Roger Craig Smith, who has voiced iconic characters including Ezio Auditore da Firenze, Batman, Kyle Crane from Dying Light, Sonic, Captain America and numerous others, recently sat down with TheBestWarGames’s Naomi Kyle on Character Select.
He talks about breaking into voice work, his early career path and how it continues to shape his voice work, and gives his thoughts on everything from returning to a character years later and VR.
A non-linear career path
“I have, as of late, been joking with my friends, going, man, look at us. Look at where we are in life and all these things that have happened,” he told Kyle. “Then I chuck on. I go, exactly as we planned, right? Nobody I know is like, oh yeah. This is all where I was headed.”
Smith started acting early, attributing his first line in an elementary school rendition of Charlotte's Web to placing him on a path into the arts and comedy. This single line caused raucous laughter to fill the room, a feeling Smith can still recall.
“I can, still, now at this age, remember what that felt like to get a rise out of people,” he said. “And so I really think if we were to go, in the literal sense, it probably began there that I enjoyed the idea of moving people and making people laugh.”
From there, Smith stayed involved in the theater arts through high school. He was a self-professed class clown, and began doing theatrical work outside of school in a youth musical Repertory Theater called MYART. He acted in everything from Grease to the Sound of Music and Wizard of Oz.
“I enjoyed discovering what my strength was, which, back then, was being comedic, and it was also just what I loved,” he said. Once he’d graduated from high school and started doing jobs including pizza delivery and barista work, he discovered he didn’t want to work a classic 9 to 5. So, Smith started getting into stand-up comedy.
“I went and watched an open mic. I watched a couple of comics do some stuff, and I thought I could do that. I'll put something together,” he said. At the same time, Smith went back to college to get his degree in screen writing. As he pursued a stand-up career, the idea of doing voice work was planted by his high school theater arts instructor.
“I did a private stand-up show for her. We got done, and she was like, ‘Do you want me to be nice or be honest?’ And I go, ‘I'm here for honesty and not for being nice,’” Smith said.
“She goes, ‘Where are your voices and characters? You're just doing stuff that anybody else could do. You can conjure up characters. You were always my little Robin Williams, why don't you go do that?’”
From then on, Smith started incorporating characters into his act, which helped him stand out, and is what stuck with audiences. However, he knew he didn’t want to be a comedian forever.
At the time, he had his eyes set on becoming a screenwriter (and he nearly made it, too) but his trajectory was altered after performing in an improv showcase at the Aspen Comedy Festival.
“The show ends. We get back on stage, and [the evaluator] critiques us in front of our fellow stand-ups,” Smith said. "She gets to me and just goes, 'Hey, who represents you for voiceover?' And I was like, ‘Yeah, nobody.’ She goes, ‘You do so many characters in comedy and voices in your act. I thought you were a cartoon guy.'"
From Stand-Up to Studio
The next day, Smith started researching how to get into voiceover work. He took a class, worked with someone from his old film school to put together a demo, and took to the streets.
“I stomped the ground around Orange County, California, and just dropped off demos in a suit, trying to be different. And out of 11 places that I found that were based down there, about three ended up calling me. I started working for them, took a class that one of them offered, sort of booking work. And I just basically started, entrepreneurially, building my own little voiceover business,” Smith said.
Eventually, Smith took another class, which ended up being audited by a booth director for Abrams Artist Agency. She took a liking to his work, he submitted his demos, and a few weeks later, he had professional representation.
It may sound simple when laid out like that, but Smith had to put in serious work. His work ethic was formed at an early age, slinging hundreds of avocados that grew in the neighborhood where he lived, and working for a family friend’s produce business during the summer.
Both of his parents are ambitious workers who instilled early in him how important professional drive can be. But careers aren’t always linear, and Smith didn’t always have a clear vision of what he wanted.
“On my 30th birthday, I woke up and was kind of like, oh, man, I’ve got to get this going. I’ve got to figure this out. I'm entrepreneurial, but I'm not really established in anything right now. And that was when things really started to kind of kick into gear, the year of my 30th birthday with getting representation and all that kind of stuff,” he said.
His experience in these different fields – comedy, screen writing, theater work – all flowed together into his voice work.
With stand up, Smith said, it’s almost like playing football. You huddle up, you do a post-game analysis, look at what worked, what didn’t, what’s the best way to approach the next show. It also taught him how to shed his ego and keep moving.
“I utilize that in voiceover all the time. They want to know what else you got. Try another thing. Let's do it this way. Let's do it that way,” he said. Studying screenwriting helped him understand character development, story arcs, callbacks, plants and payoffs. His work ethic, honed over years, pushed him on.
“All those things, just kind of all of a sudden, aligned. And I would find myself sitting in a voiceover booth going, I cannot believe I'm getting paid to do this thing that I would still do for free and started out doing for free to get people to, you know, take a listen. Here I am. As content as can be, and I feel like I'm good at this. I feel like I'm right where I should be,” he said.
Smith on bringing iconic characters to life, and stepping back into their roles years later.
Smith has been playing Sonic for 15 years. He’s been the voice of Ezio and Batman for over a decade. Stepping into such iconic shoes (or in this case, tights) can be a tricky line to walk. Smith said he tries to respect those who came before while also bringing something new to each character.
“When it comes to Ezio, I always say, look, that performance is as much me and Ida Darvish and Peter Arpesella and Amanda Wyatt, my director, and Patrice Désilets, who was there for AC to like Corey May, our writer. I mean, there were so many people that were involved,” he said. “It's a collaborative thing.”
That’s how film, video games and TV productions work, Smith said. It takes a team of people to create these stories and characters, and each – including himself as the voice actor – has an impact on the result.
“I try to remember that, look, [Darvish] was my dialect coach on AC two, and about halfway through Brotherhood, she had to move for a job opportunity. And it's like, you know, she was instrumental in helping me shape what was our sort of, as always, I call it the Italia-spanglinish accent, but also speaking lines in Italian that I'd never done. She was crucial to that. And so I can't take full credit,” he said.
Smith had a support network around him to help shape Ezio. The final performance was a collaborative effort between Wyatt, himself and others. “[Wyatt] was there to say, pull back on this. Or no push there,” he said.
Wyatt was also instrumental in creating what Smith views as the quintessential scene in Arkham Origins. The confrontation between Alfred and the Caped Crusader, where Alfred is expressing worry about Bruce being in over his head, wouldn’t have come out the way it had without Wyatt’s help.
“[Wyatt] was crucial in guiding me into a performance that I could be proud of, and that we both were like, ‘Yep, I like that. I'm okay with this.’ You know, ‘That was good,’” Smith said.
And yet, he still gets nervous stepping back into the shoes of these characters he’s played for so long. He said he feels some pressure around getting things like the accent right, but the people around him help to keep him on track.
“But also, along with that, it’s like, oh my gosh, you just asked me a question about voicing a character that I'm still getting to do over 10 years later. That is a good problem to have in this industry,” he said.