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Like an abbess, but 10 letters later.

Provided you survived that "joke", this week we've got a women truly in the background of your life. Having done countless commercials and narration bit across her multi-decade career, Kay Bess is just now getting into the realm of character work (although of course commercials are characters all their own).

Kay talks about working suddenly on Rise Of The Tomb Raider, how listening is just as important as speaking in voice work, and her new podcast The B-Hive where you can listen to her talk to yet more voice actors (if this show isn't enough for you. It's ok, we can take it.)

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Don't be Garudo, there's a lady present.

God that was just awful. Moving along....

Elizabeth Maxwell may be relatively new to this whole voice acting thing, but she's managed to snag some choice roles in the short time. From Ymir on Attack On Titan to the latest actress behind Motoko Kusanagi in Ghost In The Shell, she's made her mark in anime, while roles in XCom 2, Shadow Warrior 2 and as Lady Urbosa in Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild have given her exposure to videogamers (or at least those who can find a Switch).

Elizabeth chats with Evan about the inherent gassiness of voice actors, auditioning for the room and her D&D characters. Also something about Virgin Cheerleaders In Chains. Not so sure about that one.

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Tom, Tom, the Ryder's Son...

Tom Taylorson may be a relative newcomer to the world of video game voice work (although I'd imagine Octodad: Dadliest Catch was quite the trial by fire), but after starting out on the mean streets...er...mean sound booths of Chicago doing commercials and audio books before getting cast as one of the leads in another small indie game called Mass Effect: Andromeda.

Tom chats with Evan about all the cool people he's worked with (up to and including FOTS Fryda Wolff), the importance of the next job even when the current job is amazing, and going on picnics with Clancy Brown.

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Fun fact: the plural of Eggman is Eggmani.

Mike Pollack has a career spanning much of the heyday of American television anime. From humble beginnings in Little Tug's Big Adventure (we honestly tried to find a clip of this. Way to drop the ball, Internet), Mike became a regular in the 4Kids lineup of shows with roles on Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh and Viva Pinata before becoming the latest to voice Sonic The Hedgehog's nemesis, Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik.

Mike talks with Evan about honing his skills in radio, navigating New York public transit in a business that sometimes gives 1 hour notice about work, and how audio books should always come with pronunciation guides (and sometimes very strong coffee). You can hear Mike in the ongoing Sonic Boom series as well as numerous commercials and audio books.

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I don't even want to think about what a The Voice Behind Honest Trailer would cover...

Jon Bailey may be the Epic Voice Guy, but he's really just a guy from Tennesee who parlayed a MySpace page made by his wife into a career where he gets to trash movies and video games, voice his favorite Robot In Disguise and help other people make a bunch of money (fingers crossed...).

Jon chats with Evan about being a deep voiced little child, answering pop up ads and the crazy relationship between Hollywood and YouTube. He also geeks out about Transformers, crows about his puppeteering skills and contemplates moving his family across the country to pursue his VO dreams.

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If the industrial workers union can be called the Wobblies, may I sugggest that the voice actor union be called the Warblies?

Assuming you aren't running away screaming from this post with that horrific semi-pun, this episode we welcome back JB Blanc back on to The Voice Behind. JB joined Evan and Fryda Wolff a year ago to discuss a possible SAG-AFTRA strike as voice actors sought better protections and more transparency from video game publishers. Now it's a year later, and once again the threat of strike looms.

JB isn't all about sticking it to cats of various marbling, though. He talks American vs British accents, the importance of doing your homework, being confronted by anime fans at his first convention and working on shows like Hellsing, Beware The Batman, Wii Yoga, Saint's Row and hundreds of other video games.

If you'd like to follow the ongoing conversation regarding the voice actor's union's contract, just keep an eye on #PerformanceMatters.

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"Chris Smith" isn't his name, of course, merely an alias for....I may have said too much.

The man known as Christopher Smith has given voice to such memorable characters as That Guy Who Gets Blown Up in Robotech, Yelling Space Guy in Captain Haarlock and other, less well known roles such as the Joker in Lego Batman, Luke Skywalker in Phineas and Ferb: Star Wars (which there are no clips of, thank you very much Disney) and the as-yet unrevealed character somewhere in this trailer for the upcoming Mafia 3.

Chris chats with Evan about his love of Simba, I mean Kimba the White Lion, working the night shift as Thug #3 and being in so many games and shows that it's hard to keep them all straight.

Patreon supports can get an exclusive clip of Chris talking about working with 3 out of the 4 Ninja Turtles.

You'd think a Brit with the last name of Britton would be at least an honorary duke or something.

While Jay Britton may not be minor royalty, he is a very nice guy. From offering a unique brand of voice coaching focusing more on the business of acting, to celebrating other talents on his website, Jay could be seen as just a prolific enabler. But no, he had to go and win a few awards for his own voice work. Jay's the archetypal working voice actor, handling animation, commercials, corporate narration, even branching into audio books.

Jay chats with Evan about being the voice and body of Talking Tom, getting experience with many kinds of motion capture, working globally and why American's just love a British (or should we say Britt-ish?*) accent.

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*no, we shouldn't.

Augmented for your listening pleasure.

It's hard not to make a "I didn't ask for this joke" when talking about Deus Ex, but out of respect for Elias Toufexis, we will restrain ourselves. Before he was known as Adam Jensen, Elias started his video game career not as a voice actor so much as an on-screen actor in Need For Speed: Carbon. Since then he's done roles in Assassin's Creed 2, Splinter Cell: Conviction and Farcry Primal when he's not doing on-camera work for shows like Supernatural, The Expanse or Alphas.

Elias talks with Evan about the joys of having an E name...ok not really, but they do discuss getting replaced on a game after working on it for years, snapping to T even when it's not needed and swapping kid duty with your voice acting wife.

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Dude just gives off huge waves of nerd.

This week's guest Matthew Mercer has quite the storied career in anime, starting as a mere high schooler and moving on to roles in Kill La Kill, Naruto and Attack on Titan. He's also picked up a few video game roles like Leon in the Resident Evil games, MacCready in Fallout 4 and Anarky in Arkham: Origins.

Matt sits down with Evan in a temporarily vacant conference room at GenCon 2016 to talk about taking care of yourself at conventions, snaking roles from your dad and his critically (get it?) acclaimed webseries Critical Role, where he plays Dungeon Master to past guest Liam O'Brien and some other fantastic voice talent that haven't done this show yet but we love them anyway.

Given Matt's schedule at the con, this is a short show, but we'll get him on soon to dig deeper into his career.

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