‘Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba’ Star Abby Trott Has Found Her Balance 

For most actors, finding your voice can be a lot harder than it sounds. An actor can sometimes take decades struggling to find that perfect balance between inspiration and innovation. For Abby Trott, it took living thousands of miles away from home for her to find her missing link. But now that she’s found it, she’s doing anything but settling for the status quo. 

Whether it’s lending her voice talents to video games, commercials, or anime, Trott is seemingly always ready to add to her already sizable resume. As the English voice talent for Nezuko Kamado in Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Trott knows a thing or two about taking on complex roles that she can sink her teeth into. According to her, it’s all a part of that infectious rush of being an actor, no matter the part. 

Bubbleblabber sat down with Trott to discuss her voice acting journey that’s taken her across the globe. 

Matthew Swigonski: From doing puppet shows in Japan to voicing major characters in animated projects, could you ever imagine that you’d be in the position that you’re currently in? 

Abby Trott: Definitely not. I just want to clarify they weren’t exactly puppet shows per se. They were like children’s shows because some of them had puppets in them. I wouldn’t call myself a puppeteer, but I did puppeteer a few of those puppets. During that time, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my career. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that I would work regularly in voice over. At the time I just kind of figured out that that’s what I wanted to do. It was starting to solidify in my mind but that was the goal, however unrealistic it seemed. 

Matthew Swigonski: You’ve been in animated shows such as Carmen Sandiego and X-Men ’97. As a fellow millennial, that’s pretty badass. Can you talk about how it feels to be in projects that were huge when we were kids? 

Abby Trott: Carmen Sandiego is one of my favorite things that I’ve gotten the opportunity to work on just because, obviously, it’s legendary. My character is so fun. I got to bust out my wicked-awesome Boston accents with other cast members. And that’s always the best when you can go off all of the other actors. And there’s a different energy in the room. That cast was full of incredibly talented, hilarious people, including Michael Hawley, who voiced my brother Zach in the show. We would make each other laugh so hard that it was hard to get anything done during sessions.

It was also fun because we got to improv a little bit with the banter back and forth, sibling banter and bickering. And then, as far as X-Men ’97 goes, that’s another one that obviously wasn’t on my radar since the show ended. And I’m not just saying this because I’m in the show, but it is such a phenomenal take on the 90s show. It honors the source material and expands upon it and makes it better. I think they just knocked it out of the park with that show.

Matthew Swigonski: When did you first become interested in performing?

Abby Trott: I think it was in fifth grade when it kind of started. I had a teacher who was my homeroom teacher/math teacher/drama teacher at the school and he made all of us do monologues [laughs]. So as an awkward fifth grader, it was very nerve-wracking. I had incredible stage fright to the point where I was trembling going on stage. But that experience and the fact that I was able to do it and live through it gave me more confidence. I think I liked the kind of adrenaline that I experienced doing that. It was fun and also it was kind of an outlet for me to express my feelings. As an awkward kid, I was not really great at expressing my feelings. 

Matthew Swigonski: So do you still get that rush with every project that you do?

Abby Trott: Yeah, there’s something about performing and being someone else, you know? It is an adrenaline rush for me, and sometimes it’s magical, what happens in the booth. Obviously, some sessions are different than others. And if you’re doing some textbook narration versus a character, it can be a very different energy. But it is exciting. 

Matthew Swigonski: Do you have a routine when you’re in the booth? Or does it change from project to project?

Abby Trott: It varies from project to project. I like to do a little bit of a vocal warm-up no matter what I do because your cords need to wake up, especially if you have an early morning session. I’ll try to wake up at least three hours before I’m supposed to be recording to give myself time to physically wake up and for my voice to physically warm up and be ready to perform.

Matthew Swigonski: What’s the shortest time frame you ever had from the point of landing a gig to getting in the booth?  

Abby Trott: Less than 24 hours. Actually … I think the same day. Sometimes commercials have really quick turnarounds and I think one time they checked my availability in the morning and asked if I could come in at noon. And I was luckily available to do that job. It depends on the project sometimes. You get an audition and then they want to book the next day. It’s a really quick turnaround. Sometimes you get an audition and you don’t hear anything for weeks, months even. Then you get a call saying you booked the job.

Matthew Swigonski: That part of the rush? 

Abby Trott: Yeah, although when I audition, I try to forget about it. I try to just put it out of my mind because if you dwell on something, it’s just mentally unhealthy for you. As a voice actor, statistically speaking, you don’t book more than you do book. You audition all the time, but you don’t book most of those auditions. So, if you dwell on the failures, it’s really an unhealthy recipe.

Matthew Swigonski: I mean, I think that’s just part of being a millennial in general. The constant anxiety. 

Abby Trott: I definitely had to overcome that a bit. I think living in Japan helped me a lot with my self-esteem and sense of independence. All of that and put me in a state where I was ready to accept that failure. And when I came back to the United States to pursue voice over specifically, I was in such a state that I was like, ‘I have to try this at least. If I fail, I fail. But at least I tried.’ That’s where I was at mentally. 

Matthew Swigonski: Can you talk about your experiences in Japan? 

Abby Trott: I originally went to Japan in the JET program, which is a teaching exchange program. I worked in Akita, Japan for two years as an assistant language teacher where I was teaching in a middle school and an elementary school, and I loved it. It was really fun. It was not a tremendously demanding job because Japanese teachers are incredibly hard working and prepared, so they had done most of the work, and I would just show up to class and help kids with pronunciation occasionally.

But I was experiencing Japan and the incredible culture there. The amazing food, I got to travel a little bit, and then I moved to Tokyo after that to try to pursue acting and music. I loved Tokyo! But it’s a hard city to live in. It was a bit lonely because I was more isolated from my friends who were living around the city. I played the Japanese flute called the shakuhachi. It’s a bamboo flute. I found friends that were playing in a rock/enka band. 

It allowed me to keep music in my life, and in addition to that, I was gigging, you know? I was doing anything that an actor can do, auditioning all the time. But my main gig were those children’s shows. They allowed me to travel because they visited every prefecture in the country, so I got to travel quite a bit. Experience a lot of the different areas of Japan. I’ve been to most prefectures in Japan actually. It was just a great gig and a great life. But at my core, I was feeling unfulfilled. There was something missing, and I could not put my finger on it. And now that I’ve found it, I think I was just unfulfilled as an actor, you know? Being able to portray more complex roles or a variety of roles is really satisfying to me creatively. 

Matthew Swigonski: I’m glad you talked about your complex roles. Can you describe your experience working on the Demon Slayer franchise? 

Abby Trott: Nezuko Kamado in Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba is probably my most  recognized role. Ironically, she doesn’t speak as much as most of my other characters. But Demon Slayer has been an incredible journey from booking the role to now, and we’re still on this journey. And to see how it’s blown up is just overwhelming. Nezuko has been really fun to voice because she has different forms and with her different forms comes a different voice.

There’s her human form that we see at the beginning of the show, and then quickly she’s transformed into a demon. And there’s that growling feral side, and then after that, she has kind of the controlled demon side, where she is able to control her bloodlust. Then we see her demon transformation with the horn, and she’s aggressive and a little maniacal. And now, as Nezuko goes into the sun, she’s starting to talk again. But it’s not the same as episode one when she was a human, she’s kind of baby talking and learning to speak again and learning how to function. So, it’s really interesting. Nezuko’s evolutions have been really fun to experience.

Matthew Swigonski: Did you do a lot of in-depth research going into the role? 

Abby Trott: I opted to not read ahead in the manga because I didn’t want to know what was coming. Except certain things were spoiled for me. I base a lot of my performance on Akari Kitō’s performance, the Japanese voice actress of Nezuko. She really lays a beautiful groundwork for all of the fighting and I just do my spin on that.

When it comes to speaking, though, it’s a bit different. Navigating that has been kind of an “in the moment” thing. Especially when Nezuko is in the sun. I knew that was coming because somebody had spoiled it for me, but I was looking forward to it because it’s such a huge, pivotal moment in the show. I had built it up in my mind and I put all this pressure on myself. This had to be perfect because this is such a huge moment. We spent a lot of time on it in the booth because in English, the mouth flaps are a little awkward. So we spent a good amount of time trying to get it just right. I’m happy with what we came up with. But that was maybe the most pressure I put on myself for the whole show.

Matthew Swigonski: Is there a crossroads between honoring the original performance and branching out on your own for any dub work? 

Abby Trott: Yeah, it’s hard to escape that original performance because it’s in your ear. You know it, you’re listening to it, you’re watching it, and then you do your take on it. A lot of actors are strongly informed by that performance or what they’re taking. You know what they can sense from that performance. I speak Japanese, although I’m super rusty, so I can understand a lot of what they’re saying and thus the sentiments behind it. 

It varies from actor to actor or role to role regarding how much you take from that original performance or how much you were inspired by that performance. Some voices in English sound entirely different from Japanese. Some characters, you hear the Japanese, and you hear that pitch and you’re trying to achieve the same-ish pitch. It really depends. One of the roles that I feel most inspired by, just in terms of the vibes and in the intentions are Momo from Dandadan. When I heard Shion Wakayama do that role in my audition, I fell in love with her performance. She sounded so natural, so unrehearsed, so raw and real, like a real teenager. That’s when I knew that I wanted to do that too.

I wanted to achieve that sound and I put forth my best efforts to do it. I read in an interview that going into the audition she wanted Momo to sound unrehearsed and real, and she knocked it out of the park. She sounds so good in that role that I was inspired. I wanted to pull from her performance as much as I could because it’s so brilliant. But whenever you’re localizing something you need to change it. Obviously, it’s not going to be the same, and so you have to put your spin on it as an actor to some extent. It’s about finding the balance. 

 

Credits:

Photographer: Lindsey Ruth Photography @lindsphoto

Hair: Mika Fowler @mikahairstylist