I loved cartoons and video games long before I became a voice actor. 8-year-old me made a mad dash for the TV every Saturday morning to watch The Bugs and Tweety Show. Those characters shaped my personality more than my mother cares to admit. I got my mischievous sense of humor from Bugs Bunny and my dry sarcasm from Daffy Duck. On the gaming side, my first console was an Atari 2600. (Remember that faux wood panel across the front? lol) Of course I played Pong, but I also loved Math Gran Prix and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. Trying to control Luke Skywalker in his snowspeeder always jacked up my wrist. Those joysticks were not ergonomically designed!

In high school, I mastered Tetris on the Nintendo Game Boy (I can still hum the Russian folk song) and by college, I began learning all the combos in Tekken 2 on PlayStation. My friends and I used Tekken to resolve conflicts. Nothing definitively wins an argument like Nina’s backhand slap—so satisfying! It was about this time that I discovered Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. The AS lineup spoke to my love of absurd humor (ah, Space Ghost). Plus, they had Sailor Moon! I was living in a predominantly white area at the time, and this connection to my Japanese culture nurtured my sense of self. I loved Sailor Moon so much that when I couldn’t access the later seasons on TV, I found bootleg VHS tapes of the episodes in Japanese. Without English subtitles, I didn’t understand the dialogue, but I could still follow along. (While watching, I also tried to learn Japanese, but all I got were the words 皆 (“all, everyone”), でも (“but”), and 待つ (“wait”).

While my future husband and I were dating, we had weekly gaming nights playing Halo 2 with his friends. I gotta admit, Halo wasn’t my game. I was more into Virtua Cop and Gran Turismo. In Halo, I would stumble around until I found the energy sword, pick it up, wave it around, and across the room someone would say, “Hey, you just killed me!” (Yeah, that’s right, punk!) And while future-hubby loved The Simpsons, Futurama’s sci-fi satiric wit was more my speed. At least we could both agree on Archer. Jessica Walters is a national f*cking treasure.

In 2015, I became a mom and both my gaming and ‘tooning have had to take a backseat. Raising a tiny human is time-consuming! I have fond memories of the hubs and I playing Diablo III side-by-side on our laptops, our sleeping infant between us. One day, we’ll get back to trash-talking and kicking each other’s asses in some apocalyptic wasteland while the kid sits between us playing Minecraft, but for now, it’s Tic Tac Toe. And the only cartoons I get to watch are Paw Patrol and Doc McStuffins. But I’m compiling a list of all the kick-ass, female-led or female-featuring cartoons I can’t wait to show my kid one day: Powerpuff Girls (original, of course), ATLA & Korra, Kim Possible, Daria, Lilo & Stitch, Princess Mononoke. I hope we’ll bond over the strength of these women and their messages of love and acceptance. Or, even better, I’ll model for my child that strength and character when I write and act in a show of my own. 

Thanks for coming to visit. If you want to know more about the work I’ve done so far, you can listen to my demos and see some of my work. Or you can check out my resume on imdb.

Stars The Agency

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