Invincible's Gillian Jacobs Explains The Hardest Part Voice Acting For Her
Although she remains most well known for playing the hilarious (and often painfully awkward) Britta Perry on "Community," actor Gillian Jacobs actually has a prolific voice acting resume to go alongside her live-action credits. Her first voice acting role dates back to a 2010 episode of "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" (in which she played the wife of Carl Brutananadilewski), and she has since voiced characters in acclaimed animated series like "Robot Chicken," "Adventure Time," "Regular Show," "Rick and Morty," and Amazon Prime Video's "Invincible."
The latter saw Jacobs taking on the role of the superhero "Atom Eve" (alter ego Eve Wilkins) — a member of the "Teen Team" and later the "New Guardians of the Globe" who served as a teammate and love interest to Mark Grayson (Steven Yeun) during "Invincible" Season 1. According to Jacobs herself, this role was particularly difficult because she believes the hardest part of voice acting is recording all of the little grunts and body noises needed for fight sequences.
"The hardest part about voicing a superhero character is definitely all the fight noises you have to do," Jacobs explained during an interview for The A.V. Club. "'Cause you feel kind of silly standing in a sound booth by yourself and they're like: 'punch, kick, you're getting punched.'" Jacobs said she finds it very challenging to invent all of these noises, particularly the ones that require her to "use her powers" since there's no reference for what that sounds like.
Jacobs still loves the show despite how difficult it is
On top of the fact that Gillian Jacobs herself finds this particular aspect of voice acting to be creatively challenging, her comments also make it clear that making these noises can be physically exhausting as well.
According to Jacobs, the team actually saves all of these "battle noises" for the end of each recording session since they can exhaust your voice so much. Despite how blatantly difficult this part of the job might be, Jacobs went on to describe just how much she loves her role in "Invincible," saying: "The scenes themselves I love doing. I love getting to be a part of that show."
Although it certainly seems like crafting every single grunt, sigh, gasp, or battle cry for an entire season's worth of action television might be too exhausting for some, it's clear that Gillian Jacobs loves the show enough to stick with it — even if she does feel a little silly in the recording booth.