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IN THE ROOM WITH
Spotlighting the people and projects you need to know
In the Room With
Julie Ashton
The prolific voiceover CD shares her process and what stands out in an audition
By Elyse Roth
IF YOU’RE A FAN OF ADULT ANIMATION, CHANCES ARE YOU’VE
heard the work of Julie Ashton. The renowned casting director broke into the world of animation when she got a call from “Bob’s Burgers” creator Loren Bouchard, and her work on that show led to collaborations with the team on Apple TV+’s “Central Park” and Fox’s “The Great North,” as well as Netflix’s “Big Mouth” and its forthcoming spinoff. Her background in sketch and comedy prepared her for finding multitalented performers who could channel their skills into voice performances. It’s opened up a whole new world of talent for Ashton, who here shares her process and what she wants to hear on a demo reel or self-tape.
How is casting a musical animated show like “Central Park” different from something more traditional like “Bob’s Burgers” or “The Great
North”? It is very different. We have lots of shows that have songs on them, but not a show that’s almost strictly a musical. From week to week, when we have new characters, we discuss who we know [who] can sing and act and be funny and have a great voice for the show. Because of COVID-19, Broadway performers weren’t working. We were able to utilize so many of these brilliant Broadway people and musical people for the show.
How do you know if a live-action performer can handle
a voice role? Probably the hardest thing is to create a character that’s believable and grounded and also interesting enough that it matches up with the wonderful animation on our shows. I really admire actors who can create a complete character without us even seeing them on the screen. I get auditions for people every single day, and they’re just reading lines and yet somehow making me laugh and get emotional. The thought of them being able to do so off me sitting there, literally looking at a blank screen and only hearing their voice— that gives me the chills.
How do actors end up voicing several characters on a
show? We have people on our shows who are unbelievable voiceover actors, who we know are capable of doing anything. When you get a script, there are multiple roles. With one-liners, there are 80 or so characters; then we start to think: Who do we have that we can utilize their amazing talents and fill in all these holes? And then we have guest stars who can pick up extra roles when they have that range in their voice. There’s never been a time when we’ve said, “Hey can somebody do this voice?” and they’ve said, “No, I don’t think I can do that.” They always want to give it a shot, because it’s so much fun. And I think it’s also really creatively freeing and inspiring for the actors to be able to stretch themselves that way.
What’s the difference between casting live-action and ani-
mation? We have our favorite people who we know and love and trust, and who we can use over and over and over again. And you wouldn’t even know it, because they’re doing different characters that they’ve created. I had done a lot of kids’ casting and comedy; I can’t use an actor over and over again on those. I’m lucky enough to be with a group of people that we all have the same sensibilities and our favorites, and then, luckily, they’re creating all kinds of new characters for our shows, where we’re bringing in a diverse selection of people and getting self-tapes and turned on to these brand-new people, and they happen to be amazing voiceover people.
Want more?
Read the full interview at backstage.com/magazine
In Her PurposeWHAT’S THE COMMON THREAD BETWEEN
an ensemble drama in downtown Chicago, a queer coming-of-age comedy in modern-day Hollywood, a Black “Bonnie and Clyde,” a Emmy winner Lena Waithe talks honesty, perseverance, docuseries about sneaker culture, and a searingly intimate marriage story? The answer, and “craft, craft, craft” of course, is Lena Waithe, the creative force behind Showtime’s “The Chi,” BET’s By Jack Smart - Photographed by Shayan Asgharnia “Twenties,” the award-winning film “Queen & Slim,” Quibi’s “You Ain’t Got These,” and Netflix’s “Master of None,” respectively. Ask Waithe herself what connects such disparate projects, and you get a glimpse at the creative instincts of a true Hollywood multihyphenate: The variety of the work is part of the point. “I don’t want to be known for doing one thing,” Waithe tells Backstage. “I’m definitely someone that colors outside spawned the 2014 indie hit “Dear White the lines; I don’t live inside a box. And I’m People”—around the time Waithe booked always trying to do something that feels hon- her first acting gigs on “The Comeback” and est and new and different and interesting, then Aziz Ansari’s “Master of None,” despite and in many different forms.” having no on-camera aspirations. Chatting via webcam, Waithe alternates But being ready for opportunity, in whatbetween speaking at a rapid clip, idea upon ever form it takes, has been central to her idea spilling out of her, and listening intently, mission from the jump. “I think sometimes as if with her whole being. You get the sense people prefer artists to be inside a box, that those qualities lend themselves well to because it’s like, ‘OK, you do this one thing someone who’s used to leading a writers’ really well. Always do that.’ Sometimes that room, or jumping from pitch meeting to works, you know? Sometimes it makes press interview to AT&T commercial voice- sense. But for me, it can be suffocating. It’s over gig. Waithe is doing all that and more, like telling Mary J. Blige, ‘Only sing happy particularly in the COVID-19 era, when “you love songs.’ ” actually can become more productive by That refusal to be pigeonholed is more being at home,” she says with a laugh. “I can than just a means of survival or a creative have five meetings in the span of literally an mission statement; it can pay the bills. In 2017, afternoon. There are two writers’ rooms up Waithe became the first Black woman to win right now that I can jump [into] quickly right a writing Emmy for “Master of None” Season after this Zoom!” 2’s “Thanksgiving,” an episode inspired by her Born in Chicago and having aimed “to be own coming-out story. Again, she could have considered one of the greats in television” stayed in one lane, just playing the character since childhood, Waithe transferred her job of Denise. “I had no plans of ever writing on at Blockbuster to a Los Angeles location soon the show, actually, because I really wanted to after graduating from Columbia College keep it separate,” she says. She was focused Chicago. Years of juggling survival gigs with on her first blockbuster feature role in Steven low-paying internships at networks and stu- Spielberg’s “Ready Player One” when Ansari dios eventually led to assisting an executive insisted on the two of them churning out the producer on a sitcom (“Girlfriends”); writing episode together in three days. for a procedural (“Bones”); producing shorts “People always say, ‘What’s the highlight and viral videos; and working with the likes of your career?’ ” reflects Waithe. “It’s not of Gina Prince-Bythewood, Queen Latifah, winning the Emmy. It’s the smoothness and Justin Simien. The latter collaboration with which Aziz and I wrote that episode in
—Lena Waithe
London over the course of a weekend. And it was because I had been writing, watching so much TV, doing so much studying and listening and learning, that when the time came… To me, it’s the equivalent of somebody passing to [Michael] Jordan. He’s got a few seconds on the shot and he has to clear it. It’s not the shot-making. It’s all the things he has to do to be in position to make the shot, period. That’s the win.”
Waithe’s big break also mirrors two interconnected entertainment industry trends of the past few years: more and more up-and-coming artists embracing the term “multihyphenate,” and Hollywood’s mainstream expanding (slowly but surely) to invest in stories from creators who happen to be female, Black, or queer. Waithe, who is all of the above, remains at the forefront of the fight for diversity both on- and off-camera—a growing movement built on “shepherding and encouraging community,” as she says.
“I’m part of a creative community with Issa Rae and Donald Glover and Justin Simien and Terence Nance and Michaela Coel,” she adds. “I knew all these cats coming up.” It’s no coincidence that her production house, Hillman Grad Productions (a nod to the fictitious college in “A Different World,” a favorite sitcom of Waithe’s), features a community-based Mentorship Lab designed to forge the kind of professional partnerships that led to those creatives’ varied successes. It’s a blueprint for creating more inclusive spaces in a more equitable industry—proof that a rising tide can lift all boats.
Under the auspices of Hillman Grad, with Waithe as CEO and Rishi Rajani as president, “The Chi” premiered in 2018 and is now four seasons strong; the drama’s newest installment premiered May 23. Additionally, projects previously stuck in development, like BET comedies “Boomerang” (a sequel series to the 1992 Eddie Murphy and Halle Berry film, co-produced by Berry) and “Twenties” (a semiautobiographical retelling of Waithe’s introduction to Hollywood) got their greenlights. “Queen & Slim” followed a year later, helmed by “Thanksgiving” director Melina Matsoukas, and Waithe has since produced Radha Blank’s award-winning indie “The Forty-Year-Old Version,” Little Marvin’s Amazon Prime horror anthology “Them,” and more.
That first question is a guiding principle not just for Waithe, but all of her closest collaborators. And honesty doesn’t necessarily mean true-to-life accuracy. Take, for instance, the new, spinoff-esque season of “Master of None,” titled in full, “Master of None Presents Moments in Love.” Featuring Waithe’s Denise and Naomi Ackie as her wife, Alicia, and taking place mostly in a picturesque yet isolated country home, the five episodes chart the blissful highs and crushing lows of a marriage complicated by, among other things, Alicia’s attempts to have a child.
“Lena is so creative, so inventive, so honest,” Ackie tells Backstage. “I think when you’re making art, you have to be honest and upfront about how you feel about things. You have to be honest and upfront with what your boundaries are…. She managed to juggle being a producer, being a writer, being in it. Being invested in a story but having enough of an objective eye to look at it, to also be outside-in—it’s just super impressive.
Unlike the “Thanksgiving” episode, Waithe, Ansari, and co-creator Alan Yang eschewed autobiography, drawing inspiration from French romantic dramas; interviewing doctors, nurses, and women who have undergone in vitro fertilization; and passing scripts back and forth for years. “We really wanted it to feel honest”—there’s that word again—“and real,” says Waithe. “Aziz and I have that in common, where we don’t want to do it unless it’s really going to be something special.”
The relentlessly long, single-take shots of “Moments in Love” allowed the actors to exist naturally in such real circumstances, grounding the stakes in the profoundest intimacy. “It’s probably the most vulnerable acting I’ve done in my career,” Waithe says—an understatement, considering Denise and Alicia’s roller coaster of emotions and the chemistry between them. “A lot of it was me really centering myself, being still, and just not letting you see the machine work. Because it is; it’s working overtime!
That’s where the second component of Waithe’s creative process—“How do I want to tell this story?”—comes in. It requires that fearless sense of purpose, that faith in a gutbased approach—or, as “Queen & Slim” star Jodie Turner-Smith puts it when describing Waithe, “assuredness.”
“There is something so admirable about a person who moves with that kind of certainty about what they want to say,” says Turner-Smith. “I think, as a woman creating in this industry, operating in this business, there’s so much of that that you need. Because so often, people are going to question you and doubt you and undervalue you, just because you’re a woman—and also just because you’re Black.”
Speaking from one’s innermost voice also explains how Waithe navigates, for lack of a better term, the haters. “People can take all the swings and all the hits,” she says. “It doesn’t matter; I’ve already survived. There’s nothing anyone could throw at me.”
Especially in today’s digital age, when celebrities live on social media, working in show business means dealing with those “wanting people in the public eye to be perfect all the time, even though that’s not possible,” says Waithe. And it’s exponentially more true for minority artists who are underrepresented in pop culture. “[There’s] this idea that, because I’m Black, because I’m queer, because I’m a woman, because I’m all those things, I have to be, like, pristine.
“This is a space that my white counterparts don’t sit in. Scorsese, Tarantino, my brother Spielberg, they don’t have to contend with that. So I now get to be an artist, but also have to make sure that I’m ‘a credit to my race,’ which Hattie McDaniel said so eloquently in her Oscar speech all those years ago.” As Waithe points out, many in the Black community did not believe that McDaniel was doing enough to combat stereotypes— that she should have refused her Academy Award–winning role of Mammy in “Gone With the Wind” and other maid characters. “But if she did not take those roles, what was she to do? To have a dream unfulfilled? And her doing that opened up the door for Halle Berry and Diahann Carroll and Queen Latifah and Viola Davis.”
Waithe has never been under any illusions that entering a predominantly male, white, straight industry, let alone shifting its mainstream like those women before her, would be simple. “The one that goes through the brick wall first is going to be battered and bruised. That’s just what comes with it. So, therefore, I will take that. I will carry that. I will be that. What other choice do I have?”
Can that kind of perseverance and assuredness be emulated? How could anyone adopt the unflappable attitude of someone who’s shown up at the Met Gala first in a revised rainbow Pride flag cape, then a “Black drag queens inventend [sic] camp” zoot suit?
“Stay the course,” answers Waithe with a shrug. And embrace the inevitability of failure on your way to success, she adds. “You learn more while you’re in the valley than you do on the mountaintop. You have a great view, but in the valley is when you have to figure out: OK, well, how do I get out of here? That’s what makes you stronger…. I’m always more drawn to those who make mistakes and figure out how to smooth it out versus those who never seem to trip. It’s like, we all are going to trip. Because that’s what connects us: our flaws, not our perfection.”
Confidence comes from getting back up again after you fall; Jordan couldn’t make the shot without countless failed attempts during practice. That brings us to Waithe’s advice for early career artists: “Craft is first,” she says. “Craft, craft, craft. The business is always changing. The world is burning. If you know how to craft a really great story, if you know Final Draft inside and out—if you can do that, you will always eat.”
Waithe repeats the mantra: “Stay the course. Don’t let anyone deter you. Even if somebody doesn’t like it or thinks you’re wack, stay the course, because walking in your purpose is not supposed to be easy. If it was, everybody else would do it.”
