Choice Voices

For one month, The Dot and Line is publishing essays, interviews, and discussions about each episode of Cowboy Bebop, which turns 20 this April.

No matter how you slice it, Wendee Lee is one of the most prolific voice artists of all time—and she knows it, too. “I hold a record for the most dubbed content by any North American actress,” she mentioned almost as an aside to The Dot and Line as we wrapped up a long conversation about her iconic role as Faye Valentine on Cowboy Bebop. You can read that interview below, in which Lee addresses the business of localizing Japanese anime for American audiences, Faye’s legacy as a feminist (and definitely “sexy”) character, and the one element of Cowboy Bebop: The Movie that she really didn’t like. Lee also tossed us her opinions on what a live-action Cowboy Bebop should look like and what she’s working on now as both a voice actress and a director.

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The Dot and Line: So how often do people ask you about Faye?

Wendee Lee: Oh, that’s so sweet to hear. People talk about Faye a lot, even today. It’s very exciting every time it comes up because I know instantly I have a mutual interest with someone who is a stranger. It bonds us immediately in a strange way that I really love. I feel like she lives on and she’s archived. She will continue to be a fixture in pop culture for decades, I hope. We seem to be upcycling and recycling our episodes with new generations of viewers. Faye seems to be one of the standbys that I’m really proud of.

Why is that? Why is she so special?

So many ways. I think Faye was the first animated character across the board that I ever related to as far as her being a cool, happening, in the know, really smart, savvy, sexy, cunning, interesting woman. I don’t think I had ever seen a character like her before. I don’t know if I’ve seen one since, but I do think she’s inspired many other artistic renditions of other characters and people pull from her because I’ve had several auditions in years since that will often say, “We’re looking for a Faye Valentine voice type.” I’m reading for that audition. Ironically sometimes I don’t book it and I am the voice of Faye. It’s very interesting. I think a lot of it is her sex appeal, her confidence, the way she rocks a cigarette and glasses and yellow vinyl hot pants. It’s just her ability to be so savvy and so laser-focused in on her needs and survival.

“I called [series director Shinichirō Watanabe] Sensei because he’s our great leader and teacher.”

Process-wise, what was it like recording the English dub of Bebop? I think it’s known as one of the better anime Japanese-to-English dubs in basically all of anime. Can you talk a little bit about what that process was like and how you got the gig in the first place?

Well first of all, I think that Bebop is one of the best examples of localizing a Japanese title into English. It really fits well with English as its audio track. I think we’ve received some of the highest honors from fans and professionals saying that they often prefer the English to the original track. We take that as very high marks. A very high honor. Also, I think the show has a lot of breath. It’s not just nonstop dialogue. It’s not total action. It’s not constant sequences of fast edits. It lies somewhere in between all of that. I think there’s time to take it in and there’s a lot of breath in the pacing of the show. The music is so integral, so important, such a foundation on which the story lies and weaves in and out of.

I think that lends itself to having a really solid title localized and dubbed. It just sounded so natural in the English language to me to this day. As much as I appreciate the Japanese voice actors and the work that they did, it always is a little jarring to me when I hear the Japanese. It just feels like we upped the bar, were a little edgier, and maybe made the characters slightly more heavy and grounded into their personalities.

As opposed to being mysterious only and loose-ended and the audience fills in the blanks, I think a lot of Bebop was told visually and musically, and the relationships evolved out of that. Also, we had a lot of time for the process. That’s something that’s becoming more and more scarce as budgets tighten and more and more production facilities and cities are popping up that are vocalizing and dubbing in entertainment. Animation into English. The budgets get more competitive and we are being squeezed more and more into working faster and faster and faster.

Often I feel quality can be sacrificed when we’re forced to work so quickly at this breakneck speed to just get it done, get it done, get it done because often, with a budget from Japan, when you get a second season, you don’t see an increase. You see a cut in the budget. It’s a very different business paradigm. At that time, we had all the time that we needed to review scenes, to tweak individual lines, and to perfect each and every scene. It’s very rare that we’ll be able to do that today. That’s evident in the work of the entire series, I think.

I think other than that, the humor is really dry and there’s a lot of sarcasm and classic kind of understated, cool guy lines that we hear out of all of the main characters and many of our antagonist guest characters. I actually think it amounts to many reasons why it happened to slide so seamlessly into English.

When you say you had more time, what kind of timelines are we looking at? Was it three months, four months, six months? What’s the difference now between say a 26-episode show that you might do now versus the time that you had for Bebop?

Right. Each company has their own system or individual way of approaching the process, but what we find is in the past, it wasn’t really that we had more days. We just had more hours. The way animation was scheduled as an industry standard, 25 lines of ADR — Automated Dialogue Replacement — we allowed one hour for 25 lines. If your character had 75 lines, you’d be in the studio for three hours. Well at the time, I think we only were expected to do about 20 lines an hour. I don’t know if I can be quoted on that, but it was looser and easier scheduled than we ever see today.

Now even though the industry standard remains at 25 an hour, whether you’re looping your own performance with film or you’re doing animation dubbed or you’re doing an industrial film or medical jargon or what have you, we break down queues of dialog into approximately a sentence or two. One line of dialogue, which is about that length, 25 lines an hour, is still the industry standard, but many studios are pressing us hard. The pressure is intense, top-down from the studios, to get more and more and more lines an hour. 30 lines an hour, 35 lines an hour, 45 lines an hour.

When I was directing Bleach, Johnny Bosch just killed it with Ichigo. I just knew we were going to get upwards of 30, 40 lines an hour because he knew the character so well after years and years of sitting with the character. Now we don’t have that luxury. We’re expected to maintain our budgets. I pride myself as a director in keeping all production on time and under budget. It’s a big goal that we all share. It’s the big challenge that hangs over every post-production.

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Did you ever get to meet up with or interact with Shinichirō Watanabe or anyone else who made the show in Japan?

Oh, wow. No. That would have been amazing. We did get to do a lovely video tribute, a thank you, a personal video thank-you to him in the last interview that we did. We did a big promotion with Eleven Arts and they asked if we had any words for Watanabe. It was just so exciting to be able to record a video expression of our thanks and admiration for him. I haven’t heard any follow-up about it, but I called him Sensei because he’s our great leader and teacher.

The only other interaction I’ve had other than that was at some of the live Bebop events that we’ve done. We’ve did some really cool live music and dancer events at Anime Expo a few years ago. I’ve only been able to work with Raj Ramayya, who was the lead singer on the film’s opening sequence song. Recently I did a convention with the whole Bebop gang and Raj. We all got up on stage and sang. Mary, Steve, and I were singing backups and Raj was taking suggested lyrics from the audience. That was a lot of fun.

“I worked a lot physically in the booth when I was recording her to remain really relaxed.”

In voicing Faye, do you remember any specific character choices or nuances that you wanted to bring to your performance? How did you approach her character?

Yeah. It’s really interesting because the way she’s written and how she joins the series a little bit later and how…you get an initial experience and exposure to Faye, but what you really find is you’re peeling back the layers throughout the development of the story to find out who she really is and what makes her tick and where she’s coming from and why she’s so guarded and intense. I was looking for those wounds in her character to explore and figure out where she was vulnerable and what that was about, but I had no idea it was going to lead to such a deep exploration in “Speak Like a Child.”

Yeah.

That was some of the most rewarding acting material I’ve ever had, because often, as an actor, you create your backstory when it’s not given to you. We often invent where this character has been and where they’re going. Although I don’t know where she’s going, and I’ve speculated many times about what that might entail, I am crystal clear about where she’s been. That was mind-blowing and made me have so much empathy for her. It helped me to approach her edginess from a whole different angle. I also found that I worked a lot physically in the booth when I was recording her to remain really relaxed and just grounded. Sitting back in the chair, feeling her lounge-iness. I used that quite a bit.

Then whenever she was strutting around or posing or getting athletic or fighting or shooting or anything like that, I was always standing up, emulating her movement—as quietly as possible so the mic doesn’t pick it up. But I found slipping into her shoes to be a very physical experience. It helped me nail and hone in on some of the subtleties because her strengths are clear. It’s the subtleties that really give her nuance. The peaks and valleys of who she is.

“Faye is a feminist. She’s a sexpot and a feminist from my perspective. She uses her talents and her wiles to her advantage, but she’s clearly in control. She’s consensual. The only time I worried about that was with the film…”

Do you have a favorite line? Is there one line that sticks out as, “Oh, this is the one that encapsulates Faye” for you?

There isn’t any one particular. This is something that we get requests for quite a bit, but when I go back and listen to some of the episodes … I pulled a couple lines from the series for my demo tape for my reel. I really love her line, “Well, you know what they say, cowboy. Easy come, easy go.” It’s just so open-ended. It’s almost like, “It is what it is,” which isn’t my favorite saying, but it’s kind of dismissive and yet glidey and, “I’m in control of the situation.” It’s more where she was at. I love how she tripped out in the bathroom in “Mushroom Samba.” I love how she doesn’t really like children and can’t stand Ein, but completely warms up to Ed.

It’s more these moments in the show that I love so much. Not as much her actual words. She gets a lot of screen time, but she doesn’t really get into a ton of dialogue. It’s really the guys that carry the dialogue more, it seems to me.

Well that’s why I found what you said about just lounging as much as possible so interesting. You say that and I think, “Oh, of course.” Of course for Faye, the backbone to her character involves just her reclining and trying to be as relaxed as possible. It makes perfect sense to me.

It’s so true because you are so vulnerable when you’re relaxed. You aren’t open and laying across both ends of the couch behind you. You’re wide open for whatever could come your way. She’s almost inviting it. That was so telling about the character. She’s like, “Yeah. I’m hot and I’m vulnerable and I’m open. Come hither.” She just never had fear about the unexpected or the unexplored it seemed to me.

Yeah.

There is one other thing, though. I think we all used prop cigarettes when we were recording. I usually used a makeup eyeliner. I’d use that to smoke. We had really believable inhale dragging and exhaling. Just really worked with the subtlety of how the smoke would float around. Things like that. The breath of the show might go undetected, but when you’re in the moment, those are the details that really immerse you into the experience of the show. The little details.

Other than Faye, do you have a favorite Bebop character?

I really was fascinated by the cast in general. I don’t think I have a favorite other character, but it was always like, “Okay. Who’s it going to be now? Who’s the guest character of the moment? Where is this going?” That stuff was always really intriguing.

Is there one standalone episode that resonates more for you, thinking back now? Is it “Speak Like a Child” or one of the others that you find yourself coming back to?

Of course, “Speak Like a Child” was just so surprising to me. I had no idea. I never knew what was coming, what we were facing next. We kept the experience very organic and in the moment and fresh. The director would often say, “Don’t read ahead. Just stay with me in this moment.” We would share it together and experience the emotions of it. It kept it really raw, which was cool.

“Speak Like a Child,” “Mushroom Samba,” “Toys in the Attic.” I have a lot of favorites. Every time I re-watch it, and I’ve only been through it once and a half, I find new moments, new takeaways that make it fresh again and surprise me. There will be little details that I had forgotten. It’s funny. I’ll also take a look at a character in a scene and go, “Oh, yeah.” Then it all comes back, and I know what’s about to happen.

Can you give me an example?

The whole story arc with Gren [in “Jupiter Jazz”] just blew my mind. I thought Bebop was so brave and so smart to explore unexplored lanes of the highway. It was just so surprising whenever we would get these twists and turns, how Faye ended up ultimately falling for someone who really was effeminate was so interesting to me because she so seeks alpha males.

“She’s rocking this scantily clad little outfit, and this is so common in anime. It’s so not the #MeToo movement. I just had to act right through all of that and not let it limit me and just make her a party girl or what the Japanese actress said who dubbed Faye. She thought she was vulgar.”

I think there is an element too where she sort of falls for him, but it’s very quickly revealed that nothing is going to happen, basically.

Yeah. Something around that shower scene. I think her mind is blown. She realizes she’s in over her head. That doesn’t happen often with her. She’s not one-dimensional. None of our characters are. Again, that plays so widely into their mass appeal.

Do you think there’s a lesson in Faye’s arc that you think people miss when they watch it?

Not necessarily. I could speak to the objectified-ness of her, the elephant in the room, that she’s rocking this scantily clad little outfit, and this is so common in anime. It’s so not the #MeToo movement. I just had to act right through all of that and not let it limit me and just make her a party girl or what the Japanese actress said who dubbed Faye. She thought she was vulgar. I never would have thought of that. I thought of her as typically being designed by a man for men. I was going to give her wide appeal for women too and everyone in between. That was my determination. Sometimes it’s like acting through a bag and the bag happens to be a totally sexy outfit. You have to just get beyond the outfit, beyond the dress ,and find a way to give her legitimacy and make her relevant.

That’s what was important to me. So many of my girls are these sexy, exaggerated, larger than life in all the right places humans that they become almost caricatures. Then there’s a specific kind of submissive branded girl voice that’s attached to that. Any time I can mix it up or break that image or play against that type and give it more dimension and honor the spirit of the Japanese at the same time, I’m all in.

“Vincent cuts her top open. I almost died. I couldn’t believe they were going to do this to Faye. I felt it was degrading.”

For what it’s worth, in my opinion as a straight male fan of Bebop, I re-watch the show now and I think you’re right. There is a way more lascivious lens that most other anime seems to have with regards to their female characters. Bebop doesn’t really have that for Faye. She’s obviously wearing this skimpy outfit, but she’s not turned into a sex object for certainly any of her peers on the Bebop, the main male characters on the show. She’s never presented as without agency of her own. I think it’s really interesting that you wanted to bring that to her, and that you heard that in the Japanese voice actress’s performance and also wanted to do a little bit more as well.

Yeah, definitely. Faye is a feminist. She’s a sexpot and a feminist from my perspective. She uses her talents and her wiles to her advantage, but she’s clearly in control. She’s consensual. The only time I worried about that was with the film when she got abducted and her hands are tied together behind her back. I always forget his name. Vincent.

Yeah.

Okay. Vincent cuts her top open. I almost died. I literally got up and had to take a lap around the room. I couldn’t believe they were going to do this to Faye. I felt it was degrading. I felt embarrassed for her and I had never felt that way before. The team was like, “Hold on. There’s more to this. Let’s show you more of the scene.” I just said, “Can I just watch the scene and get through it before we break it down line by line and start recording it?” We were at Sony Pictures on a big soundstage. Everybody was like, “Yeah, let’s just watch this.” We took some time to view through it, but it was very hard for me because that’s the time I felt most conflicted about Faye.

I thought, “We have come all this way without her engaging in any sexcapades of any kind.” Dealing with the crew where they put relationships aside and their objective was business. Only to see her weakened to this point, vulnerable, on the floor and basically in tears. I really question that moment in the film. I’m not really sure why it had to go that far, but it still disturbs me.

That is a bummer.

Yeah. This is a strong character.

I’m not entirely sure, but I think in some ways, Japanese storytelling is constantly seeking to raise the bar, to find the edge, to take it to the limit, and maybe that was part of the process. She certainly survived it, but barely. She loses power. She’s worked hard for her strength. I felt like that was a setback. I felt like it caused a chain reaction of bad memories for her.

In the ‘Cowboy Bebop’ film, Faye is assaulted.

Well, her bad memories are not necessarily the concern of the film, either. In my watching of the show and the movie, I don’t consider the movie frankly as good as a Bebop movie should be, because I feel like it’s essentially like a longer episode of the show. If they had made that a little bit more about Faye’s interior life after that experience, that’s one way that it could have been a little bit more complex. You know what I mean?

That’s a good point. Yeah. I think that’s what the audience longed for is more of the behind-the-scenes details of who they are and what they do apart from each other. Then how it all coordinates to come back together. I just always get a kick of any costume change because so many anime characters are defined by one costume. I loved her gorgeous opera gown outfit. I think that’s my favorite. Her Vegas dealer outfit.

I think that’s how we meet her. Then when she’s on Ganymede and she’s lounging in her little skimpy bikini and she’s working it. She is comfortable. She’s so comfortable in her skin. She’s reinvented herself, so I think it’s easier to be comfortable about her past and her present.

“The thing that I think is most surprising is how people have related to [‘Bebop’] in times of trouble.”

What’s the best piece of fan mail that you’ve ever gotten?

Gosh, I have to say some of the letters I receive almost feel like love letters. Confessional love letters. They’re so sweet because people often explain… I think they believe they are the only one having this experience, but so often what I hear when people reach me personally is that it’s something that has shaped their childhood into their adulthood and they’ve then passed Bebop onto the next generation. It’s sort of passing of the baton, but people expressing how deeply it affected them as young adults. (Let’s hope they’re maybe teenage before they start watching it.) How profoundly they related to the characters. The thing that I think is most surprising is how people have related to it in times of trouble when they really were having hardships and they feel it helped them and gave them a leg up in surviving it and overcoming strife in their life. That’s just such an honor.

It happens a lot. When we’re at conventions, people often come up for Q&A and break down. They’re shaking and they get emotional and they break down because they’re like, “You have no idea how much this means to us.” We’re looking at each other and we’re like, “Should we… Yeah, let’s go down. Group hug.”

That’s good. That’s amazing.

It’s so sweet. Yeah.

What are you working on these days? What are you most excited about that you’ve got on the books?

Yeah! Our NDAs, we’re so tied to not saying anything for so long. It’s funny. I updated my bio recently and I realized I did a number of things I couldn’t talk about for a long time that have been out for a while now, but some of the things I’m working on now. Well, the series that I’m directing now that I love so much: March Comes In Like a Lion for Aniplex. It’s such a sweet show. I don’t know anything really about shogi but what I’ve learned from anime, but I am enjoying these relationships and psychological exploration of the series so much.

I’ve been working on a lot of games. I directed Fire Emblem and Devil May Cry and Puyo Puyo Tetris, Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony. Amazing title. “Killing Harmony.” I almost passed out when I heard that. Like, “Don’t kill harmony!” Soul Caliber. I did a very saucy show, Testament of Sister New Devil. That’s out. God Eater. I did Tales of Vesperia last year, worked on a Smash Brothers. I’m really focused on games that I’m now that I unfortunately can’t mention, but I can tell you that I’m gearing up for March Comes In Like a Lion Season Two.

“I hear rumblings about the live-action ‘Cowboy Bebop’ and have grave concerns about that…. Just making it an action ride that you buckle up for would be missing the whole point of the show to me.”

Is there any one question you think I should have asked?

No, I’m just thrilled that we have people interested in the series to this day, that it’s beloved, that it’s held its steam, that it has integrity and it’s relevant to this day. It stands the test of time. It’s a series that was hand-drawn, and not many shows can say that.

Oh, I can tell you. I hear rumblings about the live-action Cowboy Bebop and have grave concerns about that.

Really? Why?

If it continues, all we ever ask is one cameo. Just put us in the cantina scene. Just let the voice actors have one cameo in any live action adaptation. That would be fantastic.

What are your concerns, exactly?

So far, it seems to me…well, first of all, I experienced firsthand that understanding anime came very late to Hollywood. It took them some time to understand it and to appreciate it and to see it as a viable market. Now that anime and Japanese culture have really integrated with the U.S.’s pop culture and that it’s a fixture, it’s here to stay, Hollywood definitely wants to be involved in a piece of it. They’re just a little behind and not in lockstep with the pacing that all of us and our fans and our community so love. They of course want to take it to the next level, which is live-action production. A film or a series, casting these iconic characters with walking, talking people. It’s a whole different process because it’s so iconic to us, the way that we know it visually and the way that it sounds.

All of that will change in the hands of U.S. production. I just don’t know if they’ll hit the mark. It certainly hasn’t been the case with other titles that have been adapted to film. I’m hoping someone will get it right at some point. I just really am nervous about them doing it on the backs of Bebop.

Yeah.

I just don’t feel like any “name” actors would be good fits for the cast. I feel especially for Faye that it would really need to be an unknown actress who becomes well-known because of her incredible performance as Faye.

It happened with the Selena story and J-Lo, so maybe it could happen with Faye-Faye too and the rest of the Bebop crew. Just making it an action ride that you buckle up for would be missing the whole point of the show to me. Fast edits aren’t going to cover up for the fact that you’re trying to revise characters or be those characters. It might have to be the future of those characters. It’s 10 years later. They’re older. They’re different on some level where it doesn’t interfere with what we’ve established and been so comfortable with all these years.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.

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