Whether performing in the booth, in front of the camera or on stage, Todd Haberkorn has entertained a lot of audiences.







Known for voicing Death the Kid in “Soul Eater,” Natsu in “Fairy Tail,” Italy in “Hetalia” and Ling Yao in “Fullmetal Alchemist,” Haberkorn constantly adds to his resume both voicing and directing ADR on new anime series, as well as adding his voice to beloved franchises such as “Dragon Ball,” “Pokemon,” “Sailor Moon” and video game series including “Call of Duty,” “Persona,” “World of Warcraft.” He can be seen on-camera as Mr. Spock in “Star Trek Continues” and hosting the new Geek and Sundry series “Otak-ing Heads.”







The Swerve recently talked with Haberkorn as he will appear at Sangawa Project, Pittsburgh's 18+ Japanese pop culture convention, December 9-11 at the Double Tree by Hilton in Greentree.







The Swerve Magazine: You recently began hosting “Otak-ing Heads” on Geek and Sundry. How did that project come about?







Todd Haberkorn: My executive producer contacted me and said that they had a concept for an anime show on their network because they didn't have that presence. He was watching videos on YouTube checking out different voice actor personalities and their Q&A videos and things like that, and he liked mine. He called me in for a meeting, and we realized that we were on the same page with a lot of our sensibilities with what a show like that would entail. We did a pilot episode for their Beta Week early this summer, and it turned out to be their number one show of their pilot season, and it was the number one most-interacted-with show, which made me feel really good.







It showed them that they were right about there being a need for a show like this on their network. We worked out a weekly thing, and we just finished filming our second episode last Friday, and it's been going great. It's a lot to take on because it's not just as a host, I'm kind of the head producer on it, so the skits and the scripted dialogue, I come up with, and they tweak it a little bit here and there, but a lot of it is on my shoulders. It is a challenge, but it's a nice challenge to have because so many times that I've hosted things in the past, it's been solely as a host, so when I come in, they've already set everything from the music to the lighting to the look, and I don't get any say in it. We're honing it as we go along, but it's been a lot of fun so far.







SM: I watched the pilot episode, and it had a really enjoyable tone.







TH: I equate it to “Saturday Night Live” in the sense that they are constantly doing something right up until the director on set says, “Okay, places.” That's what we're doing, sitting there trying to tweak scripts, get elements loaded into the computer, talking about stuff right up until the second we're shooting.







We have a lot of big plans for the show. The scope of a show is going to be a lot to tackle, but I look forward to the challenge. I've been a producer on a lot of things, but for something this regular, something that's a weekly show is a different beast.







SM: For the past few years, you have playing Mr. Spock on the “Star Trek Continues” series. How did you get involved with that?









TH: Star Trek Continues is Vic (Mignogna)'s baby. Hehas been a Star Trek fan since he was a little kid, and he actually made Star Trek home videos when he was a kid. When he had the means and had the connections, he wanted to do that on a gander scale. He talked with me about the project, and he wanted me to be Spock originally, but he was working with two other producers at the time, and they wanted me to play Sulu. I said, “No, I don't want to play the token Asian dude.” I don't want to hop on there, and “Hey, you've got your Asian, great. I don't want to do that. If I'm going to come on board, and it's going to be this labor of love, I want a real challenge of playing Spock.”





Again, Vic wanted me as Spock, but the other two were overriding that decision, so they had to have an audition to see what I was capable of on camera. Which I understand, as they hadn't seen me do a lot of...3D acting, if you want to call it that, even though I got my start on stage in the theater, and the voiceovers is actually the last aspect of the career. We shot an audition tape, sent it in, they dug it, and the rest is history.







We've gone on to premiere episodes all over the world, we've won a lot of awards, and have had wonderful guest stars, even Rod Roddenberry. We're really honored that CBS has been so kind in letting us carry the torch in this honoring of the franchise. It's been an awesome production to work on.







SM: One of the big anime stories of the past month was Funimation announcing that they secured rights to dub “Dragon Ball Super.” What's it like getting to bring Jaco the Galactic Patrolman to life from the movie to the games and now the series?







TH: I always like playing with those guys. I've been in the DBZ world as Android 19, and I've been the announcer for a couple of games, so I was in it, but to come along and have a character like Jaco that (Christopher) Sabat is excited about, and that makes me more excited. I love working with Sean (Schemmel), I love working with Sabat, and being part of the fabric of such an iconic show is always a blast. Talking with Sean, he's still very passionate about the work that he does on the show, and that gets me fired up also. I hope I am honoring the show with what I'm doing. “Dragon Ball” is part of a lot of people's lives—especially if you're an anime fan—but even if you're not, everyone's at least heard of it, so that's kind of a rare position to be in.







SM: Do you feel additional pressure when you come into a series that's already a big deal?







TH: Honestly, no, because that's not the focus of my work. I don't focus on the public's perception. I just focus on bringing my best work to every role that I'm involved in. Having been involved in “Fullmetal Alchemist,” “Soul Eater” and others, obviously, Dragon Ball Z is another level of popularity, but I've had the fortune of working on a lot of great shows like that. I think if you look at it that way, it just adds a stress element that can mess you up, so I just honor the project as best I can by giving 100%.







SM: For someone who has accomplished quite a lot, and been part of hugely popular series, are there specific goals which you are still striving to accomplish?







TH: I try to set three types of goals, and when I accomplish those, I get a new set of goals. I try to set 1-year, 3-year and 5-year goals. I learned that from when I was in college, one of my professors made us set, actually, 1-year, 5-year, and 10-year goals. I hit all of those goals within five years, and so then I set new goals, and I accomplished those goals, and I keep setting new goals and making life a high-stakes video game.







I want to get into a lot more pre-lay animation. Having worked on “Avengers” and “Scooby-Doo,” and now “Ben 10,” it's great, and I love working in that environment, and being in bigger Western culture shows. I've been involved in on-camera work almost my whole career, but voiceover is such a big part of it, and it takes up so much time that there isn't much time left to devote to that side of the industry, but I'd like to do more of that.







I try to keep it in perspective. I don't want to be that kid that walks into the candy store, and say, “I want to eat everything!” I'll focus on the dark chocolate this time, maybe the gummy sharks with the white bellies, and next time I come in it'll be the frogs with the white bellies. I'm already planning 2017; I've got an original project I'll be producing, another album, possibly another book, but there's a lot of stuff going on with Otak-ing Heads being weekly.







SM: In the world of voice acting, probably the biggest story drawing a lot of discussion and debate is the SAG-AFTRA video game strike. What can you tell us about that, and what are your thoughts on the issues?







TH: With the strike, 96% of the union voted for the strike, so something's there. I think one aspect that's pretty controversial is you get a lot of game developers saying, “We don't get XYZ, so why should you guys get XYZ?” That's not the most productive perspective. I don't think that we, as a collective, are saying “We're asking for this, but you can't ask for this.” It's also not just about a financial change to the contract. The whole way that this strike came about is the interactive contract that's in existence is 20 years old. Let's just take video games; it's a $24 billion industry, it's the biggest entertainment industry, bigger than movies and music combined.







In 20 years, video games have gone from 8-bit consoles to virtual reality. This contract needs to change because actors are a bigger part of these interactive movies we call video games, now more than ever. In the 8-bit world, you had Q-Bert and Mario, these classic, iconic characters, but they didn't have voice, they weren't movies, they didn't have the capability. Now we do, and now we're so much more involved in these games that I think it's fair when we're getting booked for these jobs, we know what game we're working on, we know the title, we know who we're going to be, we know how many sessions it's going to be. Is it going to be content that will hurt my voice because I'm going to be playing a monster for four hours? I think it's okay to ask for, “If this session is 100% Gwar-type yelling, can we limit it to two hours and come back in later to get the other two hours?”







As far as residuals, I think people hear that word, and they think we're going to get paid on these video games forever. That's not what we're asking. What we're saying is, on the biggest video games—it starts at 2 million copies—then a small, modest set of residuals kicks in, and there's a cap at 8 million copies. The maximum amount an actor is going to get in residuals on a game is about $3,000. That's the maximum amount. I think that when you take a step back, and you look at a company that has sold 8 million copies at about $60 a head, and we're asking for a maximum of about three grand, I don't think that's a big deal. Let's look at “Grand Theft Auto.” It has about 400,000 lines of dialogue, that's a movie, and the actors are a big part of that.







I think that when they say, #PerformanceMatters, I agree with Nolan North, who recently said at The Game Awards that all performance matters. Absolutely all performance matters; there would be no game without the developers, without the composers, without the animation artists and the designers. All we can do is work with what we have, and what we have is a voiceover union that represents us, and it trying to get our stuff resolved. By all means, if the developers want to get together and do something like that, absolutely I will support that. I will back that 1000%; I will support that beyond what our human arithmetic is capable of and give them 1000%.







SM: You had mentioned performance and demands on the voice. While anime ADR is different than video game recording sessions when you are overseeing the recording of a show, what steps do you take knowing, as an actor, the demands that you are putting on performers' voices?







TH: I try to be very cognizant of what I am asking them to do. I am very sensitive to when there's yelling in it. I just started directing a show right now for Netflix—I can't say what it is—and we had a case on Friday, there was an actress who was kind of sick, and she had some yelling stuff to do, and we just saved it. We'll save it until she's better, and she was very appreciative of that, and she was willing to do it, but I said we would wait because I want the experience to be good for everybody involved. I know I've lost my voice in many, many sessions because of the recording times, and needs for yelling, and so on, so if I have the opportunity not to have to push them, I'm going to take it.







SM: Another industry question, as you just said, you can't say what that show is right now. Are the non-disclosure agreements with anime purely for company's public relations, and timing of announcements, or are there deeper reasons why some shows can't be discussed at a certain time?







TH: There are legal reasons behind it as well. Sometimes companies haven't finished negotiating contracts, and if you're saying, you're going to be working on X show, well that changes the negotiations a bit fro them when steps are already being set into motion.







A lot of times, I get excited about (my roles), and I think that when companies get that out of the way, and people can talk about shows, it just helps the show the sooner you can talk about it. I understand that there's a lot of business aspects that need to get handled, so I always honor my NDAs, but a lot of times if we're just the actors we aren't given a lot of reasons, but sometimes I know the reasons because I'm involved in other aspects of productions. As actors, when we're given NDAs, we just accept it as, “Well, another show, of course, there's an NDA.” and ofttimes don't know the reasons why it's just standard practice.

