It's nine O gene one engine with Jenny Garth and Tory spelling here.
She is, Hi, Julie, How are you hi, Tori? How are you hi?
Oh my gosh, we just watched you on the episode where Dick dies. Dick dies, Poor Dick. Your boyfriend, Dick Harris.
I remember, I remember him well, I still warn him. No, he that was that was that was a long time ago.
It was, oh yeah, like thirty years ago. Is that You can't remember exactly what happened.
It's no to be to be totally clear. I do remember what happened. I remember that he ohdeed, I remember it was in the bathroom. I remember sniffling.
Like in the background yep, yep, and.
And everybody sort of looking over.
You're the only one like having a real honest reaction and everybody else just staring at the dead body and you were freaking out, which that's what would have been happening.
I'm here is my boyfriend?
Yeah, you know, or we've been you know, like dating and hanging for a little while.
Right.
Take us back to the beginning. How how did this role come about?
So let's see, so.
You played Ellen Fogerty, and you were in five episodes of nine O two super reminding me.
Ye right, it was actually all season seven.
It was all season seven all it was like the start of college.
No, I know. The first episode I did was the one where.
Uh, you and I Tory were dealing with someone who wanted to pledge the sorority. And I was a very pleasant sorority president.
Oh You're nasty, weren't you?
I was really nasty?
Yeah?
How you were like the O G mean girl.
Yeah. And what's so funny is.
Obviously that's the way I am in real life. I wasn't acting. This is how I am.
I show up this way all the time. I know you guys are like, oh no, what is she going to think of me?
Not true? You were so nice. I remember that.
Really.
I know you asked about the origin story of my getting on the show, but I have to say, I my memory of being on the show has a lot to do with my memory of being backstage in the makeup trailer seeing both of you, both of you being so kind to me. Tori, I remember you would tell these really funny stories and I was like, she's so bold. She just says whatever she feels like saying. And I was so new that I for me, it was really kind of freeing to see how real both.
Of you were.
Really everybody was backstage and being themselves, and Jenny, you were so sweet. You always made me feel so welcomed, and it was so early in my career and having, you know, come from my living room watching the show being enamored and like, I don't know if obsessed is the right word, but like I watched every week.
I was such a fan of the show.
Everybody was like, that's not something that's like, oh, really you were, but I was so excited and nervous, and every time I came you were both so kind and welcoming and.
Good.
So thank you all these years later.
No, thank so. How did so you auditioned for the show? Did you know how many episodes it would be? Back here? No?
And I don't, to be honest, I don't know if they did. I think Larry created Ellen. So my whole backstory here is that my career began with a phone call from a cousin I didn't know I had. Okay, if so, Jessica kleinb Yes, I win.
I missed her so much right before I was Jen and I were talking and I was like, memory serves, there's some connections, family connections somehow, and I couldn't remember. I was like my dad like and then right before I was like, woa wait, Jessica. I think it's Jessica. And then we're like, how do we ask or we can't ask her this?
Right? Do you happen to know anybody? Yeah?
So the story sounds kind of a little bit made up, but I can't stress enough how true it is that I got. I went to Tufts University, I graduated. I was studying Shakespeare for the summer in New York and after graduation, and I was this was my focus. I mean, I'd always been writing, and I was directing in college, and I had all these wonderful interests singing.
But I knew I was just going to like go for go for acting.
And I got a phone call and I really want to stress out of the blue, and it went like this, Hi, my name is Jessica Klein.
I'm your cousin.
I was like, wait, stop, go back. She was like, I'm your okay, I'm your second cousin. Okay, my mother got a photo of you from your grandmother. So Florence is your grandmother and You're okay. The point is I'm looking at a picture of you. This is how it started. And I was like, wait, we're cousin. And then she says, you know, I'm a TV writer, I'm producer, and you know, I guess your grandmother gave your picture to my mother to see if I could do anything or if I
thought anything. And I have no idea if you're any good. But I see something in your picture, but you could be terrible. I have no idea. So she said, I'm going to send you and I'm still going like, this is a family member. And at some point she mentioned that she was working a nine or two and hour and I was like, oh, oh, that's normal. That's I get called like this every day. I just graduated from college.
It's fine.
Wait at any point, did you think this was a prank?
Yes, except for that it felt like a prank, except for the fact that she was naming family members, like specifically naming family members and then telling me her grandfather's name and this was my grandfather's And I was like, okay, but it was you know, second cousin is not somebody that you for me that I grew up, you know, knowing, but here's this wonderful person who calls out of the blue like a fairy godmother or a fairy god's sister. By the time, you know, we became very very very close.
So she said, I'm going to send you to my friend who is the head writer on One Life to Live, Susie Budsoe Horgan, and she'll she'll tell me if you're any good like okay. So everything really started there. So and I you know, started working very very quickly thanks to justs and thanks to you know, being connected with people who then said, yeah, we are interested in you. Yeah, we do want to have a little part for you
and create this role. And the casting director of One Life to Live with like, you need an agent, yesterday, Here are my such a ridiculous story. Here are my five favorite agents. Go and tell them I sent you and pick one. Like this is when I when because I get interviewed because of voiceover stuff now and I'm always like, kids, don't try this at home, Like this is not a normal story.
It's just not normal.
But all of those things happened. And then I think pretty early on in that maybe maybe a year later there when auditions for Tracy were happening.
Jess was like come out and an audition spoiler.
I didn't get it, But then a little while later I do have, And it's a long time ago. I have a memory of coming back in and reading for Ellen, and then there she was. I know it's I do get thought of a lot for really obnoxious meaning characters. But but but it was really really fun to play completely against my own type. And and I do remember Larry maull and did create the role because he would always make jokes like up bringing her back.
Yes, so yeah, And it was a long It was a long pause.
Between the Sorority episode, which was Pledging my love, I think, and when all of a sudden, I'm they're hanging out with Dick and Dan Gautier.
Did you have any chemistry off camera with Dan?
I don't have a memory of that being something that was like, I don't have a memory of that.
To be honest with you, I felt like on camera was cool.
I feel like he and I gelled off camera, But there wasn't like an off camera roman.
Because he was in teen Witch. He was very desirable when he was younger. We just interviewed him and he was how funny was he? Jen? We had really best time, like it was Yeah, and Jen didn't remember Dick died and he spoiled it. Oh why would you do that?
That was fun?
Okay, So but after the show you went on to do like hundreds of other roles like you and now you're doing a ton of voiceovers.
So tell us about that. How has that happened?
So somewhere around the same time that all of this was happening, or maybe right there, for I had been doing, you know, a bunch of different roles on soaps. I was recurring on One Life to Live for a long time, and and I played a role in another soap, and this was and I always it's very hard for me to tell the story and not do the voice, so please forgive me. It's a long time ago, and news is called borge and Joy got watch that, And so no one was saying.
Yeah, it's amazing, Wow, what the characters ladies.
No, that's like one of my elderly lady voices. And my dog is sleeping down there and his voice is is I just want to feed my birds?
But but yeah, so I'll tell you about this. I'm sure we'll get to it.
But voiceover for me was so freeing to find because no one's gonna look at me and cast me as the giant monsters or villains or you know, tiny children, and I get to play anything. So it's really it's really opened up so much space for me as a person and as a performer.
Were you doing voices as a kid? Like these are not like these are crazy voices?
They are. I am, well, it's but.
I mean, as a kid, would you be like doing all these different types of levels of voices of characters?
You know, my mom would always say that she was an enabler for me because she found me funny, which was an error, right because then I'm just trying to make her laugh all the time, and so she would enjoy it if I would mimic her and make fun of her. So we would spend like an hour and a half where I would do that and I would imitate her voice. But that wasn't really the thing. In college, there was a roast of graduating seniors, and so they had me, you know, get into the center of the
stage and start doing imitations. And I didn't realize till later, but those really were quite vocal, but my mom found uh, there's an old recording of me as a tiny child playing with a tape recorder and in the middle of telling a knock knock joke to myself, I changed voices. So I think there's something there. But I'm also you know, my I was trained as a classical stinger, so like being aware of my voice and trying to figure out what it can do was very natural to me. But
I never ever thought about it as a profession. Like I don't think I thought that the cartoon, like, you know, into my twenties, like that's Garfield is Garfield, that's a real cat.
I think resigna.
But I don't think it ever occurred to me that that was a thing a person could do, like even just for fun, let alone for a living. But full circle Tangent found. So there's just been goo of the internet and nobody would saying don't read the comments. This was like eighteen forty two like this, nobody was saying, don't read the comments.
Or you'll get depressed, right right, So I'm like, whoa, let's see what the fans think of me. And this is the direct quote.
She is real pretty and all that I have to turn the volume off on my TV because it's like Alvin and the Chipmunks have invaded my living room. And I was like, huh, first of all, you, second of all, that sounds like an amazing career and I literally never thought of it.
And it is so part of the way my brain works to sort.
And it's a survival skill too, right to sort of take in, well, that's insulting, and also where's the gift?
What like, that's the shadow? Where's the light?
And I made a career of it. The insults I.
Don't right, so and sometimes it's if that's the main deal, I know that has to be hard, right. So that's why for me, finding this thing was more chasing joy, which is really that's kind of my I think that's become my mo o more than anything else. It's like, go where the energy is or go where the joy is. So I called my agents. I had agents at the time back in New York. I'm still at the same agency, CEESD. They've been representing me for commercials and then voiceover for
you know, since eighteen forty two. And I said, hey, you know, I'm out in LA doing some work right now. But when I get back, can you try me out of this video thing? Like somebody insulted me and I think this might be cool and they were like okay, and they sent me on my first audition and I booked it and like never stopped working. Mock would hold on tree like and it was. It really was like I know it sounds so cheesy, but like coming home.
I see every once in a while catch something that I did on camera on TV or someone will tell me like, oh, look, here's a clip, and I catch myself and I feel like I never saw you.
Guys doing this. You know, camera's here, and i'd be talking to someone.
I'm like, yeah, like not looking, but just oh I have to make sure they can see my face and I'm like sure, you're completely self conscious.
I would have to be in a booth. Everything's in my imagination. So that really did it, and I never looked back.
I did on camera for a little while after that, but when I started getting works as a voice actor and then also as a writer, it was so easy for me to just let go of on camera and then so that's really my performance life is in voiceover.
Do you believe in karma?
I do?
I sometimes I don't know that that's the word I use, but I absolutely believe in karma.
Now, just hearing your story from the beginning, I'm like, you were really a kind, great human that didn't get your just desserts into past life and just the way everything's unfolded. Obviously talented, but wow, these stories. I could listen to your stories all day. You do so much voice over work, can you give our listeners just a little insight into all your characters?
All of them, every single one of them.
Run through your top.
Ones, every single one of them.
I'm probably best known as playing Samantha Maxis in the Call of Duty franchise, usually the Call of Duty Zombies franchise, but then it kind of expanded in Call of Duty Cold War.
My boys are going to freak when they hear this.
By the way, geez, she's you know.
I also never imagined i'd be voicing video games. But again, when I started, this wasn't really a place that you know, voice actors were working so much. And again, like again, I'm a pretty peaceful person, and I've bad these characters who commit these terrible crimes, and like so so Samantha Maxis started as a as a little girl on the show show on the in the video games series, and then in Cold War they let me actually grow her up and I played her at thirty. So that's probably
the role I'm most known for. I do voice a lot of video games I've played. I was in Star Wars Outlaws as Ink, So that's a great That's a great example of the dichotomy because NK is a chadraphon. She is like this big and she was a little older and she's like like a little like a rat, fuzzy tiny feature.
Can you do Ank's voice for us?
Well?
She she speaks in hottees, so I have to really remember my hot tea, oh something like that.
It's all I remember. It was Bulira, I think is money.
And in Bayonetta three, I play bal Dabul, who was a an opera singing demon frog. So like when I say, it's stuff that I would never get to doing, which yes, that was the first time I ever got to sing opera in uh a game, and that was something I thought it would never happen, and it was.
It was really wonderful. I got to sing.
Also in Call of Duty, there's an easter egg in in one map where I get to sing a song, but usually it's not opera that I get to sing. And that's my That's kind of like my first musical love.
But I also I've been in Powerpuff Girls. Powerpuff Girls was a very early one.
I played rob been Schneider and her her line that people sometimes remember is.
Cory in too, that's so cool, You're so cool.
In Avengers Assemble, I played Crimson Widow. Uh in them. There's a movie Fixed that just came out.
Yes, my kids want to see that. You know it's a more adult humor, right.
Yes, very adult.
You're in Fixed.
I'm in Fixed by to think the roles. I'm Bull is the Dog? It just came it's It just came out on on Netflix the other day, and uh.
Bull is the dog and it's it is the story of a dog having his last hurrah the night before he snipped.
It's such a great idea.
And for that, I will tell you that Sony Animation was kind enough to send me a stuffed dog with detachable testicles put on with Elcrow.
If you know you play with or without the tecticles.
Oh, that's interesting, It is interesting. I never had a dog like that.
It's wonderful, it's fun. It's a silly thing. And yes, in the in the movie, I play the human mom of the dog who is the lead dog, bull, and I also play I don't want to spoil anything, but she just has a couple of couple of words in there. But uh, the dominatrix dog in in a in a Yeah for children.
Truly, Nathanson, is there anything you can't do?
She's done at all.
I can't draw at all.
She's like, yes, there is something I can't do.
My stick figures look like stick chickens, Like there's no drawing ever, And there are lots and lots and lots of things, but they do follow where.
The fun is.
That's the joy. Find the joy.
Yeah, does your husband ask you to do voices for him?
No? No, he does not.
I don't know why that came out like that. I was trying to look for a segue into talking about your husband and child.
That's fine, that's fine.
I will tell you that when my child was much younger, accent freaked him the hell out.
Like he would be.
Okay with high voices, but low voices or anything with an accent, he was like, stop, be mommy, be mommy freaked him out.
I can imagine.
Yeah, right, like you know, kids want to know that you're you.
This is true. One last question. Sorry, Yeah, we know you do do a lot of conventions. We've been doing some conventions, but I'm sure your lines are crazy long. Like we have our niche our nine O, two one O fans, but at these like Comic Con, it's yeah, the.
Animation, it's the games, video sectors.
Yeah, you must have lines around the corner.
You know. It's funny. I just started doing conventions.
Really, I've always gone to Comic Con or Wonder Con if I'm asked to do a panel, but I didn't have a convention like booking agent I've had, like right before the pandemic, I had signed on with one and then the pandemic happened, so that kind of fizzled. But I just started working with Gung Ho Booking and they are starting to get me out on stuff. So yes, the it has been lovely, and you know, fans will come with I'm sure you guys get this, like here's my copy of this or here's my poster.
Did when they come up, do they want to hear the voice?
Though sometimes they do do you say that's going to cost you extra, I'm just kidding.
Honestly. The idea of charging for this.
Stuff is we understand it's so it feels an not much like who I am as a person. I know it's a thing, and I know that it's part of business, and I understand it, but it's still very odd. So there are lots of things that other people charge for that I'm like, no, just can I just do the thing for the person?
Do they come dressed as your character? Often characters.
I have seen a couple of people at conventions dressed as characters, and you know, but a lot of times I'll walk up to them and I'll be like, hey, can.
I just have a picture with you? No reason, no reason, it's cool.
I'm like, they're Friar in League of Legends.
And I have friends who, when they were at conventions will be like, look, here's a Briar for you, and I'm like, how they make the pillory?
That's so cool.
I again to be able to make things.
But people are so creative.
I know, I know, and I do love the I wonder if you guys have the same feeling like seeing I know that fandom can become toxic, and the brighter side of fandom, to me, is such a great example of how art can be so lasting and you never know what's going to touch somebody and make them remember or feel something or learn something. And I do love that energy at a convention, all these people have come together because they love this game, this comic, and it shows.
It's lasting in their heart. It brings them joy. It's a good time memory. And there's so much happening in the world that's not good, so's that brings it back to a good time. Oh my god, I wish I knew how cool you were thirty years ago. My goodness, Oh my gosh.
We would have been asking you to do voices all the time.
Yeah, we would have.
I might not have known, how I mean, it was right around the same time. I don't know that I would have had voices to pull out of my proverbial hat at the time. But you know, I'm be happy to do your voicemail messages.
I don't know. Oh, it is really funny how just so much of our lives.
I feel like as we get older as humans, it's about centering who we are as people and then as performers.
It's how can we.
Expand into a greater variety and like breadth of what we can be. I find it really interesting. So I'm always trying to, you know, break whatever barrier it is. If I'm like, huh, I haven't haven't booked a voice of a teenage boy in a while.
I mean, let me try to do that and I'll work on it. What a weird thing to say.
That's so wild.
I love that.
Well.
Thank you for being with us today. So good to virtually see you after all this time. And everyone, check out Fixed on Netflix right now. I can't wait to see it.
It is hilarious. It is definitely not suitable for children, but enjoy.
We'll probably run into you at a convention.
Oh hi, holy so I have hugs for you both. Thanks really great to be you're doing well. Thanks for inviting me, Thank you for being here.
Thank you,