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Growing up in Washington D.C., Anna Vocino always wanted to be a performer. As a teenager, she would go watch Gross National Product (GNP), a local sketch and improv group, and yearn to be up onstage. But, in D.C., it felt like little more than a pipedream.
“D.C. is kind of a one-horse town,” she said. “It was just never in my family’s purview that somebody could grow up and be a performer.”
That all changed when Vocino went to Emory University and joined the college’s improv troupe, Rathskellar. Years later, she would go on to be one of the co-founders of Whole World Improv Theatre in 1994, situating herself firmly in the middle of Atlanta’s budding improv scene.
“I always say I got my 10,000 hours there, between rehearsing and multiple shows a week,” Vocino said.
Vocino now lives in Los Angeles and has made a career out of performing – in particular, doing voicework. This weekend, she’ll take to the screen voicing Mrs. Potato Head in the upcoming film “Toy Story 5,” taking over for the late comedy legend Estelle Harris. Harris, who played the role in the previous four films, passed away in 2022 at the age of 93.
If you’ve ever seen a “Toy Story” film, or an episode of “Seinfeld,” you know that Harris had an inimitable voice. When she landed the role, Vocino knew it would be tough to fill the shoes of such an icon.
“Her voice – I mean, she is that character, and that character is her voice, right? That’s how she speaks,” Vocino said. “I can’t even begin to unpack where that voice came from, because it’s so incredible. It’s so powerful, and it’s so much character, and it’s so textured. It’s everything that she is. The abrasiveness and the lovingness all rolled into one.”
Lucky for Vocino, she has a particular knack for mimicry – or, in this case, voice matching. In the industry, voice matching is the ability to modulate one’s voice to match the tone, texture, and pitch of someone else. It’s used in voice acting as well as live-action ADR (dialogue that is added in post-production) when the original actor is unavailable.
Read in full at RoughDraft Atlanta
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