[SPEAKER_04]: Welcome to Crooked Stories Theatre.
[SPEAKER_04]: Today we bring you part two of our three-part Devil's Do Actors Roundtable.
[SPEAKER_04]: Here, I want to bring in Olivia.
[SPEAKER_04]: I haven't had a chance to talk to her yet.
[SPEAKER_04]: But one of your scenes, Olivia, the dying scene, which I am what is episode four, I believe that it is.
[SPEAKER_04]: And you're acting side by side with Jared in that scene.
[SPEAKER_04]: And with the same challenges, it's a very emotional scene, but you're playing off of somebody.
[SPEAKER_04]: How difficult is something like that for you?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's one of my biggest challenges getting into boys acting, especially since I was technically trained for the stage, which is all directly interacting with somebody right in front of you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, oh yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it is, it's hard to overcome.
[SPEAKER_00]: I found the best way to do it is to at least give a lot of variety in that sort of in your takes.
[SPEAKER_00]: So kind of it goes to your editor for a while of where it goes,
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, it helps to make a more coherent scene and and just trying to stay authentic to the emotions that the scene is getting and how you're interpreting it as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: It, you know, you're, you're a fellow actors usually also know what they're doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it, it's, um, it's still difficult, but I find that that variety really helps.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so when you're you're looking at a script, you get a script for the first time you've opened it up, you're taking a look at your character, how do you go about making decisions for that character and deciding how you're going to how you're going to play it?
[SPEAKER_04]: What are the types of things that you look for and determining the type of delivery that you're going to give to a scene?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what, I'm gonna go on a fallback phrase of just instincts are the best stinks, half the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Usually, how I first want to interpret a scene is what I end up going back to.
[SPEAKER_00]: The other thing is reading ahead as much as possible.
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, that wasn't super possible with this one.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were kind of going one episode at a time, but always if you can read the whole thing and then go back and read it again with that context of later on,
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, so I'm hearing right faster is what you're saying to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's fast as possible.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, noted.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so maybe if you had a red all eight episodes in one sitting, would it have, would it have, do you think impacted your performance in some of the earlier episodes?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it would have a bit, maybe not anything particularly noticeable but I would have felt like it would have made a difference and maybe that's all it takes.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[UNKNOWN]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, so the first point that we hear from Rachel is in the saloon, and it's kind of a ghostly presence, and then I would say the next point that we hear from Rachel is, I believe it's when you're dying.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's right, there's a pretty big range.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that was it, too, is because when I got that first couple of lines, I'm like, okay, it's clearly foreboding.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I, and you know, I got the character description that this is a revenge story.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I had at least that, but it was kind of a, so what are we going for right now?
[SPEAKER_00]: And just let me throw a few things that the wall see with sticks.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, well you did a great job and we're so so happy that you were cast in that role and we're looking forward to I know you're you're going to be in roles going going forward for us to so and appreciate having you on the project.
[SPEAKER_04]: And now, and somebody who, and a lot, let me say this too, and this will be a transition into talking to Jack here.
[SPEAKER_04]: I have to apologize a little bit to your character.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think I, I think I reached out and told you this.
[SPEAKER_04]: I feel like in the story, your character is the most underserved character in the story.
[SPEAKER_04]: Rachel is such a huge part of what's going on.
[SPEAKER_04]: But I don't feel like as a writer, I explored enough of what was going into Rachel's motivations and propelling her forward.
[SPEAKER_04]: So season two is going to be a lot about
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, I think Rachel and her motivations and trying to get right with Walt.
[SPEAKER_04]: So yes, we are doing a season two and Olivia.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, you are going to have your your character is going to have a bigger part.
[SPEAKER_04]: So sorry that that I didn't didn't do right by you in the first season, but that we're going to make it right.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll make up for it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, which allows me to transition to Jack Parker, another person who I'm going to go ahead and take this opportunity to apologize for because let me let me go ahead and share here real quick.
[SPEAKER_04]: The very first file that I got from Jack.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, no.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is from episode one.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm not going to share the whole thing, but I'll just play a little bit.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeser.
[SPEAKER_09]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: Anybody knows the pattern there?
[SPEAKER_08]: If there is a way to say those words, I try to find them along the way.
[SPEAKER_04]: That was almost the entirety of your episode one performance there, and so I want to talk a little bit about the way things developed between you and I and for your character.
[SPEAKER_04]: So when I've, I've devils do start it off as like a six-page short, and I just wrote it for an online screenwriting contest.
[SPEAKER_04]: And when I decided to expand it out into eight episodes, I took the short, and the short is basically the first two episodes.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I took the short kind of cut it in half and expanded that world out to tell the first two episodes.
[SPEAKER_04]: But I knew we were doing an audio only format and the short was written as all of my work is to be filmed.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I knew the big challenge to converting to an all-audio format was going to be how to tell the story how to get into the character's heads.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so the first thing I knew I had to do was in order to tell Walt's story I was going to have to figure out a way to get into Walt's head.
[SPEAKER_04]: And Nathan is the choice that I made to get into Walt's head.
[SPEAKER_04]: was written into the script for two purposes.
[SPEAKER_04]: One is because I knew I wanted to hire Jack to play a character and I wanted somebody for, well, to talk to, because I didn't want wall riding around out in the planes, talking to himself.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, it's just, it's a simple screenwriter's decision, but I just needed some mechanism.
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, but I can see, and this is, this is a bit of confession for me here.
[SPEAKER_04]: I can see in my writing that I didn't, I knew this was your first job ever, and I could see that I didn't, I don't know if I didn't, I don't want to say I didn't trust you, but I didn't.
[SPEAKER_04]: Probably.
[SPEAKER_04]: And probably.
[SPEAKER_08]: Well, it's basically so.
[SPEAKER_04]: No, no.
[SPEAKER_04]: But I can see, I can see in my writing how I'm like pulling back.
[SPEAKER_04]: in the writing.
[SPEAKER_04]: And when I got that file, I was like, no, I just, I cannot do this to you.
[SPEAKER_04]: And this was, for me, it was a huge, one of the biggest things that I learned out of this project was how to write for actors, there was nothing that you could have done with those lines.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, you did the best you could, you did everything you could with it, but I gave you no chance with those lines, and so I don't know if you remember, but I came back and said, look, we're going to rewrite some of these lines and we're kind of beef them up a little bit.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we were able to do that a little tiny bit in episode one, but because I hadn't written all eight episodes, then going forward, I was able to write your character in a more full way.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I remember specifically asking you the question, knowing that episode six was coming, would you be comfortable doing an emotional scene?
[SPEAKER_04]: Do you remember when I asked that question in your response?
[SPEAKER_08]: I don't necessarily remember my word for word response, but I remember
[SPEAKER_08]: looking forward to it and definitely wanting to, you know, this is, this is in a lot of ways a dream come true for me growing up just loving acting, performing, voice acting, and everything involved in it, and to just be given the opportunity to go beyond the yesers in the okay, but to really see could, could this be something I could actually do?
[SPEAKER_08]: You know, could I do it?
[SPEAKER_08]: You know, I always dreamed of doing it, but could I actually do it?
[SPEAKER_08]: I wanted to at least give it a shot.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think, for me, the moment that I really got confidence in the fact that I knew you could do it, it was actually in the next time on segment, probably was episode two, next time on, and it had the moment where you are seeing Walt
[SPEAKER_04]: pulls out the, pulls out the pistol and he puts it to the side of his head and he doesn't have any bullets in the gun, but he's, you don't know that, and you're like, well, no, and I just, yeah, yeah, and that was like for me, it was like, it was only like four words.
[SPEAKER_04]: But that was the moment where I was like, okay, I need to trust you and I do trust you and from that point on.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then knowing that episode six was coming.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so I asked you, would you be comfortable doing a big emotional scene?
[SPEAKER_04]: And you basically, your response wasn't just, yeah, I'd like to give it a try.
[SPEAKER_04]: Your response was, yeah, I really, really want to do it.
[SPEAKER_04]: And you basically said, push me.
[SPEAKER_04]: Because I said, I'm going to, I'm going to take you as far as I possibly can emotionally.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it turns out that you deliver probably my favorite line in the entire eight episodes.
[SPEAKER_04]: And as almost as a challenge to episode one, where you just had yes sir, my favorite line is actually only one word line.
[SPEAKER_08]: Ah, yes.
[SPEAKER_08]: I know the one you're meaning.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, you want to say it?
[SPEAKER_04]: Mom?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yep, that's it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Mom, so you were able to pack all of that into that.
[SPEAKER_08]: I'm a writer stream.
[SPEAKER_08]: Just give me like one or two words.
[SPEAKER_08]: One or two, right, you know.
[SPEAKER_08]: I'll give you all I got.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well I mean that did it turned out to that whole scene that whole sequence at the end of episode seven I think it's just fantastic and I want to talk to Jason next about emotional acting because of that episode seven scene.
[SPEAKER_04]: But finishing with with you, Jared and Jason just you know the three reactions to what they've seen as they're standing there looking at the grave, you know Rachel's grave.
[SPEAKER_04]: That was just a highlight moment for me, almost chills when it's special, but the highlight there is just mom.
[SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, a kind of an apology and also a thank you for giving and teaching me the biggest lesson that I could learn in this series, and that was
[SPEAKER_04]: trust your actors and push them because I feel like the more I pushed everybody the more and it's not even pushed isn't the right word.
[SPEAKER_04]: The more opportunity I gave to the actors in terms of emotional content and stuff.
[SPEAKER_04]: The more that was coming back into the project and that was a huge lesson for me.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's a good transition over to Jason.
[SPEAKER_04]: So Jason, I wanted to talk to you about that episode 7 scene.
[SPEAKER_04]: Let me go ahead and play just this little bit here.
[SPEAKER_04]: Just to remind everybody that what I'm talking about.
[SPEAKER_07]: Well, drop to his knees.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm sorry brother.
[SPEAKER_05]: I tried.
[SPEAKER_05]: I tried to do the right thing.
[SPEAKER_05]: I tried to give you peace.
[SPEAKER_05]: I tried to be a father to you, beautiful little daughter.
[SPEAKER_05]: I tried, I tried to give her a good home when I couldn't.
[SPEAKER_05]: I tried to watch over, protect her.
[SPEAKER_05]: I just, I failed.
[SPEAKER_05]: I didn't see her standing there.
[SPEAKER_05]: Ah, I swear, I would have never let her see what she saw.
[SPEAKER_05]: Her father, oh God, dying.
[SPEAKER_05]: Shot as she watched the poor girl.
[SPEAKER_05]: It was mercy, but not for her.
[SPEAKER_05]: It was hell.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know, Jason, that entire scene is just for me and I knew all the way from the very beginning when I started writing that that was a moment that we were going to get to and I knew that that was going to be a good season right now.
[SPEAKER_07]: I mean, that's right.
[SPEAKER_04]: No, seriously.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's what it was.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's the emotion.
[SPEAKER_07]: That's the emotion.
[SPEAKER_07]: He's putting into that.
[SPEAKER_07]: I mean, that's incredible.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's a little bit of what I want to talk about is building to that scene and I knew it was coming and Jason knew it was coming and he and I workshopped that scene one evening and Jason I don't know if you want to talk about that experience at all but if you could at least talk a little bit about what it takes to build to an emotional scene like that and how do you how are you able to tap into that and release that as an actor?
[SPEAKER_06]: That and yeah these are not fake emotions.
[SPEAKER_06]: This is real.
[SPEAKER_06]: So for me that scene hit really close to home because my wife and I are trying to have children right now.
[SPEAKER_06]: So I thought about
[SPEAKER_06]: you know, if I had a, you know, had difficulty having children.
[SPEAKER_06]: And then now I'm watching someone who's only child is watch, I've noticed that the man that I just killed although out of mercy, his only daughter is now, has just watched that happen.
[SPEAKER_06]: And at her age, she's, she's
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, and I tried to think of, you know, the weight in the implication that might have on a child and for the rest of their life and then how is that relationship going to be now that I'm having to adopt this child who's just seen me killed her father and how difficult that's going to be.
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, and my wife and I are, you know, we're exploring foster care and adoption and things like that.
[SPEAKER_06]: So of course, I mean, that hits right in my heart, you know, and I think about that.
[SPEAKER_06]: But then, you know, I also try to think about it from another perspective, from the perspective of a father.
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, and him, and I said, okay, I thought about, I know like Nigel is dying, but what did it take for him to ask for his brother to kill him, knowing that his daughter is going to be left behind?
[SPEAKER_06]: So I kind of took all of that and ingested it into that scene and now here, we're 25 years or 20 years, however long it was and the scene later,
[SPEAKER_06]: And Walt has tried to be, he's tried to be hard.
[SPEAKER_06]: He's tried to hold this all in.
[SPEAKER_06]: He's got the guilt over what happened in that card scene.
[SPEAKER_06]: I don't want to spoil too much.
[SPEAKER_06]: But the decision that was made during that card scene that we talked about earlier, he's dealing with that.
[SPEAKER_06]: There was the scene we talked about where he had the gun to his head, where it looked like he was about to take his own life.
[SPEAKER_06]: He's carrying all these things, including the loss of his brother.
[SPEAKER_06]: He's revisiting this place for the first time and now all of it has to hit home.
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, so I just thought about like if I had repressed all of that for all these years on top of all the emotions that I felt before, how would that hit me in that moment?
[SPEAKER_06]: And every time I listen to it, it hits me again because I think about it.
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, I think about when I lost my own father, you know, there was just several, you know, several things that came into play, you know, during that scene.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I thank you for the opportunity, you know, to experience that, because in a way, I think it was therapeutic for me and my journey, you know, with my family and pursuit of children and my own relationship with my father and the rest of my family.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, it wasn't, in the words of Tom Hanks, it wasn't acting, it was becoming, you know, in that moment.
[SPEAKER_06]: I didn't act sad, I was, I was sad, I was grieving, you know, I was dealing with that loss in that moment.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, yeah, I mean, obviously that's a very difficult, very personal process, and you, in a sense, you had to go through it four different times in order to, you know, because we had that first, I remember two, we were like I said, we were workshopping and we were talking about the scene and everything, and then finally, at one point you were just like, you know, what?
[SPEAKER_04]: Let me take a run at it, and you just, yeah, I think you just cold-red the scene.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know, I don't know if you had ever even read it before that point.
[SPEAKER_06]: I think I've read it in front of you and then I said, okay, let me try it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and the boom, and then you just nailed it.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then when it came time, like a month and a half later, you, you, you, because we didn't have that original take.
[SPEAKER_04]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_04]: We had to come back and try and recreate that original take.
[SPEAKER_04]: And, and you took three tries, but you got it on that third try.
[SPEAKER_03]: Your sick man, Paul.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm so sorry.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm so sorry.
[SPEAKER_03]: He's like, yes, Jason, do it again.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_04]: But he did.
[SPEAKER_04]: You sent me two takes of it.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I felt so bad, but I was just like, it's not the same as that original take.
[SPEAKER_06]: Of course.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so we had to like go back and re-explore it just a little bit.
[SPEAKER_04]: Is that like, is that cruel?
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I'm not sure.
[SPEAKER_06]: I think your take on it was what I had given you before was honestly, it was too broken.
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, and I had to kind of like man up a little bit because Walt still, you know, he's not quite
[SPEAKER_06]: broken down.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, still he still won't.
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, he's still we're going to get this thing done and it's going to be all right, you know, like yeah, I had the same conversation with life without you know about Nigel.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, both Walt and Nigel are our Kansas born and bred there, you know, they're like, you know, this this Midwest farm stock in the 1870s.
[SPEAKER_04]: These are these are tough guys.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: And different than farm stock in the 2020s.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, which is all corporate, but the character comes out of this world, and there's a certain toughness there.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so yeah, we couldn't let the character be like,
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know what the two weepy I guess.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think it's the word that you use.
[SPEAKER_04]: I went back and looked at and you said this I'm sending you this this other take and it's less weepy.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and that was the take we ended up using so and that's a good transition over to Ralph I was going to go to Matt sorry Matt.
[SPEAKER_04]: But he's going dinner real quick.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll come here.
[SPEAKER_04]: Matt's going to be in everything we're doing.
[SPEAKER_04]: He's stealing every role I write.
[SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, I'm not feeling so sorry for you Matt, but we're going to get there.
[SPEAKER_03]: Don't, don't, please.
[SPEAKER_04]: But Ralph, yeah, you and I had the exact same conversation about Nigel, Nigel who is the times that we see from Nigel, he's dying.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know why I've got so many people just, that's their scene as they're dying.
[SPEAKER_04]: But Nigel, we had to make sure that we weren't going to weeping with that character.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and also you specifically said, can't be
[SPEAKER_01]: is close to Walt as I was.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I'm so special.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I had to lighten my voice a little bit and you know, still come out with the emotions.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, I'm skewered.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, what does that feel like?
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, but I can think about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so I guess for Jason with with Walt, it's it was kind of a a little bit more of an emotional pain, but for Nigel, it's very much a direct physical pain as is so how challenging is that to act physical pain as a voice actor?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, the fun thing about that is if you have a booth that you can stand up in and you can move
[SPEAKER_01]: that is what you need to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: It frees you up, it allows you to put all the movement into it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And just, there were a lot of times I was like, you know, acting like it was actually through me.
[SPEAKER_01]: So,
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't do that stuff while you're sitting down.
[SPEAKER_01]: It just doesn't work.
[SPEAKER_01]: And everybody who I've dealt with, people who are coaches, casting directors, you name it.
[SPEAKER_01]: They all say, when you're gonna read, stand up.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, in Jared, of course, is standing up right now because he is always ready to go.
[SPEAKER_01]: I always the proud to go.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Good to share it.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's an investment profession.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so Ralph, I mean, you had to combine the physical and the emotional, because that's also a very emotional scene, so you have the combination there.
[SPEAKER_04]: So what people won't know is that, and this is another confession.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is a big confession, night for me is Ralph, you were originally cast as Marvin.
[SPEAKER_04]: But I had to call you up on what way be with the worst day of the entire production for me personally and say we have to switch you off of Marvin and move you over to Nigel, which actually turned out to be, I think really a good move because the performance as Nigel was, I thought very powerful and it worked out really well.
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, but the thing we were running into and you kind of hinted at this was that you and Jason your voice range is so close together that I had you in the in the scene in the pub scene is you're playing cards together and I couldn't I literally I knew both of you and I couldn't tell the two of you apart and so I was like I don't know if you're talking about it all.
[SPEAKER_06]: We don't sound anything alive.
[SPEAKER_04]: As an audio only, it was like the audience has no other cues, you know, it's only what you sound like.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so, you know, for a production standpoint, we, we were not, we just couldn't leave it that same way, thankfully, you were kind to me.
[SPEAKER_04]: You could have, you know, really made a bad day, very way worse.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, thanks.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not really sad when you called.
[SPEAKER_04]: I felt horrible, just absolutely horrible, but we're able to move you and we have you on Nigel and then I don't know why
[SPEAKER_04]: but I decided that that wasn't going to be a problem for the final scene of the entire series and cast you as James also, which somehow I don't know.
[SPEAKER_04]: I was okay with that and I actually do think it ended up working.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it was great and worked.
[SPEAKER_01]: My initial voice for James though was this
[SPEAKER_01]: Don knots, you know, higher pitched kind of guy and, you know, I just picked your him going, please, you know, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you said, no, that's not going to work.
[SPEAKER_01]: So let's try with your normal voice or closer to your normal voice.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the one thing that you didn't say is you,
[SPEAKER_01]: because of Jason, I did not get the preacher role.
[SPEAKER_01]: You went with somebody else because my voice was too close.
[SPEAKER_01]: My thought process of it was too close to where what was.
[SPEAKER_01]: even with the southern twang to it that I added.
[SPEAKER_01]: But Jason's already got that covered.
[SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, it's a, I cast Jason first and then everything had to work off of that.
[SPEAKER_04]: Which is really interesting, it's a process as you're thinking about again, this is all audio only.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like I have all of these talented people, you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_04]: And anybody could play any role almost.
[SPEAKER_04]: But,
[SPEAKER_04]: When you're putting the project together, you have to think in terms of the audience, and how do you provide separation for the audience?
[SPEAKER_04]: So they can understand the difference in the characters and who is speaking in one moment given the next.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's confusing enough as it is for an audience this format.
[SPEAKER_04]: But yeah, it became really important to provide separation.
[SPEAKER_10]: Confusion.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's confusing.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's confusing.
[SPEAKER_10]: It's confusing.
[SPEAKER_06]: Can I tell you?
[SPEAKER_06]: Can I tell them the story?
[SPEAKER_06]: I told you that my mother-in-law.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yes, it's a good place for it.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, this is a really good place for it.
[SPEAKER_06]: And it's completely unexpected.
[SPEAKER_06]: I didn't pick up on it either, but she...
[SPEAKER_06]: is probably out of anyone in my circle, my mother-in-law is the biggest fan of the show.
[SPEAKER_06]: She's listened to every single thing, you know, she every minute in, you know, maybe even multiple times, I don't know, but she's loved the show.
[SPEAKER_06]: She loves all of you guys, but I asked her, I was like, well, what's wrong?
[SPEAKER_06]: Once one of your takeaways from the show, because she's not an actor, she's not techy, she's not a musician, an engineer, anything like that.
[SPEAKER_06]: I said, what would?
[SPEAKER_06]: what what did you have any difficulty with the show and she says no she said well it was all really good she says the only difficult part for me is there were sometimes I just couldn't tell the difference between she's like who was the narrator
[SPEAKER_06]: And who was the young guy that was like, you're you're you're your colleague that traveled with you and I was like, oh my goodness, you're talking about the Steve and and Jack, I believe their father and son.
[SPEAKER_06]: She's like, yeah, I couldn't tell their voices apart sometimes of like, wow, what an interesting observation.
[SPEAKER_06]: And she's like the only one who, I know that picked up on the similarities in YouTube.
[SPEAKER_07]: And we jack, jack had to go, but we have heard that a lot over the years.
[SPEAKER_07]: I know he's heard that a lot that we have been really, yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: And Jackal was, Jackal was says, I don't think our voices necessarily sound alike, but the way we speak is kind of similar.
[SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, I hear it's a very similar experience thing.
[SPEAKER_07]: But yeah, we have heard that a lot.
[SPEAKER_04]: I just find that just so unbelievable.
[SPEAKER_04]: I literally, all these years that I've spent with you guys, and I have never once,
[SPEAKER_04]: I've never once thought that that's really well maybe just heard us too much.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well speaking of providing that difference, this is a good opportunity to bring Matt Candleario into the picture here because once we decided that we just couldn't have Jason and Ralph sitting next to each other in a scene, we're able to pull Matt Candleario over
[SPEAKER_04]: Matt, I want to say, so we had you on the bounty hunter at that point, or did I, because I remember thinking, I just, I wanted you on the team, and I don't remember if I had a place for you initially, or, or, or how, how it worked out, how, what order went in.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, real quick before we get started, Jason, that performance was incredible, by the way, as as a father as well, it kind of hit me on that level that you were talking about and I just, I remember hearing it in the kitchen, I kind of had to stop for a second and I'm like, oh.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, so well done, and then Justin as well, man, the mixing and engineering and the music was just incredible.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, but to get to your question, Paul, you had reached out to me similar to Jason on casting called club because I had auditioned for through casting called club Walt and the preacher separately.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, and I don't know if you had heard something in that and you had gone through and looked at some of my other auditions where I had one that was kind of similar to what we ended up being the bounty hunter that sort of kind of Genetic he spun ex sort of Latin American thing and You kind of had you told me in the message hey, I want to hear that with these lines.
[SPEAKER_03]: Can you audition and we'll kind of go from there
[SPEAKER_03]: and I did and and here we were.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think it was after that you had reached out and said, hey, we're you know, we're having some some what what would you say that there are two similar registers for the characters and and you had me take a swing at that as well.
[SPEAKER_03]: So
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so you end up in the role of Marvin, and then also in the bounty hunter, and talking about this again, that separation, even though Marvin is in episode 1 and 2, and the bounty hunter is in episode 7 and 8, we still wanted to make sure we provided that separation.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so, yeah, we made the decision to go ahead and
[SPEAKER_04]: and give the bounty hunter a different presentation and kind of that accent and that personality.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then you, I want everybody to understand what I asked you to do.
[SPEAKER_04]: I literally made this request of Matt.
[SPEAKER_04]: I said, Matt, I need you to read the bounty hunter lines as the bounty hunter with your action in the style of the preacher.
[SPEAKER_04]: So he had to act as his own character with his own accent, but also in the style and accent of another character.
[SPEAKER_04]: And your reaction was, okay, I was like, yeah, let's try it out.
[SPEAKER_03]: Why not?
[SPEAKER_03]: That was a lot of fun to do, actually.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was nerve-racking, but it was a lot of fun once I got in here.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I mean, I kind of cheated because you sent me the preacher lines you wanted.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I just dropped him into my DAW and just listened to them over and over and over again.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's going to be a better way to do this.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm sure, but I couldn't think of one in the moment.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I just basically looped them until I had it in my head enough.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then it was sort of like a 3, 2, 1 go and I would do it over his.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think I sent them to you and I remember being really excited, like, yeah, I nailed it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Here you go.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: You literally did.
[SPEAKER_04]: You said in the email, you're like, nailed it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I played it.
[SPEAKER_04]: And you nailed it.
[SPEAKER_04]: But yeah, we wanted the two reasons that went into that decision is we won.
[SPEAKER_04]: It was the same character, you know, against spoiler alert, but the bounty hunter is the preacher.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I wanted some of that preacher personality in those the delivery of those lines, and then also because it's kind of those transition point.
[SPEAKER_04]: We wanted to overlay the two, and Justin can talk a little bit about what he did with this.
[SPEAKER_04]: We wanted to overlay the two deliveries, the two characters, each saying the exact same lines.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then we wanted to kind of phase between the two, as if the transition was happening right in that moment.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I remember you saying that you're like, I don't know if this is going to work.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know if we're going to use this.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I had kind of a sneak peek before I sent it to you,
[SPEAKER_03]: one on top of the other, oh, this is going to be great.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is going to be, this is eerie and kind of spooky and also, you know, kind of that sci-fi sort of line that we're, we're pushing up against.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was like, this is going to be awesome.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, man.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: I was so concerned about that.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like you said, I wasn't sure if it was going to work.
[SPEAKER_04]: I had, I could hear it in my head and I knew what I wanted it to sound like, but I didn't know if we were going to be able to physically pull it off.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I hated to ask you to do that because I felt like that was a really big challenge.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I didn't want to ask you to do that.
[SPEAKER_04]: You put in all the effort and then I go, yeah, no, it didn't work.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're not going to use it.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I mean, that's kind of the name of the game at a certain point, you know, is just trying the stuff out and if it doesn't work, it doesn't work, you know, but at least you got to take the swing I knew I knew you liked it a lot because you came back and he said, hey, I think I kind of want to try this with all the lines and I'm like, please no, I'll do it, please no.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody's goal Paul is to make you happy.
[SPEAKER_01]: as long as you're happy, we'll do whatever it takes.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really, really smooth.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone, I'm miserable.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm really, really mean guy if I'm not happy.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I'm sorry everybody.
[SPEAKER_04]: No, yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, and Chris, I was asking him to kind of do the same thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a little bit easier for him because it was more like, hey, I need you to read his lines, the bounty hunter lines as the preacher.
[SPEAKER_04]: So it was a little bit of a different ask for him than it was for you.
[SPEAKER_04]: But just and once you got that, what else did you have to do to that to make those little moments work?
[SPEAKER_10]: So there's a, yeah, it depends on
[SPEAKER_10]: where we're at in the scene.
[SPEAKER_10]: I think we did it a few times.
[SPEAKER_10]: So I have to pick and choose how I want to approach each one.
[SPEAKER_10]: I don't want to copy any effects baseline, simple automation.
[SPEAKER_10]: I've got you know raising and lowering of all just the easy one.
[SPEAKER_10]: There's a few tricks up my sleeve that you can do.
[SPEAKER_10]: I mean, obviously just a hair reverberable, maybe a little delay, maybe a voice changer or a vocalizer, really help add that.
[SPEAKER_10]: really the voice acting helps so much.
[SPEAKER_10]: I mean, there's a few instances I kind of did shop shop and kind of add some, you know, stutters on purpose, but really just the voice acting itself helped carry out carry so much of the feel that we were going for there.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, well, it's a little bit different, too, if you listen to the transition in episode 7 versus the transition in episode 8 and we wanted 8 to be kind of like, you know, where all comes together and in the biggest, most dramatic way and you did it with those two transitions so episode 8 is is even more intense experience than episode 7 with the exact same mechanism going on.
[SPEAKER_10]: Right.
[SPEAKER_10]: And I think, I know what to talk about faster writing to.
[SPEAKER_10]: I quickly learned to that it was good to save a few bag of tricks for later and always had that extra vocalizer effect.
[SPEAKER_10]: And there's so many different options you can pull from.
[SPEAKER_10]: And you don't want to get to do there's so many options.
[SPEAKER_10]: You don't want to do too much.
[SPEAKER_10]: You don't want to do too little.
[SPEAKER_10]: What's the right weight that it carries?
[SPEAKER_10]: What's too much of an impact?
[SPEAKER_10]: And you really don't want to drown out the actual voice acting.
[SPEAKER_10]: And I do an accent effect every once in a while with the, you know, the preacher other scenes too that might not even be heard, but it might be felt.
[SPEAKER_10]: But yeah, I mean, that episode 8 definitely had more intensive use of the vocalizer effect that I was using.
[SPEAKER_10]: And, you know, I had a lot of fun doing it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you for joining us for part two of the Devil's Do Actors Round Table, part three drops early tomorrow and then it's onto our next projects papers and alien press conference.
[SPEAKER_04]: We'll see you again soon.