Alpha Betas' Fledgling Voice Actors Were Intimidated By John DiMaggio's Legendary Voicework
John DiMaggio is a legend in the world of voice acting, sporting a lengthy filmography that includes everything from "Futurama" to "Transformers: The Last Knight." The voice actor offers his talents to everything from kid-friendly content to more adult-oriented animation, the latter well exemplified by his hard-drinking "Futurama" character Bender.
DiMaggio has also appeared on "Alpha Betas," a series released through YouTube. DiMaggio is credited with playing multiple characters in the series, including Agent Conklin. DiMaggio's voice accompanies several much younger voice actors. "Alpha Betas" follows Alpha Team, a group of bickering gaming friends who save the world through virtual reality missions. The team consists of Eddie (Evan Fong), Buck (Brian Hanby), Mason (Michael Cunningham), and Tommy (Tyler Wine).
"Alpha Betas" ran a massively successful Kickstarter campaign, bringing in more than $1.3 million from over 8000 backers (per Kickstarter). The series features a number of YouTube stars who have built followings in their own right. Fong, for instance, posts as VanossGaming and has more than 25 million subscribers to his channel. His character, like others, was partly based on his personality (via Vanity Fair).
The YouTubers opened up in a behind-the-scenes feature teasing new episodes about working with the legendary DiMaggio and how his impressive work and list of credits can be a tad intimidating.
Alpha Betas voice actors have some horror stories
Asked whether he would like to do more voice work, Brian Hanby responded he would but joked working with DiMaggio can be a left hook from reality. "If I could, yeah. But when you work and watch John DiMaggio, you realize you suck. I got a lot of work to do," Hanby said.
"I want to do more of this for sure," Scott Robison, aka Mr. Sark, said. He went on to reveal one unfortunate story from his voice acting background, where he was told during the recording of the 2020 video game "Predator: Hunting Grounds" that he sounded like the Cookie Monster from "Sesame Street." Sark voiced Zeus in the game, which also saw the return of Arnold Schwarzenegger as Dutch from 1987's "Predator." Others "Alpha Betas" stars had similar stories, with Hanby revealing he went through an entire recording session, only realizing after that he never actually hit the record button.
Even with their learning curve, the voices behind "Alpha Betas" have individually found their own success through their channels. They now have a funded animated series attracting voices like DiMaggio, which is not too shabby. Also among notable names attached to the series is oddly "A Million Little Pieces" author James Frey, an executive producer through 3BLACKDOT (via Animation World Network).