For years there has been a push in include more diversity in roles in Hollywood, and it was a legitimate concern given Hollywood’s history.
But voice acting is a different animal as it’s supposed to be faceless. If someone can do the perfect voice for a character, then they should get the role.
A perfect example of that was in the original Transformers cartoon and the character Jazz. The producers wanted him to have a jazzy sound, so Scatman Cruthers got the job. He had previous voice acting roles like Hong Kong Phooey and so on.
His voice, like many others, just fit the characters perfectly and they hold a special place in our hearts.
But like anything in Hollywood, we just can’t have nice things. They took social justice to another level by proclaiming that characters could and should only be played by people of the same race.
Based on what?
The battle cry was about white voice actors taking jobs away from other people that were rightfully theirs.
In the case of some, like Mike Henry who created and voiced Cleveland Brown for roughly twenty years on Family Guy, were forced to give up the role they created for a sound alike.
Arif Zahir took over as Cleveland, and while the change isn’t very noticeable, the fact he didn’t create the character and Mike was forced out of the role is an issue for many given the original voice creator was forced out due to his skin color.
Character and voice changes happen all the time for reasons we’re not privy to, and life goes on.
Everything comes around
But now the worm has turned, so to speak, as SungWon “ProZD” Cho took to Twitter/X to voice his frustration at only being allowed to voice Asian roles, because he’s Asian.
He deleted his tweets, but you can still see screen captures of them at Boundingintocomics.com (https://boundingintocomics.com/2023/10/23/western-voice-actor-sungwon-prozd-cho-unhappy-reaping-what-he-sowed-complains-that-industry-is-now-segregating-roles-by-race/).
It wasn’t too long ago ProZD was all for this change as it was viewed as giving himself and other minorities more roles, but now that the “stay in your lane” isn’t working out like expected, he’s understandable frustrated.
The easiest and best way to deal with this may be for the studios to go back to hiring the best voice actors for the job despite their pigmentation.
Another option is the writers could write more characters to fit the voice actors. How successful they’ll be depends on the writers, actors, and presentation, but it can be done and help people stand on their own merits and remove any naysayers.
What to you think about voice actors staying in their own lanes? How should this be handled? Let us know in the comments below.
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