Voice acting with Matt Johnson
Finding freedom in failure.
Thinking About Getting Into is a newsletter about interesting people with interests.
As the co-founder and chief strategy officer of the creative agency Haymaker, Matt Johnson understands that the best work comes in the absence of fear: You’ve got to push your limits to eventually find the thing that really clicks. He’s made a name for himself through his advertising career, working with notable brands and companies including Topo Chico, Pluto TV, Powerade, and more—and he says that if he hadn’t uncovered his “side passion” of voice acting early on, he may not have grown into the strategy-minded creative he is today.
I spoke to Matt about how he got into voice acting and why he sees failure as essential not just to a creative’s growth and development—but to everyone’s.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
What got you into voice acting?
I call myself the luckiest guy in advertising. I went to the University of Oregon, and I know I’m biased, but no school better prepares its graduates for the field of marketing and advertising. I eventually landed a job at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in ’97, and it was as if I stepped into a carnival of creativity.
I was surrounded by people who knew how to play the guitar, skateboard, snowboard, did stand-up comedy, did improv comedy, would act theatrically on the weekends. We would land a new idea with a client by executing what we would call an ‘idea video.’ And it was essentially a mood film. It always had a script attached to it and a narration, and as agencies go, typically these things would come together pretty close to the actual delivery date. So, the casting of the narrator's voice would often happen internally. They’d have a bunch of different people at the agency read it. And I thought, ‘Hey, that sounds like fun.’
So I gave it a shot and then little by little I would book more and more of them internally. And a lovely woman named Cindy Fluitt, who was head of production, said, ‘Hey, you’re pretty good at this. You could probably get an agent and join the union.' I was like, ‘What’s the union and what are you talking about?’ And she said, ‘Oh, the Screen Actors Guild—you can make money doing this. Let’s see if maybe we can get you an agent based on all of the scratch tracks that you’ve read.’
Now, mind you, I’m getting directed by some of the best advertising creatives. But through those scratch templates, I was able to get an agent and then I started booking work.
Another fun thing we would do [at the agency] was end-of-year holiday videos—every now and then, you’d either be asked to perform in a sketch, or in my case, do impressions. So long story short, this guy Steve Dildarian—a massive talent in advertising who’s gone on to be a massive talent in the world of television—called me up out of the blue and said, ‘Hey, I’m pitching this show. Rather than do a table read, I’d like to record it and play it for the executives. Could you try a few voices for me?’
So I tried a few voices, and he used some of them for the characters. It ended up getting sold to HBO. It was a cartoon called The Life & Times of Tim, and I was a series regular on that for three years. I did all kinds of different voices on that show. And then [Steve] ended up selling another show, Ten Year Old Tom, years later, and he brought me back to do more voices on that. I’ve gone on to do countless commercials and video games and a lot of industrial videos explaining technology. It’s been really fun, and it’s been a really creative side passion for me going on 20-plus years now.
Was this a talent that you knew you had? Had you done theater productions growing up or was it a shock to you like, ‘Oh, I can do this!’
When I was really young, I was a big baseball fan. And I would do [an impression of] Harry Caray before Will Ferrell did it on Saturday Night Live. Then, when I saw him do it, I was like, ‘His is way better.’ But I would do that for friends or pick up an Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone impression. It wasn’t until I got to where people were like, ‘Can we use you for this?’ that I learned I can read really fast. I was the legal guy because it’s against the law to speed up [legal disclaimers in commercials].
If you can read fast, you give the creative team an extra half a second to a second of time for the spot. And so I did that quite a bit. A lot of friends helped me along the way. I didn’t have your typical actor’s journey. You just try things. Now it’s fun to do voices and stuff with my kids. They’re pretty good at it.
What kept you in voice acting? What did you enjoy about it that made you eager to continue and even balance this with your career in advertising?
There were two factors. The first was I grew up in a really small town, and I never knew that anything like that was possible. I thought that if you were going to be doing anything on television or in the movies, you got discovered in a mall—like some super agent found you. I had no idea how any of it worked.
Also, I had so many supportive people along the way, like, ‘Give it a shot. Try it.’ That got me over my creative nerves. If I hadn’t done voice acting, I don’t think I would have embraced the creative sensibility of a strategist later in my career.
What was your emotional journey as you progressed in this field? Were you ever like like, ‘Oh, I’m afraid to do this voice because maybe it’s a little bit too weird?’ Did you have moments like that? And then did you eventually get over that?
Yeah, I have. I would do some voice acting, and then I tried stand-up. Then I tried some on-camera commercial acting and performed more and more. I would bomb. There were horrible stories of failure, and I failed miserably in advertising as well. I had public failures in front of big bosses and learned very much in a public forum—falling flat as you could fall on your face. I think the more that you fail, the faster you learn.
Haymaker is a safe space to fail. I want everyone at the agency to have the freedom to fail, not just a writer or an art director. Everyone should should know that it’s okay. That’s where you learn the fastest. But yes, I would bomb miserably. I tried voices that were horrible, or my voice would give out, or people would say—they’re very kind—they’d say, ‘Okay, let’s try something else.’ I bombed auditions, and I bombed stand-up. I’ve failed miserably in improv moments. All that stuff.
Is there any research that you do as a voice actor to develop new voices or are there go-to characters that you have in your head? Has it changed the way that you view other content—like, ‘Oh, that's a great voice?’
A lot of people have asked me, ‘How do you get into it?’ The first piece of advice I would give to folks trying to get into commercials is to listen to commercials. Then, don’t worry about doing an impression—just match the inflection because inflection is the trickiest part. People will go up on words. They don’t say words like you and I would say them in a casual conversation. They might read some words faster. Some words with emotion, some words really flat.
I think [it’s helpful to] visually draw out the inflection, almost giving it like a sine wave. Are the words going up? Were they going down? Then, try to match the inflection. If you do that enough, you’ll start to learn how commercials are done, and you can do the same thing with industrial videos.
You can find your spec for your type. For a long time, mine was the 25- to 35-year-old guy you’d have a beer with: approachable, nothing special, but casual. Now I’m the older one. And hopefully, it’s still casual.
When it comes to doing characters, singing is a good first step. It’s easier to do an impression of someone when you sing rather than if you try to speak it because all of the inflection is already mapped out. It’s a song, right? You’re just trying to match or copy the tone of the voice as they sing it. You’ll find certain voices are a few degrees off from each other.
The number one [tip for developing] characters is listening to people. The character I played in The Life & Times of Tim was an impression of a guy I met in Central Park when I was visiting a friend in New York.
What’s the most fulfilling thing that you get out of this?
Freedom. I don’t want to sound hippie-dippie here, but when you live your life in your own skin, naturally, you are a little bit cautious. You want to treat people well, you want to say the right things. You obviously want to be genuine. I think those are really good instincts.
But when you play a character, especially in an improv environment—like The Life & Times of Tim and Ten Year Old Tom were all scripted, but there was a lot of improv that happened—that is the ultimate freedom. You can be a jerk, or you can be scared, or you can be weird; you can be all of these different things if you just let go. It feels like I got a massage, took a shower and a dip in the ocean all at the same time. So in that way, it’s a bit of a stress release. Creatively, it’s really a gift to be able to be free. Moments when we’re allowed to be our freest are when we make our best work. ▲