Hello everyone, MinaRose2023 here with another great interview, this time with Marissa Lenti.

Thanks for having me!

Hello Marissa, how are you today?

Doing alright. It’s still a struggle, how much I have to stay inside and do all of my work from home. But I’m keeping positive!

What got you interested in voice acting?

When I was a kid, I always had an interest in acting as a craft in general. I took acting classes and did both theater and on-camera work, but I quit after some time because I got self-conscious, and I didn’t like being on stage or on film. When I got a little older, I was still searching for what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, after trying and not liking two different prospective career paths in college. It was around that time that my roommate introduced me to the dub of “Case Closed”, and I realized that being a voice actor for the characters must have been a job I just had never considered, despite how much I liked anime. So, I started researching what it would take to become a voice actor, switched my major to Theater Studies, and the rest is history.

When did you begin your journey to become a voice actor?

While I was still attending Emerson College, I began taking classes at a nearby recording studio in Boston. I then started voice acting online, recording for indie games and things like that. Then, when I graduated in 2014, I moved to Texas to pursue working with the companies there– including FUNimation, Gearbox, Sentai Filmworks, and others (all of whom I would end up working with over my several years living there). I auditioned for “Fairy Tail” after about a year of applying and sending my resume to FUNimation, which was my first big audition. My first anime project, a few months later, was doing background voices for a show called “Tokyo ESP”, and then shortly afterwards, I booked a different role in Fairy Tail aside from the one I’d auditioned for. That role– Libra– is still one of my most popular roles despite me being so new when I voiced her. All of those opportunities, from the audition to the first named role, were all given to me by a director I’d met named Tyler Walker. I owe him a lot in getting me started.

How is it for you to be behind the mic and also direct for anime? 

It really is a dream come true, despite how absolutely crushing it can be at times. It’s a hard industry to flourish in due to how intensely competitive it is, and often it can be hard to press onwards when it feels like you’re spinning your wheels. But when I’m behind the mic, I really do feel like I found the thing I’m supposed to be doing. It’s fun, it combines my interests with my skills, and I feel like I’m genuinely good at it, so I wouldn’t trade it for the world even when times are at their toughest. Meanwhile, directing was an unexpected love. I didn’t set out with any idea that I would eventually be directing anime dubs, I just wanted to be an actor who got to voice the characters myself. But the longer I worked in the anime field, the more I wanted to be involved, and you basically can’t get any more involved than starting to work staff positions. In this section of the industry, the person I have to credit with getting me started on my way is Aaron Dismuke. He taught me how to write scripts as well as how to direct. He let me shadow him while he worked, critiqued my scripts, and eventually hired me to be his AD on an anime called “Nanbaka”. From there, I’d AD a bunch at FUNimation on various peoples’ shows, and then eventually get hired at Sound Cadence Studios as one of their main directors. I love working there. I get all the freedom to be as quirky and out there with my casting as I like, and I do think it pays off. I care intensely about each show I work on and I always want it to be as perfect as possible. I also get very protective of my actors, haha. They’re like my kids, even if they’re older than me. Directing means getting to meet so many amazingly talented people, squeeze gold out of them, and then wave at them as they go on their way. It makes you so connected to people in your industry in a way that I treasure a lot– and it also gives you the power to reach outside of the bubble of the industry and pull in people from other fields, too, who might have something valuable to give to the dubbing scene, like singers, film actors, etc. I love being able to do that. It gives me a huge blast of serotonin when the dub finally comes together and the fans like it. It’s one of my biggest professional joys right now, so I don’t see myself stopping directing anytime soon.