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We Interviewed Voice Actor Natalie Van Sistine

MinaRose2023 here with another excellent interview this time with Natalie Van Sistine. 

Hello Natalie how are you today?

Doing great! I’m currently visiting family for the holidays and enjoying taking a bit of time off after a busy year.

When did you start to pursue acting?

It was something I think I always wanted to try, but I didn’t have opportunities outside of school and church theater growing up. I always thought that I would have to live in California or New York and look a certain way to do anything more and just assumed it would always be a hobby. Then, after I graduated from high school, I noticed that people were starting to release covers and original music on platforms like YouTube and thought that was something I’d like to try. In the process, I stumbled on a casting call for an independent animated short that needed voice actors. I knew I had a microphone built into my laptop and was familiar with using free recording software, so I tossed my hat into the ring thinking it might be fun. Everything started to snowball from there.

When did you decide that voice acting was a career you’d like to do?

For the longest time I treated voice acting for indie productions (typically animation, audio drama, and games) like a hobby – I thought it was basically the internet’s equivalent to community theater and I didn’t set out with any major goals. It was just fun! But, after a year or two, I occasionally began to book paid jobs and I realized it was something I might be able to make supplemental income from. I started to get some repeat clients and learned which websites were best to find more work and it became a profitable side hustle. I think after five to six years it finally clicked that maybe voice acting could be a real career and I started trying to aim for that possibility, while still assuming it was deeply unlikely. I’m thirteen years in now, but very grateful that I proved myself wrong.

What other things in the entertainment industry do you do beside voice acting?

I really fell in love with audio engineering and sound design and actually got my bachelor’s degree in sound for cinema. I assumed that was a much more practical and stable career and originally planned for that to be how I would support my acting work. I worked steadily as a recording engineer for anime and video games for a few years and still do so from time to time. I’m also passionate about writing and was able to translate that into adapting dubbing scripts for anime and live action films, though I’d love to get back to my roots in fiction writing as well. I love challenging myself and learning new things, so I’ve also dabbled in a bit of directing, game development, and music composition. I wish I had more time (or clones) to do it all!

What has been a challenging voice over session ? What has been the most fun?

I’d say one of my most challenging sessions was probably the time I recorded with a ruptured cyst. I was in a tremendous amount of pain, but it was a situation where I was not in any kind of medical danger and had been told by my doctor that all I could do was take lots of Ibuprofen and ride it out. I can’t say I would recommend doing what I did to anyone else, but that session was a huge career milestone I had been looking forward to and I didn’t have a ton of lines or strenuous work. My director was endlessly gracious and supportive and I think they could sense I needed to be there and pretend to be someone else for a few minutes to stay sane. In hindsight, it’s one of my best experiences in the booth, despite how much I was struggling at the time.

As for most fun, it’s definitely hard to pick. I’ve had a ton of great sessions this year especially, though I think working on Spy x Family stands out as a huge highlight. Cris, Megan, and Dallas are all fantastic directors and really make the experience a blast. 

Which voice actor or actress do you admire?

The honest and truthful answer is that I admire just about all of them. This industry is filled with a tremendous wealth of talent and it’s genuinely difficult to narrow it down.

That being said, I will always remember one of my first jobs as a recording engineer working with Brittney Karbowski. I was just beginning to fully comprehend how challenging and complicated the anime dubbing process can be, and we were working on some material that I would still consider difficult (lots of lines that covered a wide range of emotions, detailed animation with very specific timing, etc.) I came into the session thinking we would have to record her lines multiple times to get the timing just right and tackle the material in small chunks to make it more manageable. To my surprise, Brittney was easily able to record an entire page of lines in one take, all as she was watching the footage for the first time. We barely needed to make adjustments for timing and her acting was always spot on. It was absolutely mind blowing to see what an actress of her calibur could accomplish and I still strive to be as capable as she is.

What’s it like being part of such a huge Anime as Spy x Family and playing best mom Your? 

It’s genuinely very surreal. I’ve been pinching myself almost daily since I got the call that I was playing Yor because it feels too good to be true. I love being a part of such an incredible story and seeing just how much it resonated with audiences. I couldn’t be more grateful and honored that it now has this place in my life. 

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