Emmy winner Daniel Ross honors mother through Donald Duck role

BY CLARA NIEL cniel@newspost.com

When voice actor Daniel Ross was 3 years old, his mother, Michel Sadur, taught him how to talk like Donald Duck.

He would crawl into his bed, and Sadur would tuck him in and tell him she loved him in the infamous quacking voice. Ross would return the sentiment in like. She was Momma Duck, Ross said.

“No matter what was going on in our lives, that was something that would cheer us up and make us feel better and let us feel connected to each other,” Ross said.

So when Ross won the first Children’s and Family Emmy Award last year for voicing the beloved Disney character in “Mickey and Minnie Wish Upon Christmas,” it meant much more than winning a shiny golden trophy.

It was even more important considering Ross’ mother died of breast cancer in 2022 before he won the award.

“The last thing that she and I watched together was ‘Mickey and Minnie Wish Upon a Christmas,’” Ross said. “And I promised her that I would honor her through my work, and I would spread the joy and the creativity that she had given to me.”

But the journey to becoming an Emmy-winning voice actor wasn’t straightforward.

Before leaving for Los Angeles to pursue his dream of voice acting in 2014, Ross was living in Frederick and working at the Target in Wormans Mill. He was living here to take care of his mother, who had been living here since the mid-2000s. Though he’s situated on the West Coast now, he often thinks about Frederick and how it prepared him for his future. When he was living in Frederick, he had already landed smaller gigs like voicing Starscream in a Transformers video game, doing voices for commercials and corporate voicemail messages as different characters, like Jack Sparrow. He was working overnight shifts at the Target and using the daytime hours to network, but he felt in his gut that he needed to move on. So, he nervously said his goodbyes and put in his two weeks at Target. He packed his bags to drive across the country from Frederick to Los Angeles. He told himself he would give himself five years to make a name for himself. His mother supported him in pursuing his dream, he said.

And during that drive, Ross’ agent called him to tell him that he got the role for Lucky the Leprechaun from Lucky Charms cereal. He voiced that character from 2015 to 2017, he said.

Shortly after landing that role, Ross got the job to voice Donald Duck in 2015.

“I never thought in a million years I’d have an