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Interview by: Amanda Mack

So, what happens when you give a beautiful red head a great sense of humor, a contagious energy and personality, and a passion for limited edition sneakers? Vanessa Marshall is what happens. It’s not everyday that I get the opportunity to talk one-on-one with a former plus sized model and comedian turned voice actress and hopefully soon to be published author who’s done two one woman shows and has her own company. But then again, there aren’t a whole lot of people with careers as unique and broad as Vanessa’s.

Her credits span all the way from a less than girly intern on Scrubs to the cute and dorky Erwin on The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy all the way to deliciously Russian Olga Gurluckovich from Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty who has become a bit of legend in her own right with the help of Marshall.

I got the chance to speak to a very honest and open Vanessa about being overweight in Los Angeles, being queened as the voice of Mary Jane Watson in The Spectacular Spider-Man, and her goal to deliver a message to women everywhere.

[Note: Although the audio is in its entirety, the transcription is pretty rough. There was really no way to translate into text how funny and insightful Vanessa is so, you're going to have to listen to the audio for the full experience!]

Amanda Mack: You’ve done a little bit of everything including modeling. Was that something that you set out to do or did you fall into it?

Vanessa Marshall: Well, it’s an interesting story. I’ve always been sort of a large and lovely lady and growing up in Los Angeles-I would be anorexic by Iowa standards but by Los Angeles standards, I was obese, which is why I did stand up comedy and I always sort of went for the ‘fat funny girl’ genre. But, I was a dinner party and this guy came up to me and said that I should really plus size model. And I told him to go to hell because it was the most insulting thing I’d ever heard! But, then I asked him, ‘Well, how much money do these women make’ and he’s like, ‘You can make a good living’. And so, I went and met with him and got pictures taken and started booking and I could not believe that people were actually willing to pay me for being, by LA standards, completely imperfect and by American standards, totally normal.

AM: You mentioned that you did stand up comedy as well. I was watching your stuff on your site and I think you’re absolutely hilarious.

VM: Thank you.

AM: So, who were some of your comedy heroes?

VM: I come from a theatre background and so actors like Lily Tomlin and Anna Deavere Smith, people who sort of take characters in society or human beings and study them. And of course, they’re very amusing but they have more of a theatrical edge to them. Those were really some of my heroes.

[Vanessa talks about her style of comedy being like that of comedian Julia Sweeney and doing her one-woman show.]

AM: You mentioned your one-woman show that you did. Where were you in your life when you decided you were going to write that and wanted to perform that?

VM: The first one that I did, I was somewhat overweight and not really getting any jobs on camera here in Los Angeles. And so I figured ‘Well, if I can’t control my acting career, I might as well be productive and write something for myself’. The premise of it was that it was a cyber dating game and I played the host and all the contestants. It was about an hour long and it was a meditation on technology’s influence on intimacy. On the one hand, technology is fantastic. We met through the Internet, which I love and then on the other hand, sometimes it’s not quite as intimate as a real human, real time connection.

The second one woman show was about being a plus size model and losing 50 pounds and being the only woman in Los Angeles who wanted to gain weight for her career. I lost my career by losing weight, which all my life wanted to do that but at that point had meant losing money. But ironically, by accepting myself as being an overweight person for some reason the weight literally fell off of me. It was kind of this cruel spiritual joke! I’ve managed to maintain a 50-pound weight loss for seven, eight years now.

AM: That’s great!

VM: Yeah, and it’s really strange cause it was just by shifting emotionally. The point of that show was to encourage women to accept themselves. It doesn’t seem acceptance would be the key to transformation so it seems like ‘no, you gotta go to the gym and do the footwork and pull yourself up by your bootstraps…’ But oddly, it was by loving myself that that occurred so I thought that was an interesting lesson to share with women. 

AM: I was watching some of it [Got Phat? Tales of a Plus Size Model] on your site and even though I don’t think it was the whole thing that was up there, I felt completely inspired because I’m not a stick at all and I guess I’m there at that point in my life where you know, I’ve kind of accepted it.

VM: Exactly! I think it’s the way to be. It feeds American commerce for us to hate ourselves cause then we have buy a gym membership and get liposuction and take drugs to make us thinner and all this business. It’s very simple. Self-acceptance didn’t cost anything and it actually worked. It’s ironic how that goes. If only I had known all those years before when I was on the Stairmaster wishing I were dead!

AM: You really didn’t set out to do voice acting. Did you find that process a little intimidating at first, being in the booth and having all the eyes on you even though you said earlier that you were a ham?

VM: I actually did not. I found the anonymity of voice over to be quite liberating. I felt like more eyes were on me when I was on camera or on stage. In a booth at a microphone, you have no idea what I look like and I think it was far easier for me to just let it rip when I knew that no one could see me. I sort of gave myself permission to have fun because it didn’t matter what I weighed or what color my hair was or any of that kind of stuff.

An agent ended up seeing me in a sketch comedy group that I was in out here in LA and said ‘You have a lot of characters. You should be doing animation. Why don’t you come in and read and we’ll see how that goes’. Went into the agency, read for her, and my commercial reads were not that impressive to her. That part was a bit nerve-wracking. She said ‘Why don’t you riff as your characters’ and I did that and the other agents listened to my…mental illness on tape and they said ‘You know what? She’s just nuts enough that maybe she’ll work. Let’s sign her.’

[Vanessa talks about how voice acting snowballed to the point where she put acting on the back burner. She also discusses her short time on Scrubs.] 

AM: Did you have any opinions of voice acting before you got into it or did you not really think about it?

VM: I didn’t really give it much thought and it’s somewhat seen as the bastard child of film acting or regular acting. I got a masters in acting [from NYU] which, I don’t recommend. I think you’re better off going to dental school but, that’s just me. Sitting around for three years talking about Shakespeare is really-I don’t know anyone has that kind of time anymore. Especially when your career is over at 29 and you’re considered old. That’s three years wasted right there. But, I would constantly feel like my fellow NYU students were like ‘Yeah…how great for you that you’re doing voice over’ because they were doing major motion pictures and TV shows and all this kind of jazz. That’s not why we went to graduate acting school, you know? But at the same time, it’s a great gig and I’m very happy. It’s far less pressure than what they have to deal with on daily basis. I get to play and have way more fun doing voice over than I would on camera so, it all works out.

AM: You said you can play pretty much play any race and any gender and it’s funny because Erwin, the character you play on “Grim and Evil” [more famously called The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy now] is a black boy.

VM: [laughs] Yes, he is! That’s a funny story because we were only given a pencil drawing of the character and he has a high fad like Chris Reid [Kid from Kid N' Play] and I didn’t know that the character was black but he looked kind of geeky to me so, I did more of a geek voice for it. I guess other people did more of an urban, patronizing read. I treated Erwin as a human being and the show creator appreciated that so, I ended up booking the part. I watched the show several months later  [laughs] Uh, hi…he’s African-American! Was anyone going to tell me that? I had no clue. But it was really sweet in sense that it didn’t matter which is the way it should be ultimately.   

AM: Is it more fun to voice a character that you do in a series like that or one that you only do once like Olga in Metal Gear Solid 2?

VM: Well, I think they’re equally enjoyable. It’s always nice to have job security or regularity. It really meant a lot to me to go to the same place every Tuesday and hang out with the same people. Essentially, that’s the closest thing a voice over actor gets to a 9 to 5 job on a regular basis. So, cartoons are more fun in the sense that you create a better sense of family where as Olga is me alone in the booth mostly. There’s no regularity to it once so ever. They’re enjoyable in the moment equally but I prefer the sense of community I get from a cartoon.

AM: Speaking of Olga, when you first kind of got the gist of Metal Gear Solid 2 and got what Olga was all about, what were your impressions of them?

VM: Well, I must say I was very impressed with the cinematic quality of that game. I’ve never seen anything like that in my life! It’s probably the closest thing I’ll ever get to some sort of film or cinema. The opening part of Metal Gear Solid 2 with that crazy music and you see the boat and the names come up. It just feels like this is the important thing on the planet! It’s just a bunch of voice actors doing this stuff. To us, it’s just a job we did one day but when it’s fully executed, it looks amazing.

[Vanessa talks about having to match sync with the Japanese actors while recording for MGS2 and working with David Hayter.]

AM: When word got out that I was interviewing you, I realized people were very curious about your feelings about Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. Olga’s not in it but, her daughter is so have you really been following that at all?

VM: There’s a level of humility that goes with doing voice over work where nothing is forever. Things move very quickly and if anything repeats, it’s a miracle. While we’re exceedingly grateful for a return to any job, we don’t assume that one exists. I’m not really entitled to be in a Konami game. Whatever serves them to get the story of Snake going-I’m just there to be of service to their project not really to take it personally when I’m not involved in the next version or when they ask me to come back as EVA or whomever. I had no qualms about going back as some soldier in the background who’s praying for her life. I mean I would do anything for Metal Gear so I was grateful to have another job doing EVA. So, it really didn’t affect me negatively. Maybe that’s just the life of a voice actor. Grateful for pretty much anything that comes your way.

[Vanessa talks about how she sucks at playing the Metal Gear and I single handedly set the girl gamer movement back about 20 years.]

AM: So, how did the chance for you to come back and play EVA for Portable Ops come up? Did you audition for that? 

VM: Yes, I did. And it was auditioning for that that I realized “Oh, I guess Olga’s not making a return.” I wasn’t sure that they’d bring me back since I had already been Olga. I didn’t expect to be able to play a different character. Sometimes, if they use you once in a game, they’re not going to use you again as someone else. Sometimes when I do games, I’ll do like 10 different voices for the game so it’s not a problem. I didn’t think I would book it and then was totally happy that I did.       

AM: I saw that around 2001 or so, you started your own voice over production company. How did that happen or how did that come up?

VM: I started booking so much work that it was more advantageous in terms of taxes to be incorporated as opposed to be taxed as an individual. So somewhat, it was born out of a practical thing. At the time, my husband who is named Andrew Kishino who’s also a voice over actor and he actually just booked the voice of Iron Man in the next Iron Man game.

AM: Nice!

VM: I know, dude, it’s just like…punch him! He’s freakin’ Iron Man! But, anyway, he actually asked for a divorce last year and so we’re no longer married but we’re the best of friends so, it’s really the best version of a divorce, if there can be one. My company is called Marsh-Kish Productions and he’s a hip-hop music producer as well. And so I thought we were going to ride off into the sunset producing hip hop music and producing voice over stuff and he ended up starting his own corporation for his music so that never really happened. And obviously, since we’re such good friends, I don’t mind keeping part of his last name in my company at all. So, that’s how that came about. That’s a long answer [laughs].

AM: So, what’s coming up for you projects wise?

VM: Well, I don’t know if you’ve seen the new Spider-Man series. That’s been amazing. I’m playing Mary Jane on The Spectacular Spider-Man. They renewed the second season already cause I guess it’s doing quite well. I remember when I got the call that I had booked Mary Jane, I literally fainted.

AM: Oh no!

VM: No, I’m serious! My knees went out from underneath me. My agent called and left a message saying ‘Please call me back.’ and I thought, ‘Forget it. Of course, I didn’t get it. Oh well.’ But, I called her back and she’s like, ‘Yes, is this Mary Jane?’ and I literally fell over. That was one of the biggest honors for me as a human being on the planet. I’ve also been doing voice over promos for a new show on CBS called “Swingtown” which isn’t really a project per se but women never get to do that.

On a more personal level, I just finished my first draft of my novel and I’m hoping to have a readable draft by 4^th of July and then hopefully get that published by the end of the year.

AM: I did see that you were working on a novel and I was going to ask you about that but I didn’t know whether you wanted to talk about it right now or not.

VM: It’s an extension of my one-woman show about the plus sized modeling. It gets a little bit deeper into the subject matter. I don’t know if you know my mom…her name is Joan Van Ark and she was on Knots Landing and she’s a size zero. Having grown up in the shadow of that, struggling with weight issues, I think our relationship really embodies what a lot of women go through, even just looking at a television set. I said my one-woman show was about encouraging women to accept themselves; the book goes even further with that. The comedy is greater, the story’s deeper, and I think that what I offer other women to take away from it is more inspiring.

[Vanessa talks about reading about "Thinspo" or Thinspiration in the New York Times Magazine and how writing her novel has become her "night job".]

AM: Professionally, what do you feel has been your biggest accomplishment so far?

VM: To be perfectly honest, I was in New York this weekend and I found these limited edition shell top Adidas tennis shoes that say “Queensborough” on the side and they have limited edition Jam Master J laces. Those are going in a glass case!

[laughter]

VM: I’m a total sneaker head and I’m so grateful to have found those. Professionally, honestly, Metal Gear was really one of the highlights as far as the gaming goes. Everything has it’s own unique joy. Playing Erwin was also hilarious. I’d say the top three would be Olga, Mary Jane, and Erwin.

*** 

Thank you, Chip for helping this interview come together and of course, thanks to Vanessa for taking such great interest in the site and seeing the results of the interview!