Being a Brief Discussion with Tiffany Grant

By: Way Jeng
Date: Wednesday, March 02, 2005

If you don't know who Tiffany Grant is, the odds are that you don't watch a lot of dubs produced by ADV. She has voiced some of the most popular characters in anime, including Maki in Burn Up, Kome in Blue Seed, Asuka in Neon Genesis Evangelion, and lately characters such as Satella in Chrono Crusade and Dr. Tsukumo in Wandaba Style. Ms. Grant was kind enough to share a few moments of her time to discuss anime and dubs. I hope everybody enjoys hearing her views on the shows we enjoy so much.



Interviewer (I): So, what have you been doing lately?



Tiffany Grant (TG): What have I been doing? Well, I was really swamped with script writing back in November or December, simultaneously doing Sister Princess and Hello Kitty's Animation Theater. Then Sister Princess finished, then I was writing and doing the script for Jungle Juice, a live-action Korean film. I finished script writing as of December Nineteenth. I'm probably going to start again in a week. So I'm taking a little tiny break from script writing right now and just doing a little bit of traveling.



I: It sounds like fun. Do you have any plans for the future?



TG: I plan, of course, to keep on writing and acting. We're thinking about buying a house in a year or two. Getting a new car. These are some plans that I have. I have plans for a Hello Kitty kitchen. That's right, Matt, a Hello Kitty kitchen! You cannot stop me!



I: A kitchen? You mean with a stove and everything? Oh, I can only imagine the fridge.



TG: I've never seen it, but I know I can get it.



I: Really?



TG: Yeah, I've seen the blender and the microwave and the toaster. They have dishes...



I: A blender?



TG: Yeah.



I: Does it have Hello Kitty painted on it, or is it shaped like Hello Kitty and you... I don't know... put celery in it?



TG: Well, if you put bread into the Hello Kitty toaster the mechanism for the toasting inside burns Hello Kitty's face onto the toast.



I: I have never been more scared in my life.



TG: Yes, it's very true.



I: Wow! You learn something new every day.



TG: It's awesome.

I: You've done a lot of cool things. You've played some amazing and popular characters. What's your secret?



TG: A very broad imagination, I think. I sometimes think I'm the luckiest person in the world. When I was a kid I used to dream of doing voices in a cartoon or somehow using my voice. I always paid attention and tried to mimic them, and I think it's so cool that I grew up and actually got to do that. I like to mimic funny little sounds, like whenever I see a commercial for a computer and they do that funny little thing, the, "boop boop boo boop!" Or when I dial the fax machine and I'll try to do that, "bee bee boo boo bee bee boop!" I don't know. It's just a crazy imagination, and I like to make silly noises and voices. I guess as long as I can keep doing that, I'll have work.



I: How long have you been voice acting, and how do you think your acting has changed from the very beginning until right now?



TG: I have been voice acting for nearly eleven years. Very, very close to the eleven-year mark.



I: You were one of the first people to voice act with ADV.



TG: I was the first voice actor ever hired at ADV, and that was on February Twelfth, Nineteen Ninety-Four.



I: How has your acting changed since then?



TG: I have a much broader range than I originally did. I didn't really know what I'd be able to do. I just sort of stretched more and more, and now I feel much more confident doing a role that maybe I haven't done before. I think that's one of the things; I have more confidence and broader range. I know that I can do a lot of different voices. One of the things I've been doing in the past two or three years is a lot of young boy characters, a lot of them. I found that I have almost a limitless supply of little boy voices. I don't just have one little boy voice in me. It depends on how old he is, and is he nerdy... I like the idea of being able to play within a certain area, but different takes on that kind of character. I love the challenge of being able to play a new kind of character that I haven't tried before.



I: I have to say as an aside that when I watched Wandaba Style, which is a great show...



TG: It's an awesome show.



I: That Dr. Tsukumo is too funny. Those koku crack me up. That and the meters-to-shaku conversion.



TG: They screened that earlier today, but unfortunately it defaulted to the subtitle track!



I: That's too bad. But when I heard the character, my first reaction was to ask if ADV hired a kid. I really had to listen to pick out your voice.



TG: Wow, thank you. John Swasey is a veteran actor with ADV and very, very talented. This was his first directing project that he got, and he had me come in to audition for a different part, the part of Ayame. When I go into audition for a show the first thing I say is, "Okay, well tell me about the show first." The first thing out of his mouth was, "Well there's this genius boy scientist who..." and I said, "Hmmm..." So then he tells me about the show, and the rest of it is, "Blah, blah, blah." I wanted to play this genius boy scientist. Then I'm in the booth and reading for Ayame and he's like, "Do you want to read for this Dr. Tsukumo character?" and I said, "Oh, yes." I read for the character, and I guess John had forgotten or wasn't paying attention, and he didn't know that this is one of the things that I do. I play boy characters. He had a few people read for the part, but I guess he hadn't found exactly what he was looking for. Then he heard my audition and said, "Okay, you have the part." I was very excited about that role. It's a fun part.



I: I remember you were also a boy in Grrl Power.



TG: Yeah, I play this boy. They call him Riku, which means dirt. You never find out his real name because they call him Riku. Also, I was Sandora in Excel Saga, the little South American boy. That was very different.



I: That's Pedro's son.



TG: Right, Sandora is Pedro's son. Then in Legend of the Mystical Ninja, Goemon, I play the part of Tsukasa, and my girlfriend's name is Asuka! That was kind of funny. I'm calling out, "Asuka!" She was played by Hilary Haag. I've played a lot of boy characters, and they're something that I never get tired of doing. I love playing them. But I think most of the boy characters are younger than the female characters I've done.



I: Besides voice acting, do you do any other kinds of acting?



TG: Yeah, I started out like most of the other actors, in theater. I still occasionally do some. I've been in Snow White for a long, long, long time. I performed with a children's theater company and I played Snow White. I do voice acting in radio commercials, and I have done a little on-camera work. Not a lot of on-camera work.



I: Do you think your experience in anime has had an effect on any of your stage acting?



TG: I don't know if it's so much effected my work on stage, but I do think it helped with radio commercials. I'm never cast as the smooth-voiced announcer. My work in radio voice-overs has mostly been kind of a character voice, so I think that's helped me to be able to generate the different voices. The funniest thing was that I got cast in a commercial as this British woman, and they auditioned British people. I couldn't believe that I got the part. That was really funny.



I: It's well documented that the priest all shaven and shorn married the man all tattered and torn to the maiden all forlorn who milked the cow with the crumpled horn.



TG: [Laughs]



I: Now, why would the priest marry a man to a woman who's clearly in emotional distress and isn't ready for a long-term commitment?



TG: Maybe he wasn't in his right mind. Maybe he was on drugs. He could have been hypnotized.



I: Hypnotized?



TG: There are a lot of different possibilities. He could have been both.



I: You don't typically think of a priest all shaven and shorn as on drugs.



TG: But he might if he was hypnotized.



I: Oh, so you think he was hypnotized into taking drugs?



TG: Yes. [Laughs]



I: See, that makes a lot of sense.



TG: [Laughs] Sure.



I: I've always wondered about that. Okay, tell us something about anime that everybody thinks they know, but they're actually wrong about.



TG: Hmmm... Something they think they know, but they're wrong about.



I: Yeah, what's a total myth?



TG: Wow, there are a few misconceptions I get all the time. Here's the first thing that about ninety-nine point nine-nine-eight percent of the population say: I reveal what I do and they say, "Oh, you speak Japanese?"



I: [laughs]



TG: I don't know if anybody listening to this makes that assumption. Maybe it's just people who aren't familiar with the industry. No, they already did it in Japanese. We do it in English.



I: They think you're translating on the spot?



TG: Yeah, I guess. I don't know, but that's the number-one thing I get. But that's people who aren't in the industry. I think one of the other misconceptions is that, by and large, all anime is dubbed, meaning that the voices are recorded after the animation is done. That holds true of the Japanese and American, any language it's done in. There are a few select high-end titles where they have done pre-lay recording and then animated the mouth. Spriggan was one where they did that, but it's very few and far between. Most of the animation is done first. So I think most people have the misconception that those mouth flaps are matching something in Japanese, but I don't know. If you watch it, they're not matching anything. That's another big misconception. Also, I'll tell you another common misconception, that in Japan these voice actors are revered. They're really not. What they're really revered for is for doing the voice of Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts. Now those people are idolized, and a lot of those people, on the side, do anime. But that work is like the lowest of the low. It's very low paying and it's not very glamorous. I think when they come over here, the Japanese seiyuu are stunned that there are throngs of Americans who don't understand a bloody word they're saying and are just in love with them. It's an amazing thing, and I think it's great for them to be able to come over and experience that. So there are many, many misconceptions about voice acting. Oh, another one is we make piles and piles of money and we all drive Rolls-Royces. Believe me, we don't.



I: [laughs] I talked to Jeff Thomson about misconceptions, and he said there's a misconception that voice acting is the path to billions of dollars.



TG: [Laughs] It's not the way to thousands of dollars! What is he talking about?



I: I think people are beginning to understand that. People do this because they love it, not because it's an easy job.



TG: Well, yeah, and that holds true of all acting. It's a labor of love, and you do it not just because you want to, because you have to. I often think of acting as a congenital condition. You're born with it. I feel I've always been an actor, that this is what I'm supposed to be doing. That's how I was born, and it's this thing that I need to do. If I couldn't, I wouldn't know what else to do.



I: I had a friend who told me, "All actors are actors. It's just the some are paid to do it and others aren't."



TG: That's a very good way to put it.



I: We were talking about the Japanese earlier, and I wanted to ask you something related. I've always wondered... Sprechen Sie Deutsch?



TG: Ja, ein bisschen Deutsch sprechen. Habe in der Schule gelernt. Habe jetzt viel vergessen. So, for everybody else, yes I do speak German. I learned it at school, and actually I used to be good. I won some awards for it. I've retained a good bit of it, but unfortunately I've lost a lot of that because I don't use it on a regular basis. But I've been lucky to play a few German characters, like Asuka. Of course also Satella in Chrono Crusade. It's fun because in Evangelion I got to write the German dialog, and I get to do the same thing in Chrono Crusade, too. Now they did have the original actors speaking German, but it wasn't really good. Some of it wasn't phrased correctly. My favorite one was when she says her summoning spell she says "laden," which does mean summon but means summon as in a jury summons. It's a different kind of summon, so that just cracks me up. The phrase that I'm using is "kommen sie," which basically means "come here." It works really well because her mouth usually moves three times.



I: It would. You know, I'm the same way. I tell people, "I used to speak German."



TG: I can speak a few choice words of Japanese, but most of that comes from script writing than the acting because when you're writing you hear the words over and over again and you're looking at the translation, so you pick up those key phrases. Enough to help you follow in the translation.



I: Okay, this is something I like to do. Everybody who I interview has to answer one question in some way related to academic philosophy because that's my background. I feel the need to subject everybody to it... Well, because I'm bitter. So this one is yours.



TG: Okay.



I: You've played some of the most popular characters in all of anime, and there are tons of fans out there. Now, to what extent are those characters yours and to what extent are they mine or a fan's?



TG: I accept that those parts are not just mine. They do belong to everyone, especially the very obvious one to mention from Evangelion. I love Asuka very dearly. She's very near and dear to my heart, and I mean that metaphorically and not just because I'm wearing an Asuka T-shirt. She's a character I care a lot about, and I feel that she is mine in a sense. I think you can say that Anno and everyone is the creator, but then that gets passed down. But she does belong to the fans as well. People latch on to these characters and identify with them. They buy the merchandise and T-shirts and everything and really identify with the characters a lot. I've met so many fans over the years and gotten e-mails. I know they really care. Asuka is mine, but she's everyone else's to share as well.



I: Do you enjoy sharing the character with everybody?



TG: I do! I know the first time I heard somebody doing an impersonation of me as Asuka or some other character it was kind of annoying at first. I said, "Why are you imitating me? I'm standing right here!" But it's the sincerest form of flattery. So I think it's cool that they remember the line and quote the line and want to do an imitation for me. It's all appreciated.



I: Okay, let's play some "highs and lows."



TG: Okay, "highs and lows."



I: Describe for me the most comfortable pair of shoes you've ever owned.



TG: I had this pair of Reeboks that had these cushiony air pockets in the bottom of them. I was working retail, and this was over the Christmas season, and I don't think I could have made it through the Christmas season without them. I wore those shoes every day until one day the little air thing underneath it burst, and then they were doorstoppers.



I: Right.



TG: It's not like you can re-fill it or anything.



I: What about the least comfortable?



TG: The least comfortable pair of shoes... Wow, that's really hard. There are so many uncomfortable shoes. The pair of shoes I bought for my wedding, though very attractive and dyed to match my dress, oh my god it's amazing I didn't end up with deformed feet from wearing those all day.



I: What's the most socially valuable aspect of anime?



TG: I think the most socially valuable aspect is that it brings people together. You see people at conventions of different ages, different ethnicity, different socio-economic backgrounds... These days it's almost as many females as males. People really come together over anime. I think that's very valuable. There's such a friendly atmosphere at a convention.



I: There is. There really is.



TG: People just enjoy watching it. We were at war with the Japanese people, and the Japanese people as a whole, not fairly but it's true, were hated by Americans as little as sixty years ago, even fifty years ago. Now we welcome this culture. We see that we as people on this planet have more in common than we don't. We all have the same needs, wants, desires, and feelings. To me I think that's the greatest thing about anime. It's the way it brings us together.



I: What about the least?



TG: The least? The least socially valuable thing?



I: Yeah, how does it not help us at all.



TG: It's really disturbing the aspect of the desired submissiveness of women. Why Rei is so popular, particularly in Japan. Traditionally, not so much anymore. But traditionally that was the desired role, the female in a submissive position. I'd like to get rid of that.



I: What's your favorite meal for breakfast?



TG: A nice hot cup of tea, Darjeeling is very good. Toast on some really good whole-grain bread, and then a variety of fruity yummy jams that I could put on it. I just love that. And maybe a bran muffin.



I: What breakfast do you like the least?



TG: The least... Hmm... Well, probably pancakes. But I can't have pancakes anyhow because there's milk in them.



I: Oh, everybody's going to love that. There's a running joke about me and pancakes, and they're going to give me so much trouble about this. You wait and see.



TG: Oh, okay.



I: That's okay. It's a good answer. Let's move on to the Lightning Round.



TG: Okay, the Lightning Round. I'm ready!



I: Everybody loves a Lightning Round. Here's how it works. I'm going to give you five questions, and I'll show you the time on my watch so you can stress out about how long it's taking you. The audience, the people who read this, they're the judges. They're going to judge you fifty-fifty on time and content. So you don't have to think of the absolute fastest thing, the first thing off the top of your head, as long as it's something good.



TG: Okay.



I: Let me know when you're ready and I'll start the clock and read the first question.



TG: Okay, go.



I: First question. What is good about good-byes?



TG: What is good about good-byes?



I: Right.



TG: That you'll see that person again soon.



I: It's well documented that Jack and Jill went up a hill to fetch a pail of water, and that led to a tragic accident. Why is the well located at the top of a hill so steep that it poses a safety risk to everybody involved?



TG: Because there was a problem with flooding in the area and they didn't want the well contaminated with the water from the flood.



I: What do you think the color blue would smell like?



TG: I think the color blue would smell like lilac.



I: Suppose you can change your name, just for a day, and everybody will call you whatever you want. What do you want them to call you?



TG: Persephone.



I: Suppose you could invite one character you've voice for tea. Who would you invite, and what would you serve as a snack to go along with the tea?



TG: Only one... I think I would like to in Pochacco, and I would serve as a snack banana pudding, because that's his favorite.



I: All right. Your time is... 1:44.08!



I'd like to thank Tiffany Grant for taking the time to talk about dubs for a while.



Are you involved with English dubbed anime, and would you like to have a brief discussion about it? If you'd like to appear in this column for an interview, e-mail me at way.jeng@gmail.com



If you enjoy reading this column, you may also enjoy my book, Getting Things Just Right. ISBN 1-4116-0881-X.



Copyright 2005 Way Jeng

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