How ‘The Legend of Vox Machina’ Levels Up ‘Critical Role’ with Animation
The core cast of “The Legend of Vox Machina” is pretty unique among voice actors, or actors of any stripe, really. It’s rare that an actor originates the concept for a character, lives with them for nearly a decade, improvises nearly 400 hours of material, and participates closely in the character design, scripting, and storyboarding of an animated series — all before they step into the booth to record their lines.
The Prime Video series (about a group of fantasy fuck-ups who might just be the heroes the magical land of Exandra needs) balances that wealth of experience that the “Critical Role” cast — Laura Bailey, Taliesin Jaffe, Ashley Johnson, Matthew Mercer, Liam O’Brien, Marisha Ray, Sam Riegel, and Travis Willingham — all have with an adventuring party full of guest voices. Rachel House, Stephanie Beatriz, Gina Torres, and the late, great Lance Reddick, among others, all sub in for characters originally voiced by Mercer as the dungeon master of the “Critical Role” actual play.
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However, all of the performances, regardless of the actors’ varying levels of history with “Critical Role,” need to seamlessly support the animated adaptation’s storyline — not getting out too far ahead of where a scene or a character arc is headed, and also not leaving any viewers behind. Even in the first three episodes, Season 3 of “The Legend of Vox Machina” has already asserted its own storytelling initiative. So the show needs to have someone who can harmonize all its voices. Fortunately, that responsibility fell on the shoulders of someone with proficiency in performance, persuasion, and the actor feat besides: voice director Mary Elizabeth McGlynn.
McGlynn describes the art of voice acting as both a lot more fun and a lot harder than it might appear. Being able to do accents or funny voices or the “efforts” of throwing punches and taking hits (in such a way that it doesn’t destroy your vocal cords) are all legitimate skills, but they’re the icing on the cake.
“And the cake is the acting. Acting is acting is acting,” McGlynn told IndieWire. “The sessions can be really, really hard, and really emotional. You have to use your imagination so much more than if you’re on a set that’s been built around you that you can react to. You’re in a padded room screaming at a television or screaming into a microphone.”
McGlynn is an accomplished voice actor in her own right, but as director gets to steer the ship of the show, at least for a short period of time. She has known this particular ship for a long time — McGlynn appeared on the actual play livestream in its Vox Machina campaign as the tiefling Zahra, whom she also voiced in Season 2 of the animated series — but even with “The Legend of Vox Machina” such a special case, her core tasks are ones any director will recognize: To give the actors the context they need for each scene, and then help them forget everything they know and be present.
“I try to find a little more nuance here or there and guide them knowing we’ve got an arc for a character; they’re so excited to finally get this out and into a microphone, into a computer, and it’s like, ‘No, hold onto it, pull it down. We’re going to get there. We need to start about here and then your arc will take us there,’” McGlynn said.
There are, of course, also discussions of the physical reality of a scene; whether the blocking of the characters has them close and intimate or shouting across a magical storm changes how actors are going to deliver their lines. Distance and volume matter, there are visual gags that have to be sold, but McGlynn reflected that in voice acting and on “The Legend of Vox Machina” in particular, “You really are in a safe space and what happens in the booth stays in the booth,” McGlynn said.
“We can experiment and people can mess up things and we can all laugh about it and then go back to, ‘OK, does this serve the character? Does this serve the story? What do we need to adjust to get it there?’” McGlynn said. “Every actor has a key. You’ve got to find it as quickly as possible to open up their performance, to make them feel like they are in a safe space for them to fail. And every actor works differently. So I have to adjust to them more than they have to adjust to me.”
That openness to play feeds into the performance style of “The Legend of Vox Machina,” too. “Every show is different. If you’re doing ‘Spongebob’ or ‘Tangled’ or ‘She-Ra,’ everything has its own style and this happens to be naturalism with a lot of cinematic intimacy and a lot of big, fun, broad moments as well,” McGlynn said.
Mercer’s cameo as a strung-out spice merchant is proof of that, but McGlynn and the actors always find a middle way between unbound imagination and grounded realism. The show embraces a relaxed naturalism, including levels of breathiness, whispers, effort and pain that wouldn’t necessarily fly in other animated adventure series; but also a bombast in its combat and comedy. “I feel like we’re running the entire range of what you could possibly do with your voice and with voice acting. It’s wonderful,” McGlynn said.
It’s a range “The Legend of Vox Machina” achieves across its journey, not just when McGlynn is at the helm, of course. The animation, editing, music, voice acting, and sound design all work together to tell the story the writers have crafted. Or, perhaps, in “Critical Role” terms, they all give each other advantage. “Everyone in the room is so invested in every aspect of this,” McGlynn said. “We talk about [the scenes] as much as we need to and then let all of that go and just let their amazing acting instincts take over and we play.”
New episodes of “The Legend of Vox Machina” premiere Thursdays on Prime Video.
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