Before the Roll - The People of Critical Role

thank you [Music] [Music] thank you foreign uh to being able to explore who I wanted to be in those spaces hold him for the loud beep why don't say everyone making so much noise I was trying to film a thing that was a quieter kid when I was younger when I was around my parents I was a ham I was bullied because I was quiet because I was uh had thick glasses for many years and up until about middle schoolers so I didn't have a lot of friends parsigs were moving so constantly so I was I was kind of playing solo except for like a handful of of people that that I clung to yeah no it was weird because like at one school I would be cool and then at the next school I would be a total loser I was very awkward I had really curly hair I was not slick it was not a lady killer at an early age I was a very secure and kind of cocky little [ __ ] I was always a lot more mature probably because because I was an only child I hung out with adults more I was super overactive hyperactive add all that stuff when I was a kid I had an English teacher in the fifth grade encouraged like creative writing and some like re like dramatic readings in front of the class it would just wake up apart something inside of me that that you know I hadn't really ever explored I am a Hermit and extremely introverted and people always think that's a weird thing for an actor but like I feel like I was more confident as a kid than I am now because when I was little I was like yeah what do you need me to do and I think that was kind of the thing of getting into print work or doing commercials it's kind of like you need a kid to be able to do that I mean I had a sad card at like seven months old I was I was a working kid my mother was was a working actress at the time I mean my father was was writing scripts and producing stuff I was in theater from a very early age my first theater production was I was in Oompa Loompa in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when I was like six and then from there I did a bunch of local theater shows I tried out I was incredibly shy because we moved around a lot you know so I tried out for room Romeo and Juliet in middle school I was terrible like I talked so quiet that the teacher couldn't hear me like from the stage to her seat in the front row and I couldn't talk any louder than that in high school that I probably owe much of me doing what I do today he was my English teacher his name was Jack champion and he was just that sort of Dead Poet's teacher he was passionate and would like orate at us in class and he would just have Hamlet open and semi-act it out with us and he encouraged me to after The King and I to try out for his play and that's that's when I knew that it was uh something that I wanted to stick with the rest of my life I mean first it was like dance and dance went to musical theater and the musical theater went to just straight acting in Shakespeare family friends of ours were living in Los Angeles and they uh their kids were enacting we all went to this audition and casting director came out and was like hey do you want to come in and read for this my mom was like I don't know I walked in and you know I was able to read very early did this did the part and I got it and it was a movie called Lionheart is the youngest of the French revolutionaries although tough on the outside he has a heart of gold Alexander seemed to find that combination in 11 year old Sam Regal my mom was uh was a stage mom she she got us involved in theater at a young age and my sister too but I really did like it and I still have this unending urge to perform and have that sort of creative Outlet so she she definitely kept checking in with us because I there's also a lot of Tears when you're a kid and you audition for something and you don't get it I don't know what it was that resonated but I was in into it child acting is weird and makes you a little it's a it's a it's a weird thing that to have happen to a person and my experience as a child actor was weirder than most my parents were not gung-ho about it so there are aspects of the business I just didn't have to deal with because they were not pushing for it they were kind of they were very trepidatious about everything I did there were a lot of good gigs I turned own everything my parents ever said no to ended up probably being for the best my mom had a good spider sense about about these things got a lot of cats can I have a moment to myself please I know interest in being an actor for being surrounded by entertainment you know with with like my parents and grandmother in the theater and kind of growing up around actors to a certain extent I had no interest and it was after school one day uh it's my freshman year and I was sketching in a Sketchbook while I was waiting to be picked up for my parents and Mr Kilpatrick who was the uh the theater teacher at my high school kind of stopped and said what are you drawing the more we talked he was like you ever thought about auditioning for whatever theater audition coming up soon you should you should check it out and I was like ah it's not really my thing so the times I was on stage in this costume reciting these lines and interacting with other performers on stage I wasn't looking inward I wasn't judging myself I wasn't you know focused on my discomfort and that was very kind of unique and thrilling to me I met a whole new group of friends through it and it just kind of expanded from there I think my dad was a little bit like oh God you know we're going into acting but I think my mom just recognized that I all the all the energy that I had as a kid and you know trying to give me different Outlets whether it was you know sports or art classes I was doing choir because you can kind of hide with that we did a yearly Musical and we were doing my fair lady and I was a freshman and at my school you couldn't get a lead part if you're a freshman but the girl who was a senior that got the lead of Eliza came up to me afterwards and she was like you should audition for theater because I think you're really good and so I went and auditioned for the the next theater production that they had and that's when I started doing theater it's funny though I also feel like that was the age that I learned self-deprecation where I was like oh I know how to combat this I can make fun of myself as well and make everybody laugh no choir No Chorus no no instruments nothing like that that was like just something for me that I did off hour as being an insecure kid I'm sure it was more like if I were to do a School production there would be expectations on me that I couldn't uh live up to oh we'll make Sam the star because he's a real actor and then it's like oh he sucks okay Sam I'm gonna need five small pain reactions when I got to NYU day one the teacher came out on a stage and told us anyone who who could imagine themselves doing anything else to get the [ __ ] out because the percentage of people who go on to make an actual career in a living and able to financially support themselves only from acting is something like I think is it two percent or four percent and then I wandered into this uh Forest of anime dubbing at first which led to video games and more traditional animation so I the entire time that I've been working in this uh funny farm in Los Angeles I've been supporting my acting career with directing so I've never been straight up 100 actor I did a few shows there in in Dallas uh and then my my cousin Tyler was like hey man I'm going to California you want to go I was like oh no God that sounds so risky and like Brave and courageous and Jesus I don't even know how to make a living as an actor he's like pretty sure California is where you do that no no no I have to get like a career going here and he's like in Texas I was like yeah yeah I mean you know they shoot stuff down here it's like nah come out man and then after coming out to Los Angeles voice over and I mean and that was the other thing that I actually ended up discovering that I had no idea that I would have fallen in love with in the way that I did which was everything behind the camera and producing and writing and stuff that I'm doing now I was doing theater but I was sure I still wanted to be a biologist I was studying science and everything like that science lab I was watching this so I never watched the show I haven't seen an episode of Dawson's Creek but I was home and I was watching a behind the scenes thing for some reason it was on TV and Katie Holmes was being interviewed she was in high school and she was talking about how she auditioned for the show but she almost didn't take the part because she was doing a play in school and she would have let her whole production at school down so and she just seemed so much like a normal person talking about all these things and it was the first time that I realized oh my God you can actually pursue this as a career and just be human doing it and so I turned off the program as soon as it's done and I called up my mom I was like I want to be an actress like I never realized I could actually do that I want to be an actor and she's like Laura be an actor I'm like I'm gonna do it but yeah when you when you're performing for that many people and you're surrounded by professional adults who are like looking at you when you step forward to sing your song on stage it's uh it's scary as [ __ ] but it's also the most exhilarating like I I always got stage fright I still get stage fright even now on our Dungeons and Dragons show I get staged fright mainly what I worry about on on our show that we do now is um like these ads that I do at the beginning because it's not like there's a rehearsal or anything I just kind of wing it and I worry if I'll mess something up or say something totally offensive but it's that's kind of what I I love about it about it and about just performing in general is like that oh it's about to start it's about to start you're there you're not Hello the name is Tyrion Darrington that's the name met through cosplay originally it was barely through voiceover we were both uh part of a g4ia it was an awards ceremony um and they've had a bunch of cosplayers there and I was just as Kingdom Hearts sephiroth and he was dressed as Mad Hatter from Batman and so we met there for the first time and became close friends as he had been doing voiceover for a bit and I was dabbling in the same space a little bit as production stuff started to be you know really hit YouTube people began to to find affordable uh equipment for for hobbyist filmmakers I decided a few friends of mine and we've had some ideas for some sketches we had some ideas for some shorts we wanted to do and at the time I had a job and I was like only one of us that had one so I was like I'm gonna buy the camera by like a microphone a boom mic I'll teach myself how to do Premiere Pro and uh how to do after effects since I became also an editor and a post guy we began to do our own little internet shorts and and fun things on the side we were all lowly internet shits and all of that kind of culture came from well this writer strike is going on I was getting frustrated because I kept getting cast as these super trite roles and no one wanted to give me a chance you know in Hollywood you know you have to show them what you can do No One's Gonna Give You a chance and once that started clicking in that led to me doing Batgirl well I didn't want to be in voiceover I had a friend at the time Nick Debarr he was really an anime and we would we would watch it together and I just got really again like my brain that was really into the idea of how do you break this down how do you make this work uh got obsessed with figuring out how to do this and so I made a demo after shopping that around for a while someone took pity on me and let me direct a few anime anime dubs for Pioneer entertainment and I slowly kind of built a reputation as the weird guy who does the weird [ __ ] because my stuff definitely sounded different than everybody else's because I was approaching it from a very different place finally there was a director that I did a show with in Fort Worth um that was like hey you got a that was a great show you have a good voice and I was like oh thanks man he goes you know we do um voice over it at FUNimation I was like I know Laura Bailey has been like dropping my name I've never [ __ ] heard of you before it's like she has she has his head [ __ ] he's like we're having auditions for this new show called Full Metal Alchemist not interested Dragon Ball Z though Dragon Ball Z is done he's like we'll come audition for the show it's cool I'll send you the character sides there's this guy named Roy Mustang I was like that's cool name and he's like he's a flame Alchemist and like sounds cool don't know what that means um and I went in and read for it and I went in and I remember I was going in and I kept wanting to like power up like in the audition and be like ah he's like there's no fighting he didn't kept trying trying to like acts and he's like okay here's okay you've never done this before I'm like no and he goes okay just talk just talk stop trying it act I can tell you're a great actor I saw you on the stage just read the lines to me like you were talking to me and it was just enough of a taste to be like well this is fun this plays into my love of theater I don't have to be on camera uh and I love anime and video games and these kind of places where I'm starting to to dive into once I started to book a little bit of work in Los Angeles um somebody noticed that I wasn't a total uh Coconut Head you seem like you've got a good head on your shoulders have you ever do you know how to write do you know how to adapt you know how to write and I lied and said I did I would get given a raw translation into English that didn't sound that great and didn't match the butter and I just over years got I've probably adapted when I was still doing it maybe 300 episodes of anime and English script but I I tried it with one and they were like great that's good do the whole rest of this series I love language I love art I love I love animation I love imagination it turned into oddly like the path of least resistance it was just it just kind of started happening from there on out and part of it was because I was a female actress with this lower vocal Timber there's plenty of of us out there me and Courtney Taylor so they're definitely Smoky boys swimming out there but not not as many first voice over that I did was the cartoon version of Jumanji and I played the little boy and I was I was very young and then after that I did recess I feel like when any actor starts doing voice over they're like oh this is a dream and it was just it was super fun like the first thing I ever really pursued professionally was FUNimation and I had a session and I didn't go to my recording session because I had a college orientation totally last minute I was like no I can't make it to the session and I went to the college orientation set and I got a phone call from like the president of Funimation afterwards and he called me and he said Laura this isn't a college class this is a production this is a professional environment if you make if you schedule a session you have to show up to it and that was like when I realized oh I need to maybe stop going to school if it gets in the way so I kept missing class to go to my recording sessions and finally my my film teacher in college just said Laura just stop coming to class this is what you're coming to school for and you're already doing it so just go do it I didn't dig TV very much it was a lot of waiting and there was no there was no feedback do a good job and nobody's like laughing or crying or applauding or anything so instant laughs or instant yucks you know I'm a bit of a silly person sometimes and it's probably because I'm like constantly fishing for some sort of reaction because it's like drilled into my soul that you're not doing it right unless someone's reacting to it sorry Chief I can't take the smell anymore I'm going to jump out this window and this concludes another adventure of detective Clinton P McDon team I love voiceover because you're not confined by any of those other things and the things that I love about Theater which is you're not confined by the way that you look what your stature is the color of your skin what your voice sounds like you can change all that [ __ ] with your voice really use your imagination you're all sharing in this you know inclusive participation of the Mind I think with Ellie specifically and I think that played the character for so long that I've felt closest to it's that was the first video game that I'd ever done with this game in particular and this experience you never know how capable you can be like you always hope that there's more like you do something and you're like I feel like I can do better it became a new measurement for me where I was like oh I didn't know I could get there emotionally and do that I'm gonna find and I'm gonna kill [Music] and you want to be working with people that you can trust that they're gonna make your performance the best that it can be and I am I'm #blessed without a lot to get to work with different developers that really they care when we were working on Uncharted and Neil he called me on the phone and he's like okay let's talk about let's talk about Nadine and uh he's like what are her favorite what's your favorite band what's your favorite song it's so weird to think about what would Nadine do when she's just sitting at home you can play all kinds of different roles you can be bad guys and good guys and animals and aliens and all kinds of great stuff so it really is fun to just explore and express from just from your your voice yes there's nobody just applauding off off screen um but uh you still do get a sense of like of play and improvisation sometimes watching the natural flow of events that happens when you have creative people just moving a story forward has has given me um a better sense of of how to uh how to move story forward and how to let people be people and I've gotten faster on my feet it's sharpened my skills it's made me think about character I've already thought about character and now I think about character much more strongly improv improv is one of those skills that that like is good to develop it's very useful but a lot of people decide that's everything that there is and then never leave it is it's a weird like little lotus flower in role-playing games that is such a visceral primal experience of being able to gift to somebody this story and letting them take it and run with it and and see where it goes that's what a natural 20 to get to oh my God I said that a long time ago she is the best detective good job Chester it's it's this wonderful kind of creative Baton Pass and uh it's one thing as an artist to create art and set it down and go that is Art I made but where the real magic happens when people perceive the art and then pull from that their interpretation pull from it how it affects them how how it emotionally draws them to the piece that that little interaction between the creation and and the the the perceiver of that art uh that is the real magic and in in role-playing games it's that moment of me going this is the thing that I've built for you guys take it and and do what you will we need comedy because it reminds us to laugh even at some of the worst things in the world but we also need realness and sad stories and this drama to be reminded that life is hard and at the end of the day we can all relate to that the characters that we're bullshitting on the Fly are actually like resonating with people in a way that um that is uh it's just on a much more personal level and it's really cool and it's also a lot of pressure to know that people are looking at the characters and they're seeing themselves in these characters in in a very deep personal way you can only hope that people will love something as much as you do like you know when when we make stuff all the stuff that we do here and and the stuff that you work on and especially the stuff that you care about like you want everybody to like it and you want everybody to love it as much as you do which is an impossibility it's the community around it it's all the critters and all the people that have come together to support each other to be there for each other to share in their Mutual passions to show excitement and support for all their successes and then be there to guide them and help them up in their failures the community of hundreds and thousands and God even consider millions of people that have expanded Beyond this little game is incredible and I can't take credit for that that's you guys that's that's all of you and uh I just want to do right by white they're all creating [Music] well this is pour it to that yeah no hands burrowing eyeball are you sure [Laughter] play I would like to pull out the deck of many things don't compare yourself to me it's an impossible task I could tell by the bone structure and be contempt [Music] on fire tonight praise [Music] thank you

Channel: Monique Rene

Views: 80,242

Keywords: Critical Role, Matthew Mercer, Marisha Ray, Ashley Johnson, Travis Willingham, Laura Bailey, Taliesin Jaffe, Sam Riegel, Liam O'Brien, Short Documentary, Dungeons and Dragons, DnD, Voice Actors, Through the Ages, Life, Biographical, CR, improve, Anime, Movies, TV, Video Games, The Last of Us, Uncharted, Attack on Titan, Youtube, Livestream, CritRole, Critical Role Documentary, Behind the Roll, Before the Roll, Geek&Sundry

Id: rOtaDb1okps

Length: 25min 12sec (1512 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 25 2023