Manta, a webcomics platform that is home to popular works such as Under the Oak Tree and I’ve Become a True Villainess, has stepped foot in the world of audio dramas by turning I’ve Become a True Villainess into a podcast in partnership with Meet Cute, a fiction podcast. The audio drama has released a total of five episodes as of this article’s writing and has already received glowing reviews from fans.
One of the voice talents on the audio drama is Hao Feng, who voices Callis Hanneton, the fiancé of the protagonist Seria Sterne, whose choices has left the two divided and their relationship broken. Hao Feng has extensive experience in the voice acting scene, both in anime and live-action series, including Heavenly Delusion and A Killer Paradox. The Beat chatted with him on his role as Callis and even talked about the ever polarizing Mr. Darcy. The following interview has been edited for clarity and content.
HILARY LEUNG: First, I listened to the first couple episodes of I’ve Become a True Villainess. It’s great! I said this in my review, when you came on as Callis, I was like “Man, I just really want to punch Callis.”
HAO FENG: [laughs]
LEUNG: The gaslighting is…oh my gosh, great voice acting! What a character. So I wanted to know, what drew you into auditioning for this audio drama [of I’ve Become a True Villainess]?
FENG: What drew me in was wanting to work with the director Liz [Fields]. I met her a few years ago when she was doing this writing fellowship for CAPE, which is the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment. They do a lot of programs spearheaded for championing Asian creatives and one of the programs they have is a writing fellowship which Liz, our director, was a part of. So I had met her a little while ago. We connected. She knew I do voice acting; I’ve done a lot of dubbing work in the past, some video games. So she had asked me to audition for this piece and that’s how I was brought on.
LEUNG: Did she imagine you as Callis already or did you audition for different roles?
FENG: I auditioned for both Rouche and Callis and read for both characters a few times. There were two or three rounds, and ultimately, I believe, the producers wanted me for Callis so that’s where we decided.
LEUNG: It’s a brilliant choice.
FENG: I mean, especially after hearing [laughs] Rouche’s voice. I mean, come on.
LEUNG: I know! I didn’t expect him to be British but it works!
FENG: It was really cool to see the show come together the way that it did. I also didn’t know there would be two British principals as well. Hearing their voices and hearing all of our performances come together, I’m really, really happy with how it’s turning out.
LEUNG: What was the process like doing this podcast, working with Liz and working with all the other actors?
FENG: I was a little unfortunate in that I wasn’t able to work with everyone else. Initially, because everyone was in different time zones, we were all supposed to meet on Zoom and then record simultaneously so that we can get an organic performance. When you record voice-over, you’re usually alone in the sound/recording booth. It’s you in the booth. You have an engineer and a director in the other room, sometimes maybe a producer. They’re in the engineering room, watching. If there’s a visual feed for dubbing or for anything else, they’ll be in another room and directing you. You’ve seen recording sessions for musicians where everyone has a little button for the mic and they turn it on and they communicate that way. That’s usually what it’s like.
But in this case, they wanted to get everyone together on a Zoom so they could have everyone read through the script and be able to interact and actually act off of each other. Because everyone’s in different time zones, obviously, it was very difficult to find one time that worked for everyone; I think there were producers in Korea, actors in London, people on the east coast in the US, and then people here on the west coast. It’s hard, as you can imagine.
Unfortunately, the week that we were supposed to record, I was doing a play at Yale Repertory Theatre in Connecticut. As soon as I got there, I got sick and I started losing my voice. The day we were about to record, I texted Liz and I was like, “Liz, I have bad news,” because I could feel it coming. I think maybe it was the weather change, coming from LA to immediately go to Connecticut. It was still quite cold, it was the beginning of March. I texted her as soon as I can. Normally, there are things you can push through but for voice recording, especially because my voice was starting to sound so different from what I auditioned with, I was like, “This is not something that I can push through.” Herbal remedies will make me feel better but it will not make me sound like I normally do. I told her what was happening and she was fortunately really sympathetic because she had actually just gotten over a really bad bout of sickness, herself. She’s lovely in general but for her, it was timely, she had gone through a similar thing. She was like, “Don’t worry, we’ll figure something out.” Ultimately, everyone else recorded all in that session that was initially scheduled and Liz and I scheduled for a session a week following in order to get all my lines in.
Actually, it worked out in terms of time efficacy. It worked out better for the both of us because she had gone through the whole process with the other cast members already. She knew what she wanted, she knew the pacing of things, the tone, the relationship between the characters. She had a better understanding of it, having worked with everyone else, so we were able to go right through just my lines. And she read for me for the other characters so I still had something to react off of. We were able to crank that out. I’m sad I wasn’t able to actually be there with everyone else. That was a huge bummer.
LEUNG: Are there any other opportunities for everyone to get together to read lines?
FENG: I don’t know, maybe. If Manta and Meet Cute decide to do something to celebrate the final release, that would be great. I would love that.
LEUNG: Were all these recordings done over Zoom?
FENG: Yes. Because I was at Yale at the time and Liz was still in LA, and so she was directing me over Zoom while I recorded things on my end.
LEUNG: You mentioned this before, but for voice dubbing, you usually have some kind of monitor to look at the characters, so you know their reactions and expressions. You don’t have that for I’ve Become a True Villainess. You have the webcomic, you have the books, but they’re not moving characters, they’re not talking. Did you have to adjust your approach to voicing for an audio drama compared to anime or for live-actions?
FENG: I found this way more liberating. Because if you think about the process of dubbing, the picture is already locked. Their mouth movement, in dubbing, we call them lip flaps, we have to match their mouth movement to as close a degree as you can in dubbing. Anime dubbing, I think is a little easier than live-action because the mouth movements are less specific, especially for different languages because you have different vowels and different mouth shapes so that’s tough. Most of the work that I’ve done has been dubbing for Korean dramas. As live-actions, I mean, Korean obviously is so different from English, and so you have to figure out how to match, roughly, the pacing, the mouth shapes, their vowels are so different from a lot of English vowels. But for something like the audio drama, you’re not restricted by any of that. It’s like theatre or film: you can act what is most organic to you and you can create from nothing and it’s really freeing.
LEUNG: I actually didn’t expect that because I thought it would be a little more difficult because you’re given a blank slate.
FENG: That’s what I was trying to do. When you’re given a text, you have free rein. Like in a black box theatre, I mean, that’s an actor’s true playground. That’s kind of what this was for voice acting.
LEUNG: How did you prepare for Callis? You mentioned theatre. Did your theatre experience help prep you for voicing Callis?
FENG: Absolutely. I’ll start with the first question. In terms of preparation process, at least for me, I think the preparation process for voice acting is far less intensive than say, what you might hear when there’s a big blockbuster film or just any feature film or TV show where people might be shooting for months. There’s a really long preparation process involved: there are different accents, different body postures that might be involved. You hear about actors and their preparation process for those roles. For those, you have to come in ready with exactly what you want to do. You work with the director in communicating how you want to put this story together.
Oftentimes for dubbing, we don’t know who the characters are until we step into the booth, until we meet with the director that very day. We will audition and it’s usually dummy sides, which means it’s fake sides. You don’t know the actual characters’ names. Even if it is a name, it gives you no context. It gives you a description of the character but you don’t know the whole show. You’re coming in with a very rudimentary introduction to the show and the concept. You don’t get to know anything, really, until you see the clips that you’re recording for dubbing.
In that regard, and in a lot of voice-overs that I’ve done in general, you find the character as you go along once you get in the room. There’s a lot of flexibility that you have to have in terms of fitting in the tone of the show, in terms of the relationship with the other characters. For this one, I read through the script, did my text analysis, and tried to figure out some of the relationships with the other characters. But the most important thing for me was being open to direction by Liz, because she was the glue holding the whole show together, especially because I didn’t have the opportunity to play off the other characters. I had to trust Liz; I had to follow what she had already created and then find my way to fit in. But I had to rely completely on Liz because I didn’t know what the other actors had done.
For this role in particular, they mostly wanted my natural voice. I wasn’t putting on an accent, I wasn’t pitching up or down, or placing my voice differently. The preparation was doing the most basic [things]: starting with the text analysis but then also being open to direction, re-direction, from Liz, being able to work together and collaborate.
LEUNG: I’ve read the webcomic; Callis isn’t great. Not exactly a sympathetic character but in your announcement when you announced that you got the role as Callis, you called him “untrustworthy and pompous at times, but very misunderstood and steadfast in his convictions.” As you said, [the process] was very liberating and you can take his character however you want to go. What kind of direction or image did you have as you portrayed him?
FENG: I think of him as a Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. If you think about his arc, for most of the film or book or whatever version you prefer, Mr. Darcy is fiercely misunderstood. He is vilified for most of it until the very end when Lizzie finds out his actual motivations. I think that’s part of the beauty of the construction of a piece like this, is that you need that contrast between the characters. You need that tension, or else why are you listening? But for someone like Mr. Darcy, at the end, he has a redemption. But it’s not really a redemption; it’s an understanding. He never really changed. It’s only that Lizzie changed in that she now knows why he did certain things the way that he did them. He just didn’t reveal them.
And Callis in that regard, yes, on the surface, he can be very callous. But at the same time, he has his own convictions that he’s not always forthcoming about. I think that’s also the beauty of playing any character or any villain is, how do you find the human aspect of them? Every person has a fear of being misunderstood. Everyone has a risk of being misunderstood. How we humanize them is that we find their own convictions, the reason why they do what they do or the way they do them. Yes, I agree Callis can be blunt, and can be, you said gaslighting earlier, but me personally, especially after voicing him, I feel the reverse is also true, especially with Lina.
In that sense, Callis has been victim to a lot of manipulation, by Lina in particular, so a lot of his mistakes aren’t entirely his responsibility. They are, but they also aren’t. Nothing is 100% black and white but basically, I feel like Callis has a lot of very vulnerable moments actually, thus far. I think he has his own convictions, he is misunderstood until he reveals at the end. The way he does things, I think, becomes a little more clear as the show goes on.
LEUNG: What did you learn about yourself? How did you grow in your craft as an actor: voice actor or an actor in general?
FENG: I think the biggest thing for me, growing-wise, was when I got sick. It’s not craft specifically but it is part of the process. I knew that, when I was sick, for my voice to not sound like it normally does, that’s not something that I can really let fly on a professional level. I had to be forthcoming, I had to be honest about that. Knowing your limitations and knowing when to take a step back, that’s as important as pushing yourself to grow. In terms of the character…I wouldn’t say I necessarily learned this about myself because I’ve known this for a long time. My natural way of being and sometimes my tone of voice can also be a little blunt, and a certain judgemental tone that I can have in my voice worked really well with Callis [laughs].
LEUNG: I can relate. I have the same kind of problem. I’m working on it.
FENG: I don’t know if it’s something necessarily that one needs to work on. I think, for me, when someone says, “I might be judgemental or blunt or callous,” there is a certain level of tact that can be learned and should be learned, that is important for life, but at the same time, I think it’s important to hold onto one’s values, to one’s standards. Knowing when to express those and how you express those is important, but I don’t think one should be dismissive of the things that are important to them.
LEUNG: One final question: did you have anything you want to say to the fans and listeners of I’ve Become a True Villainess?
FENG: I know that Mr. Darcy is a favorite. I think, don’t be so quick to dismiss Callis for what you see at face value, because there’s so much more that lies underneath, as with anyone. I think, once you’re able to open yourself to the possibility that Callis might actually be telling the truth in terms of his motivation, his love for Seria… Listen with an open mind.
Your first impression was to want to punch him [laughs]. I get it. I appreciate you saying that; it’s a compliment to the performance and to the writing. I value that kind of feedback. Some might see it as redemption, some might not, but that’s where that comes in later on, where I think that’s so much more powerful.
This is a little meta and maybe just a critical analysis of the text. The way the stories are constructed, both in Pride and Prejudice and with [I’ve Become a True Villainess]–I’ve been auditioning for a production of Pride and Prejudice so that’s what’s really fresh on my mind, for Mr. Darcy coincidentally–the stories are told from the perspectives of Lizzie and Seria.
We have a lot of inner monologues from Seria in the podcast. We understand her process. The way that it’s structured, we are, as listeners, designed to sympathize with her because we understand her. The issue with Mr. Darcy and with Callis is that we don’t understand them fully yet. We don’t have any of their inner monologue, we don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing, we don’t know the full details of their circumstances. There’s a lot that happens between Lina and Callis that we don’t know the full details of. We hear their anecdotes second-hand, but we don’t actually see the events happen, so everything becomes a little twisted in the game of telephone and also in high emotions; [there are] a lot of misunderstandings. That’s where the open-mindedness is so important because we are seeing everything through one lens but that limits our perspective to other possibilities.
