. I can't possibly spend that money elsewhere because these are the only funds I have right now. Yeah, it is a lot of maintenance and upkeep and I think it's, it's something that inhibits a lot of people because once you move here, and you get a survival job, that job has to be your bread and butter that sustains you while you're doing these auditions and all these classes. If that survival job doesn't make you a lot of money, then you don't have the funds to do the classes. And if you don't have the funds to do the classes, then maybe you don't have the same upkeep and skills as somebody who does. I think it's kind of a catch 22 but I don't know much about other non-theater professions or Muggle professions maybe as we like to say. So I don't know maybe accountants also have classes that they need to take to make sure that they know the current tax laws or who knows? But yeah, in acting, in musical theater, it is quite a lot of upkeep to make sure that your skills are at the level that they need to be to compete with all these other people who are already on Broadway.

Matthew Carey

There's a number of things there. I guess we could consider an actor to be a creative athlete, and certainly athletic people, sports people need to train throughout the week. It's not as thought they just show up for their race meet or for their game, and that's all they do. So they certainly do ongoing training throughout the week. Teachers I know have to do maybe 10 or 20 hours of professional development during the course of a year and actors could do that during the course of a fortnight. But I wonder whether it's almost a survival of the fittest, or natural selection in the theater jungle that is New York City. Some people won't survive it and perhaps that's the way it's designed to be. It's interesting.

Stephanie Roberts

Yeah, that is a really interesting thought. I mean, I didn't survive it. At some point in 2009, I said, "I can't do this anymore. I can't just keep plugging away and going to these auditions and being told, we can't even see you today, or no, or you're too old, you're too young." It just got to be too much for me and it just made me so sad because I love performing. But I wasn't performing, I was just going to these auditions. I've heard it said that you could think of the audition as a performance. And that's true, but it's still not the same as being on stage, with the lights and the costumes and hearing the applause. So I do think that it was, it was a big wake up call when my theater career became auditioning and nothing else. "I think I might need to change course and see what else is out there." But it was a tough transition for sure. It was not an overnight - like I woke up and ready realised like, "Oh, I'm gonna do something else and that's totally okay." I mean, theater was something I'd loved since I was seven years old. It definitely is a process of weeding out, I think there are people who I graduated college with, who are still plugging away and doing this. I think that is incredible and amazing. They're very successful, but it just turned out that it wasn't for me to do that day after day.

Matthew Carey

When I say survival of the fittest, I don't necessarily mean that it's the less talented people that don't survive. If I was going to continue my comparison to the jungle, it's the people that find the food. They're the ones that survive and those that are not finding food in the jungle or that industry, maybe need to transition to something else like you talked about. As positive as we all like to be about auditions, you didn't start dreaming about being in an audition room when you were seven years old, did you? You dreamed about being on stage or being on screen. For a lot of people in our business, there is a big part of our identity that is tied up in what we say we do - whether we're an actor or a musician - because for a lot of us, it did start at an early age. You started singing and dancing at seven years old. I started playing music when I was five or six. If you get to the point where you're in your early 20s, you've been hanging on to that identity for, let's say, 15 years. That's a long time by anyone's standards. Yeah. And I wonder if part of the reason for the classes is because it's a way to hold on to that identity. If we don't have a gig, and we're not going to the theater each night, we don't get to walk in stage door and say, "We're an actor." So maybe walking into the dance studio or walking into a singing lesson is where we say, "Oh, I'm an actor. This is what I do."

Stephanie Roberts

Yeah, I love that idea. Because it is something that is really hard to grapple with. Yeah, I'm an actor. But really, I'm not acting right now. So can I say I'm an actor if I'm not actually acting? That fuels its own internal struggles. I dealt with that for almost all of 2009 - that feeling of what is my identity? What am I good at? What else am I good at? And you know, my first immediate answer was "Nothing." I've been doing theater my whole life. I grew up doing children's theater. I went to a performing arts middle school and high school, I majored in college, I went to a BFA program where it was very focused and very little academics. And all of a sudden, all this thing that I had been, not only that I had loved, but that I had been pretty good at for so long was nowhere to be found. I did struggle with that, figuring out what was next and where I fit in. If I couldn't say, because everybody you know, I'm sure like a lot of people in your hometown everybody's like, "Oh, Stephanie.Yeah, she moved to the city to be an actor." And if you no longer are an actor, then what do you say to all those people from your hometown or your friends who think of you in that way? It was a long transition. I think what helped me was - we actually moved away from the city in 2010. My husband got a job in San Francisco. We weren't married yet and he said, "Do you want to come with me?" And I was like, "Yeah, I'm gonna go." I moved to San Francisco with the idea of trying to find that next thing. What would happen if I didn't associate myself as an actor anymore, or as a musical theater performer? It was eye opening. And I don't know that that transition would have happened as fast or as smoothly if I had just been in the city that whole time.

Matthew Carey

I remember you telling Lili that you didn't take your music theater stuff with you to San Francisco. You left your shoes and your your songbook back in the city. I'm curious. I mean, you said that it wasn't easy and that it was a process. Did you learn anything in that process of adapting your identity that would be useful for somebody else to think about? Any tools that you used or lessons that you learned?

Stephanie Roberts

For the first time when I was in San Francisco, I allowed myself to consider other things. When we're in the city, and we are musical theater actors, we must be practicing our craft. We have to be in classes every week, and I think, being outside of the city and being able to open my mind and say, "That's not even an option. I'm not even going to allow myself to think that there might be even a musical theater class to take here. So what else?" Being able to literally remove the blinders and just open my eyes really, really, really helped me clarify and see what else I was good at. Part of it was really, really hard to come to terms with. "I really want to be good at musical theater and I am good at musical theater, but I can't do it." But then the other part, "But actually, I'm also good at these other things," and that was really freeing. I was able to work at a kids play space there and I ran birthday parties, and I got to interact with the kids, I got to craft my own theater class. That was something that I've always loved doing. I've loved working with kids and I love teaching kids and passing on to the next generation of theater actors, but hadn't really allowed myself to do a ton of it in the city. So being able to do that in San Francisco was eye opening. "Oh, wait, I love this. And I'm good at it." Same thing with voiceover. I took my first classes out there. And for the first time in years, I was getting super positive feedback. It motivated me and it made me realize, "Wow, I am good at these other things, and these skills overlap. My theater skills and my voiceover skills can find a way to work together. And even though I'm not performing on a big stage, I'm still performing in a certain way.

Matthew Carey

Tell me about that idea of feedback. I understand that suddenly you were getting positive feedback and you were getting feedback in general. As you began your journey as a voice over artist, where did you go to look for feedback and constructive criticism about how you could get better at what you're doing?

Stephanie Roberts

I took classes in San Francisco. It was really the first time that I had taken a specifically voiceover class. It made me realize that I had a lot to learn about the lingo and the techniques and mic techniques and stuff about home studios that I had no clue about. But I took a lot of classes at this one studio where they bring in a variety of teachers. I got to work with all these different people and that was fantastic. Because some of them were tough but supportive, and others were a lot more generous with positive feedback. All were really helpful in my growth. And I think being there, and again just being open to like, "Wow, I really don't know anything about this. So whatever these people tell me, I should write down and practice." And I think that was really helpful to get that feedback and start my journey on perfecting my voiceover career.

Matthew Carey

Touching back on the idea of lessons and classes as an actor, how do you seek that sort of feedback and professional advice outside of classes as a voiceover actor? So once you finish the class, how do you continue that process of getting feedback so you can continue to improve?

That's a great question. I think asking your clients, especially ones that you've maybe worked with a bunch of times or have a great relationship with, I think asking them for feedback or casting directors that you often audition for or if you have an agent. And another thing that's great is having an accountability buddy, which I just started to do this year. It's been fantastic to just bounce ideas off of her and get feedback on things. I just redid my website and I sent it to her and she was like "Great, I love it. Change this. Think about this" and having a peer workout group is always fun. You're able to still get that feedback but from your peers and have people be able to help you and help lift each other up in voiceover and still be learning without spending the money on classes.

Matthew Carey

I had look at your website and it's great! For those people that want to go and have a look right now, what's the URL of your website?

Stephanie Roberts

It is www.stephaniepamroberts.com.

Matthew Carey

Tell me what you thought about as you were updating it. The thing I noticed when I went to the website on my phone, was that there was a photo of you and then the first things I saw as I started to scroll down were examples of your work as a voice actor. Listen to my voice. That's probably the main thing that your website is for. It's a calling card for people that might be prospective clients. Something you can point them towards and say, "This is what I sound like." So what sort of things were you trying to achieve with the website?

Stephanie Roberts

The website redo was all about infusing more of my personality into it. I felt like the previous incarnation of my website was great and very clean and professional. It had all the necessary information, samples and demos and things, but it felt like could be anybody's website. So this time around, I wanted to really infuse my personality and the person that I chose to help me suggested pictures. Which is funny, because in voiceover, it's like, "Do I want a picture? Do I want people to know what I look like and make an assumption based on that, as opposed to just hearing my voice?" I look very young, but maybe somebody would buy that I don't sound quite as young as I look. So it's an interesting kind of debate that people have in the voiceover industry, like whether or not you put your picture or make a little cartoon avatar, but this time I really felt like I agreed with him that I wanted my pictures there because I wanted to show people I am a human. I am a person. I am a mom. I like to have fun. I'm very smiley and happy. So I wanted that to infuse in the site. But I do think it's essential to have demos. And it is essential to have them first because a lot of times people are going to your website to hear. "I'm casting a commercial. Let me listen to this demo and see if there's a sound that matches what I'm looking for, for my commercial," To have that right up at the front is really important. And I feel really strongly about having them be professionally produced by an expert demo producer, because you're right, it is your calling card. The website and the demos especially are your calling card. In musical theater, we have our headshots and you would never just walk into a casting for a major Broadway show with a crappy picture you took on your iPhone. Demos for voiceover are the same. They should be super professional, really, really clean examples of all of the different sounds that you can have for different genres.

Matthew Carey

Tell me who are some of your creative heroes, Stephanie? Maybe both in the voice acting world and in the wider sense.

Stephanie Roberts

What a great question. My creative heroes in voiceover are the people who have done hundreds of Disney projects that you would know their voices, but you wouldn't necessarily know their names. There's a great, great, great documentary called "I Know That Voice." It is fantastic. It's all of those people who are just, they're Winnie the Pooh, they're Tigger, they're Mickey Mouse, they're Goofy. They're all these people, you know that voice. But if I asked you "Do you know the name of the guy who plays Winnie the Pooh?" You'd be like, "I have no idea. I'd have to Google it." And it's those people who are able to really shape shift and do so many different projects and make these iconic voices that we grew up with and make you feel like "Oh, it's Winnie the Pooh," you know, that like nostalgic feeling. Those guys and ladies are some of my creative heroes in the voiceover industry for sure.

Matthew Carey

Great. I want to go back a little bit because I was curious. As you began your journey as a voice actor, what were some of the things that you were immediately good at? And what did you have to learn and get better at?

Stephanie Roberts

As a musical theater performer, I was good at script analysis, I was good at cold reading and being able to speak accurately and read the copy correctly the first time. Get a sense of the tone, like a McDonald's commercial versus a healthcare commercial. I kind of already knew from my acting training, the basis of making those decisions. What I needed improvement on was technique because to be on stage and fill the house and reach the back row and be big and over the top and loud and project and larger than life. And then to learn how to pull that way in for a tiny, tiny microphone that first of all, literally can't handle me screaming into it, but also - the sense of, "I'm talking to you, one person," as opposed to "I'm talking to a house of 1500 people." That was tricky to kind of relax and let the musical theater performance aspect kind of just fall away and not have such great diction, because in musical theater, we have to have good diction and so we can understand everything. But in voiceover, especially now, a lot of the commercials want it to be very conversational, like you're talking to your friend. So learning those little tiny minutiae the little tiny techniques of how to take my broad musical theater performance abilities and scale it way down, but still have energy and life and vitality, but just smaller.

Matthew Carey

My son Josh is a bit older than your daughter, my son Josh is 20.

Stephanie Roberts

Just a little bit.

Matthew Carey

We were having this conversation just yesterday about vocal impressions. We were wondering - when you are a voice specialist like you - whether there are certain aspects to a voice that you learn to separate or identify, that help you in listening to a voice and working out how you might recreate it? Or from your point of view when you're looking at creating a new voice.

Stephanie Roberts

Yeah, there are people who are experts at this. Especially for celebrity impressions. I actually just took a class with someone who specializes in casting sound alikes. And it was fascinating because what she talked about was the tempo that the person speaks and the tone of their voice, and you know if they have any vocal characteristics, like an accent or a gritty vocal fry. She suggested watching interviews of the people, if it's like an animated character, to watch the interview of the actor themselves, not the character, to really see how the actor speaks. How they move their hands, what their body position is, what their mouth does, what their teeth look like. And I thought that was so fascinating to see those tangible things that you can grab on to and say, "Oh, okay. She always smiles when she talks. So if I start to smile when I talk, my tone immediately changes and maybe that's a little closer to what she does." So yeah, I don't know if that answers the question.

Matthew Carey

That's interesting. And it leads me to another question. When you're in your voiceover booth. How animated are you? How much do you move the rest of your body around? Or is it all focused around your mouth and your lips and your tongue?

Stephanie Roberts

I move my hands quite a lot, but my feet stay put so that I don't risk kicking the mic stand or my music stand with my iPad on it. But I do move my hands. I talk with my hands in real life and so it helps me feel like a real person to talk with my hands. And because no one can see me, there are certain times where I'll do little physical tricks to help me get into a certain sound. So if I want to more heartfelt sound, I'll literally put my hands on my heart while I talk, which helps me ground and focus and think about that heartfelt feeling of warmth. Sometimes if I'm on a call with a client, and they say, you know, we really want you to inflect down on this word, I will literally take my hand and go down so that I remember to go down.

Matthew Carey

Yes,

Stephanie Roberts

Little tricks like that can help because nobody sees you. I look ridiculous, but it does infuse the voice. Same thing with a smile or wide eyes. You know, you can hear that in my voice, even though you can't see me doing it. So I do feel like the physical gestures are really, really helpful.

Matthew Carey

Do you have tricks like actions or maybe trigger phrases that help you get into certain types of voice?

Stephanie Roberts

Ooh, that's great. I took a class with a casting director once who said that all voiceover scripts (commercial scripts) fall into four different categories. Each one has a little trigger. One of them is a wry read and the trigger for that one is "You are so stupid." Then you just read the copy because now you're in this place. "Oh, you're so stupid." And I loved that I thought that was such a great way to work from the outside in to just have something that immediately gets you connected to the emotion or the life of the character. In that same voice match class, she talked about having a catchphrase to get you into the character or the accent. Just something that you know if I need to do an Australian accent - which I won't try because it's terrible - I have a three word phrase that you know, maybe I've heard you say that I repeat, and then that kind of gets me into the rest of the flow for the rest of the accent or the character.

Matthew Carey

You don't have to do it in accent but what's the three word phrase that would help you get into an Australian accent?

Stephanie Roberts

Probably "G'day mate."

Matthew Carey

Is there a job or a voice artist experience that you've had that has been really meaningful for you in a way that you maybe hadn't anticipated when you started in this career?

Stephanie Roberts

Two come to mind. The first is that I got pregnant at the end of 2016. And at the same time I booked a job. That job was going to be the largest job that I had ever recorded for the most money. And I sort of grew this job and my daughter all at the same time. So even though the job was one of the hardest, most tedious, most mind bending jobs I've ever done, it sort of holds a special place because it was while I was pregnant with her. I did the first couple of months of my recording sessions and nobody else knew. I was just, "Can I sit? I'm feeling a little off today." I had gallons of water and sucking candies, and then as I moved into the second trimester, I was able to say, "Oh, by the way, I'm pregnant." And then of course, everybody's like, "Oh my gosh, do you need more water? What can we get you?" It was this really interesting experience of feeling like the job itself was so tough. But I was doing the job for almost the entire time that I was pregnant. So it was this dual thing where I've had this amazing, you know, body, womanhood life experience with this really, really tough job. The other one was my first animated series. I worked with this amazing director and engineer who I loved. And it was just fun. It felt like "Oh my gosh, I can't believe I get to do this. I get to voice an animated character. And I get to just play and use my acting training and have this amazing, incredible experience with people that I really, really enjoy going to work with." You know, it was just fun. It was just playtime to be there. I was cast as one of the main characters, but then at the end of every session, they would say, "Oh, you know what we need? We need a chicken. Can you cluck like a chicken?" I was like, "Sure." So it was just such a joy to feel like I had reached that level of being able to do something that I had always admired and had always wanted to do.

Matthew Carey

Was the pregnancy job the Bixby voice?

Stephanie Roberts

That is correct. Yes.

Matthew Carey

Bixby is the Samsung virtual assistant. Is that correct?

Stephanie Roberts

Yeah. So on the Samsung phones and fridges and I think maybe some other appliances, she's sort of the Alexa or Siri of the Samsung line.

Matthew Carey

The Samsung Universe! I wonder about making a recording for a voice that has to be able to say almost anything.

Stephanie Roberts

It was wild.

Matthew Carey

What's the process like?

Stephanie Roberts

The process is intense. I had to go to a studio for that. Thank goodness I didn't have to do that on my own ,because I wouldn't have been able to do it. I went to a studio, where the engineer was in charge of making sure that the sound was as incredibly consistent as possible. That meant that the chair was spiked on the floor. It was in the same place every day. The microphone was exactly the same height and the exactly the same distance from my mouth, from the back wall. I mean, it was nuts. It was super detailed. He was there to record and edit and format the files, however they needed them. I recorded over 20,000 sentences, which was everything from "This is a chair" to really, really long sentences from news articles. Basically, they needed to be able to synthesize every possible combination of letters, syllables, sounds, phrases, all together. Some of the things I recorded were just numbers and letters that would be used by themselves. Some of the things were commands specifically for certain appliances. "To send an email, press Send." But a lot of it was nonsensical sentences. I don't even know where they pulled them from. But it was crazy. The sessions were anywhere from two to four hours, and anywhere from two to four sessions a week for almost all of January, February and March. It kind of tapered off after that. And then I had a pretty difficult pregnancy and went into preterm labor. My daughter is fine and wonderful and great but she was born just shy of 30 weeks, which is very early. I had to tell them guys, "I'm on bedrest now and I can't come to the studio. So if you need anything, now's the time." It turned into quite a process, but thank goodness we worked quickly and I was very thankful for my sight reading skills during that job. We just plugged away and we were able to get everything we needed before I had the baby.

Matthew Carey

Wow, that bends my mind just thinking about it, let alone having to do it.

Stephanie Roberts

Usually a voiceover session - if everything is going great - for a thirty second commercial is maybe 20 minutes. And part of that time is just spent waiting while the engineer matches your voice to the picture or cuts it together. It's really very low key. But this was like four hours of intense reading and concentrating and making sure I said exactly what was written on the page. So it was pretty wild.

Matthew Carey

Wow. You mentioned that you live in New Rochelle. New Rochelle was the epicenter of the beginning of the pandemic in the United States. Is that right, Stephanie?

Stephanie Roberts

It sure was. It was strange to be here. We were the first hotspot. Even before New York City. There was a lawyer who was diagnosed as sort of the first community spread case. And yeah, it was crazy. We were in the containment zone. It ended up being for like five days before the entire world shut down. And it was kind of crazy. It felt very unreal. "Wait, why us? Why is this the hot epicenter of this crazy thing?" And very quickly after that, New York City became the focus. But yeah, at the beginning it was us.

Matthew Carey

How much did you heard about the virus - maybe from places outside America? And what was it like being the first community that was touched by it?

Stephanie Roberts

It was strange. At the beginning, everybody was sort of like, "Is this really something we need to worry about?" And you know, it was just barely in the news. We heard about it first, because my daughter went to preschool. We actually closed even before everybody else did because her school was in a temple. There was another temple where this lawyer had been a member and the communities overlapped. I could walk to the temple where he went, it's very close to us. So when this all was starting, we literally drove up to the school, and the security guard was like, "Hi, everyone. Um, so there's no school today." And we were like, "What? What do you mean there's no school today?" And he's like, "So, yep, there's no school. Everything's fine. There's just no school today." And my husband and I looked at each other and we're like, "Okay, what are you not saying? This is strange." So we drove home. We're like, "Sorry, kiddo, no school today." And she was very confused. And that was it. That was on March 2nd or something, and we never opened back up after that. It was very, very odd to be, "Oh my God, what's going on? Is this really serious? What's happening?" Feeling that very first initial uncertainty and pit in your stomach. "Oh, no, this might be really...this is something." I even said to my husband very shortly after that, "I feel like we're at the beginning of something very meaningful. Something big is about to happen." It was weird, especially at the beginning, when everybody was trying to be like, "It's fine. Everything's fine. We just need to close the school to clean it." Okay.

Matthew Carey

It certainly has been an interesting time. You were sharing with me that while this has been a time of macro challenges, it's also been a time of micro opportunities for you. Tell me about the things that the pandemic has made better for you.

Stephanie Roberts

My husband is a Broadway sound engineer. That job is incredible and fantastic and has afforded so many amazing opportunities for our family. But it's a lot of time. He spends quite a lot of time at the theater, traveling to and from the theater. It's a lifestyle for sure. He works late nights. He works weekends. He only gets one night, maybe two nights (depending on the schedule) a week to put our daughter to bed. And the theaters closed down on March 12, which was so strange and devastating. I mean, I remember him coming up to where I'm sitting now and just saying, "I don't have to go to work tonight. The shows are closed." I just burst into tears. "There's no theater? That's my love and this is your livelihood." But then it was this really strange feeling of, "Oh my gosh, we get time together. We haven't had time together. In years." Literally years since even the two of us have been able to just sit on the couch night after night and just watch TV and not feel like, "Oh my God, we have so much to do." Or "What do we need to be working on?" We have literally been given the gift of time and my daughter has been given the gift of time and bedtimes with her father that she wouldn't have gotten during this time normally. So it's been such a strange, bright spot, an interesting silver lining. The other thing is that I now have full time childcare. Instead of having to think and plan my day around her nap time or her bed time when I can record or have a session or wondering "Can the babysitter come?" I can just say "Hey, I'm gonna run upstairs and do a bunch of auditions. See you guys in an hour." And he's like, "Okay, see you later." That has been so interesting and freeing for me as someone who really enjoys what I do and has been fortunate enough to still be working during this time too - because voiceover has not stopped, it has been thriving. To finally get a little more time back to myself to do the work has been fantastic. And I'm super, super thankful for that. I know that that is something that I will look back on during this time and think, "Well, we couldn't see any friends. But man, I got to do a lot of work." And that is something that I really treasure.

Matthew Carey

Absolutely. And while of course we acknowledge that this has been a time that's been tremendously difficult for some people, it's also worthwhile to reflect on what have been the personal benefits from this and what might potentially be the benefits for us as communities and cultures. I'm really pleased to hear that voiceover work has been continuing to thrive. That's fantastic. And that, Josh, your husband has been able to spend more time with his Family without feeling like he needs to be torn between different places. I think it'll be interesting when his work situation begins to change again, how you reconsider how you operate as a family, now that you know this different way of being, that could be really interesting.

Stephanie Roberts

Yeah, fortunately, or unfortunately, it looks like that's not going to happen for a long time. As you know, having a kid, they change by the second. So what is true today is not true tomorrow and the thought of it being the fall or even next year that Broadway shows come back and that he would go back to work full time - she'll be three and a half, almost four - that's a completely different kid. So even though I'm someone who likes to plan, I have let that go because I can't possibly plan what's going to happen based on this current situation.

Matthew Carey

Reflecting on that idea of opportunities and challenges, you and I were talking a little bit before we started recording today. We're recording this in June 2020, when certainly your country, America and my country, Australia and the world - has been asked to think more about injustices in the world, and specifically, racial injustices. We were talking a little bit about how we have been trying to use this time to learn and to think about what we can do differently and do better. Can you talk to me just a little bit about your thoughts about being a voiceover ally?

Stephanie Roberts

Yeah, I think this time has literally woken people up to something that was a huge issue and something that is so deep seated in the United States, but that everybody has dealt with and in different ways. Now all of a sudden, it's like, "Wait, I have to deal with this too. This is something that I need to pay attention to and think about." Part of it is learning for my daughter, so that she grows up in a different world than I grew up in. I think to be a voiceover ally is to speak up and literally use your voice to say things like, "I'm not going to audition for that part because that part is not written for me." Or "They're not looking for a white actress to voice this. I have plenty of opportunities to voice things, so for this one, I'm not even going to audition. I'm going to tell whoever has posted this audition. 'No thanks. This is an opportunity for somebody else'." And to keep encouraging our industry to stop using the code words and just say what they want. If they want an actress that is black, or if they want someone who has a particular accent or sound, then just ask for it. There are plenty of people out there who are fully capable of doing these parts. And much like I would do a really terrible Australian accent, I'm not even going to bother auditioning for that - I think the same is true for these other opportunities for people of color. It's not my job to have. So I do think it's really important - now that we're even more aware of these problems - to step up and speak out when we can. I'm actually going to attend a diversity and voiceover panel tomorrow night that's being hosted by all people of color to see what more I can be doing to help foster their voices in this.

Matthew Carey

I was speaking to Timothy Huang on a recent episode of Studio Time. He comes from an Asian American background, and he talks about how there are so few roles in mainstream music theater for people of Asian descent, that it just doesn't make sense to cast those with white people. This is an opportunity that could go to somebody else. And so why are we looking past them and giving it to the regular man or woman that we consider for every other job. When it comes to voice acting, because we don't see the person behind the voice, sometimes it can be easier to go to the person you already know rather than looking a little bit further in finding somebody who might be equally or more qualified for that particular role.

Stephanie Roberts

Yeah, I think that's something that comes up often in the voiceover circles as well. "It's just voice acting, they can't see you." And while that's true, personally, it just feels icky. I know that I'm not black. I know that I don't have a particular accent for something that somebody might want. I'm not going to just try my best. I'm going to say, "That's not for me." Just as I would look at a spec and say, "Oh, they want a 65 year old woman. I do not personally sound like a 65 year old woman. So I'm gonna pass." It's this age old debate in the voiceover circles that "I could just try. I could just do it. Let me see." Maybe now - it's always been the time - but now maybe is really the time for you to soul search and dig deep and say, "Why do I want to audition for that, when it really isn't mine to audition for?" They're clearly not looking for me. And there's all these other opportunities that default to white people. So I have plenty of things that I can audition for. This one thing that I'm going to try to wedge myself into? I'm going to pass.

Matthew Carey

Yeah, I think this is a great way of approaching it. You and I don't claim to have any of the answers, but we're certainly interested in asking the questions and learning what we can. For those people that would like to find or follow you online, Stephanie. Where's the best place for them to go?

Stephanie Roberts

On my website, there's all sorts of video clips and things if you want to learn more about my work. And I'm also on Instagram at @stephaniepamrobertsvo

Matthew Carey

great. And just to finish off, I couldn't help but think as you were telling me about becoming the voice of Bixby, a voice that works on phones and all sorts of devices, including fridges, maybe you could just finish out by using your Bixby voice to remind yourself to turn the fridge back on.

Stephanie Roberts

Stephanie, don't forget to turn the fridge on. Thanks so

Matthew Carey

much for your time today. Stephanie's Wonderful.

Stephanie Roberts

Thank you I had such a great time. Thank you so much.

Matthew Carey

You can find the notes, links and resources for this episode at studio time. podcast.com. If you've enjoyed what you heard, please consider subscribing to studio time in your favorite podcast player. A great way to show your support of the podcast is to take a moment to consider someone who you think would enjoy and benefit from hearing this episode and share the link with them. You can always contact me at Matthew at studio time podcast comm I love to hear about which ideas and stories have resonated with you. As always, thanks for listening.