J Michael Tatum is a juggernaut of the English dubbing sphere. He started out as a secondary character in 2005’s Samurai 7, a mecha-flavored adaptation of the Kurosawa film, and from there went on to play multiple iconic roles, including Sebastian Michaelis, Scar, Okabe Rintaro, and Isaac Dion. Most importantly for today’s discussion, however, are his turns as traveling merchant Kraft Lawrence (Spice and Wolf) and host club manager (and Shadow King) Ohtori Kyoya (Ouran High School Host Club).
We sat down with Tatum to talk about radical recent changes in the dubbing industry, what it’s like being a highly visible gay voice actor, and Ouran’s enduring appeal.
Anime Feminist: Just to start off with something probably a lot of folks have asked you at this point: but what’s it like playing Lawrence again after all these years?
J Michael Tatum: Oh, such a gift. Brina and I both—Brina Palencia, who plays Holo–so love those characters and that franchise that we’ve been dreaming of getting to revisit them for years because we never really got to finish it. And we loved it so much that we came back for the audiobook when they asked us even though we don’t typically do audiobooks, because they’re very time-consuming. But we love those characters so much we couldn’t resist. And then now [there’s] the reboot, so it is lovely.
It’s always such a wonderful feeling to get to come back to characters that you feel a relationship with, that you feel akin to. Now, I’m older, hopefully a little wiser and have more tricks up my sleeve that we can bring to the performance that I wouldn’t have thought of when I was, you know, 18 years younger. I’m also just so glad that here I am, pushing 50, and I could still play him. [Laughs]
AF: He’s got the gray anime hair
JMT: He’s timeless.
AF: And, of course, we’re coming up on 20 years of Ouran now.
JMT: {sing-song] 20 years of Ouran. Now there’s a show that’s ripe for a reboot.
AF: I was gonna say, it’s still considered an ironclad classic at this point. For you, what is it about it that makes it so enduring?
JMT: There are a lot of things. For me, it’s always been how cleverly subversive it is; especially from myself being, you know, a gay man. I really feel like that show speaks to my experience of being gay as a young man, when I was where I was and just how easy it was for me as an actor to bring that experience into that world. And that’s not always easy to do with certain shows [where] I’m being a gay man, and I’m maybe bringing too much of that into this role and it’s not appropriate. But it was never enough [with Ouran]. And I’m not necessarily saying that Ouran is a gay or queer show, but it certainly can be.
AF: [conspiratorially] I mean it is though.
JMT: We are certainly free, and even I would say well-nigh encouraged to interpret it through that lens. And so one of the enduring things about it is how one, it was this beautiful kind of parody of that style of show. That was kind of a love letter to the sort of, you know, hokey, fun romantic, “all’s well that ends well” type of setup. But also it’s just beautifully done and the characters really deal with some… some topics that it was very surprising to see in a show that I was like, “wow, that’s very mature of them to put that in there.” Little things that are still controversial, but in a good way, in that they start, I think, very necessary conversations. And that was the first—not the first show I encountered that did that, but the first show that I was lucky enough to be one of the principals in, that was really cool.
I’m like, “oh, this is a very thoughtful show that’s really taking what could have been just an over-the-top broad strokes comedy, and made it something that really speaks to the souls of a lot of kids that are watching and going, “I see myself in those characters. I see myself in what Haruhi is going through. I see myself in this attitude toward gender” that was very new at the time, 20 years ago, at least certainly for me. It was so weirdly progressive in a way, which feels odd to say about a show that’s 20 years old.
It’s hard to put a pin on why, but it’s also just a comfort show. I think a lot of people… if that show had been around when I was young, it would have made a huge difference in how I handled my own coming out, for example.
AF: Was it Kyoya in particular that spoke to you or–?
JMT: All the characters, all the set pieces really work in that show; but Kyoya, I [got] obsessed with him.
AF: He’s got that very repressed sort of…
JMT: He’s very repressed because there’s so much pressure on him to be—because his father is such a son of a bitch. You know, not that I relate to that. I’m very lucky to come from a very open and accepting family but certainly, I’m the exception in my experience. but yeah, Kyoya, I just got him. I started working on the show as a time coder. Working with Monica Rial, who was the lead adaptive writer for those episodes, my first episode of the show that I ever watched before I knew what it was—because I was just working on it from a technical standpoint, putting in little spot checking for timecode—was, I believe, eight.
[That’s] the beach, the notorious episode, and I immediately was fascinated by him because I was like, “ah, that’s there’s a lot more going on in that character’s head than the trope would lead one to believe.” And it bore out because it’s… I mean, I’m not gonna sit here and say that Kyoya is gay, but I played him gay. I will say that all day. I have absolutely played him gay.
AF: [vibrating with delight, but quietly] He’s certainly got intense feelings he hasn’t unpacked about Tamaki.
JMT: This is very true. I mean, why else would he put up any of his bullshit? [both laugh] He’s in love, c’mon, it’s obvious. People might disagree and they’re free to, but I’ve certainly played it, and I played it gay, and it worked. So, you do the math.
AF: You’ve been with Funimation such a long time now. How has it been over… 20 years is a long time, but [what’s been] their relationship to inclusivity as a working environment?
JMT: It’s hard to speak to that because I’ve always been a contractor as a writer or an actor or director. I’ve always felt very included by that company just because they had me and I was never told not to play it gay if I wanted to play it gay, or to whatever. We were all actors. And acting in any form has traditionally been a safe space for our community. But it’s interesting to see how the company itself has grown, I think, in other ways. Several years ago, they were trying to market Pride, which is something a lot of companies are doing. I was surprised to see that but they were doing it but good on ‘em.
But yeah, it’s been interesting. I’ve always considered myself something of an outsider. And I don’t know that that’s fair. I think that’s just a status I give myself because being a gay man who grew up in North Texas, I’m used to being an outsider, so I’m very comfortable in that role. So when it comes to how a company is evolving in its relationship to inclusivity, I don’t always feel very qualified to speak to it because I always presume myself to be an outsider, if that makes sense. I guess the bar for inclusivity for me is so low [laughs], that I’m not always sure when I see it, or if… I’m not always sure what enough is? If that sounds weird. I’m an old gay man. I don’t know what’s happening.
AF: I grew up in a rural area. I get it.
JMT: Same, same.
AF: Actually, yeah, you were, I think the first gay voice actor that I was ever aware of. And that really meant a lot to me as a kid.
JMT: Wow, man, I didn’t even think about… someone’s told me that before, and I was like, “really?” But I guess I was one of the first really visible gay voice actors in this industry that kind of blew up, which is insane to think about. I’m just very lucky. I was never in the closet because—I mean, well, maybe I was but let’s just said the door was wide open. So even among my family, no one was ever surprised. There was no real closet to come out of. I was a theater kid and my parents, God love ‘em, very progressive people, they were like, “oh, yeah, we knew.”
I never really struggled with hiding it except in professional settings, because I knew that the rest of the world was not like my family. And so I might downplay my, my identity at a job. But as an actor, I never did; because as an actor coming from the stage where I started when I was a kid, there’s no hiding here. That’s the job. You’ve got to put your whole self into a role. So if anyone’s telling you, “oh, don’t do that. We don’t want to see that.” They’re in the wrong business.
So yeah, I’ve been very lucky. It’s weird—I shouldn’t say weirds me out—It surprises me to think of myself as being as visible as I am as gay because I don’t think about it. It’s so much a part of who I am. And I don’t think about how important it is for some people to see that. You know, and [dramatic] it puts a lot of pressure on me.
[Normally] And [realizing that] oh no, yeah, I am very visible as a gay man. And that’s something I think a lot of people need to see, because I certainly didn’t have a lot of role models that spoke directly to that experience when I was a kid. Because you weren’t allowed to, you know, there weren’t a lot of openly gay actors that I grew up watching. I only found out about them later. I’m like, “oh, that motherfucker was gay? Well, damn!” [Beat] “I knew it!”
But you know, it was never someone to watch and be like, “oh, there’s someone who’s successful and doing this thing and they’re also this thing that I am and that maybe people are making me feel I shouldn’t be.” And it’s nice to have that and a lot of people of my generation did not have that. A lot of people still don’t have that. So it’s very weird to think of myself as being in that class because I’m like, “I don’t know how to do this. I never had any role models. [wet cat] I don’t want to be a role model. I don’t know how to drive!”
AF: You’re just a little guy, as the internet would say.
JMT: [Laughs]
AF: At this point in your career, is there like a type of character that you haven’t gotten to play that you really want to, or want to challenge yourself with?
JMT: I was thinking about this earlier. I can’t wait to be an old man. I mean, some would argue that I’m already there; but I mean, like really old. I want to be like Gandalf-old. I look forward as an actor to finally being able to play the crazy old guy, the crazy wizard, the Gandalfs, the Dumbledores, and what have you. The crazy mad scientist types. I love that. I’d love to just be able to get out of bed and, “ah, I don’t have to adjust my voice at all. This character is just who I am now.” So I can’t wait for those characters to come down the wire. Hopefully, hopefully they will. Old representation. Old gays! I want to be an old gay.
AF: Ian McKellen won’t be around forever.
JMT: Right? Exactly. Someone’s got to—take a break, Ian McKellen, sir. I will take the torch.
AF: You’ve also kind of moved a lot into behind-the-scenes stuff with ADR and script writing. Do you have a philosophy when it comes to doing scripts for English dubs? I know people vary based on a looser or stricter styles.
JMT: I tend to be much looser. I tend to have faith in the material itself to be so universal that the language itself is always an afterthought. The sort of methodology I bring to my script is, we as English speakers, rarely say exactly what we mean or mean exactly what we say. There’s always this kind of subtle surface tension between what we’d rather say to that boss who was telling us we need to stay through Saturday, versus what we are allowed to say. So if I’m in line at Starbucks and someone cuts it in front of me, and I’m hungry—or hangry In fact—I may want to say, “Bitch!” But you know, I can’t say that. I’m gonna be like, “um, excuse me, I believe I was next.”
And on paper that looks perfectly polite, but in reality, there’s just so many dimensions of what that can mean because of the context. And for me, it’s about the context. The contexts are universal, the language that you can throw at it to give that context life is almost infinite. Some people get really obsessed with being true to the original but I think what they seem to forget is that Japanese as a language is so different in how it generates meaning. [English and Japanese] couldn’t be further apart. They evolved in their own little niches for hundreds of years before ever coming into contact with each other, so they function very differently.
English, because it’s such a big old, unruly bastard that stolen from many different cultures over the years is high context in a different way. Also, English cultures tend to be very individualistically driven where it’s all about individual expression, and you’re encouraged to make language your own, to some extent. In Eastern cultures, it tends to be opposite. Language tends to be a little more high context. And I’m painting broad strokes here. It’s high context but in a much more straightforward way, where if you are a part of the cultural process, you know exactly what that context is. And so dramatic language in a dramatic setting works differently.
In English, if you’re just kind of saying what you feel it’s considered a little sloppy, because people know that’s not how we work in real life. People don’t ever just say what they feel unless they’re at a breaking point of some kind, or they’re in a safe space, which most of us don’t feel very often, right. So we negotiate with our self-expression to try to be visible but also maintain just a little bit of plausible deniability, as it were.
JMT: And in some cultures in Japan, that’s perhaps less so because as long as you’re using language, everyone…there’s a great example of this that my husband, who speaks Japanese fluently and lived there for a number of years, says. If we were sitting here right now, you and me, and an earthquake struck, God forbid. You know, if we started vocalizing, we would all probably be saying different things like, “holy shit” or “oh my god,” or “run!” or something like that. And Brandon, my husband, he would say, earthquake hits in Japan in an office building and everyone says the same thing. “It’s shaking.” They’re literally commenting on what’s happening, so language is kind of functioning as a as a labeling device to be like, “we’re all in agreement that this is an earthquake, right?”
If I was writing a scene where there was an earthquake and everyone was saying, you know, “it’s shaking, it’s shaking, it’s shaking.” I couldn’t do that in English, it would sound ridiculous. That’s not how we as an English speakers would use language in that moment, because language is different for us. Every language has its own quirks. So I believe that to really bring a story to life, you have to treat it like the context is universal.
There are certain details that come out like, “Oh, well, this takes place in a Japanese village with someone who’s raised in a temple,” and that is uniquely Japanese; but there’s still going to be universal flavors there that everyone ought to be able to relate to. This is a very long walk, all of which is to say, for me, I think the most justice you can do as an adaptive writer to a text from another language is to prove that it has a home in every language by telling the story in your own way and showing that it still makes perfect sense. My changing a word here or there did not compromise the integrity of the story at all. It just proved how universal it is.
Any writers that worked under me always encouraged, don’t treat the language like a one-to-one ratio. Because it can create some really weird turns of phrase that just don’t hit home in English. In the interest of being true to the emotional life of these characters, change the line so that they it means the same thing without using the same words. Because it’s like baking an apple pie. You’re going to do it with a recipe. Do you want an apple pie that’s good and homemade, or do you want one that’s accurate? And there’s a Venn diagram, you know, you need a recipe.
AF: It’s so interesting to listen to, because I know that’s always historically been tough for people with like, queer context, right? Depending on whether the writer knows to see things that are part of a universal story,
JMT: That’s true. But then that’s a conversation, you know. As an English writer, you may not recognize that queer context because it’s going to have it’s going to function differently in that language. You’re like, This is a great example of I remember years ago, and I’m sorry to bring up Harry Potter because I know now that’s [grimaces].
But years ago, before we learn what we’ve learned, you know, I was on a panel with a lovely British lady who was talking about queerness in that franchise and specifically how people were kind of angry that that the writer, whose name I won’t say because I care not to, suddenly came out and said that Dumbledore was gay. And a lot of people in America had issues with it because it felt ad hoc and it felt like queerbaiting. And I could totally see why, I certainly felt that myself, but I lacked the perspective of the British.
And this little British lady. she was like, “oh, no, you have to understand. An unmarried schoolmaster, that’s a gay trope for British people.” So for the author to have made him that has always been there, because that’s just understood. That’s just a trope. It’s not a trope here because we don’t have boarding schools quite like that, you know, we don’t think like that. So that’s a uniquely British trope that suddenly made me go, “oh okay, I guess the author always did intend for this character to be gay, and was surprised we hadn’t caught up with that because we don’t traffic in that same trope, because it’s a different environment. We don’t have boarding schools to the level that British society does. So that’s an example. Yeah. Forgot what we were talking about now. I ramble a lot.
AF: I think we got to something. Just that…I think that’s just interesting. Universality, but as people become more aware of what is universal for more people, it changes.
JMT: Well, there’s certain things that I think will always be universal and other things that you have to really be aware of like that, that is very local to them, and how do you kind of tease that in, how do you spell that out for audiences for whom that’s not universal. And especially when it comes to queer representation, that’s something a lot of people that aren’t part of our community need to be sort of educated on.
And that’s where being creative with interpretation can come into it, because sometimes you do have to put up signposts and say, well, this is this is hilarious in Japanese, but if you don’t speak Japanese, that joke just does not hit right. And do you want them to know the structure of the joke? Do you want to suddenly give everyone who’s watching the dub a lesson in Japanese joke structure? Or do you want them to laugh at the line, you know? It’s a choice you have to make as an adapter.
AF: This might be too big a question to ask you with the time we have left, but so much has changed now with companies being consolidated under Sony. How has it changed on your end, as an actor, ADR, and script writer?
JMT: Well, it’s just changed a lot. I don’t write anymore because I don’t care for the environment. I personally feel that it’s just too Grindhouse for my process. And so I haven’t written for several years now. Also there’s just isn’t a lot of time. They specialize now. It used to be that everyone kind of wore all the hats, and I think that’s why things were so good, because actors were writing and also directing, and so we all kind of partied in the same room.
And so an actor might write a really good script, because they knew how an actor thought and they could write a line that an actor could really chew on, and vice versa. And now, it’s more corporate; and corporations, in my experience, by necessity have to be a little more divided. So you’re not really allowed to be a writer and a director and all those things anymore. They discourage it because, you know, they don’t want to lose three people if one person is out sick.
So it’s different now. There’s less cross-pollination between the different disciplines, because corporations try to keep everything very stratified for their own survival. And I don’t particularly thrive in that environment.
AF: It’s a shame. I feel as though we’ve we have lost something that was particular about that era.
JMT: It’ll come back. It always comes in cycles, I feel. [sotto voce] But not before corporations destroy it.
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