Kyle Hebert Interview

My name is Kyle Hebert, H-e-b-e-r-t, the reason I do the pronunciation and spelling is because I get a lot of misspellings, and mispronunciations. I’m from Louisiana, that’s a Louisiana Cajun-French name, “Hebert”, so the H is silent, “E” is like an “A”.

But I grew up in Dallas, and I first got a Bachelor of Arts degree in Radio, TV, Film, with a focus on Radio. I ended up working in the radio industry as a DJ for years for all sorts of formats. My favorite, though, is between Heavy Metal and Kids. I went from introducing Slayer Metallica, to Radio Disney. But, being at Radio Disney is what afforded the opportunity to try out at Funimation in 2000 with *Dragon Ball Z*. I’ve been a part of that dub since… 18 years ago (*breathes*), “Pepperidge Farm Remembers”. Oh my gosh.

But yeah, my career started off with that. Dragon Ball Z, Blue Gender, YuYu Hakusho, Fullmetal Alchemist, and then moved to LA, and then being friends with Steve Blum, who kind of opened doors with his agent, who is now my agent. Getting onto Naruto, which led to getting onto Bleach, and Gurren Lagann, and Street Fighter, and Fire Emblem, and the gift that keeps on giving.

It’s the coolest job in the world, but you know, like anything worth having you need to fight for it. There’s a lot of blood, sweat, and tears behind achieving any sort of success, before forward momentum in any career. I was blessed with very supportive parents. They didn’t understand the self-employed ethic, of wanting to do something where you do 98% auditions (And you don’t get paid for auditions). Or you can say you spend your time auditioning, and waiting for the call. But you get used to hearing, “No.” The auditions come in, and you send them off - nowadays you record them from home, and you email them in, and when you don’t hear from them, you know that’s a “No.” And I don’t hear from most people.

But, having been in LA since 2005, the career has moved forward to where I’m booking more than I used to, and also reading for more things, too. So I have to keep the attitude - it’s important, too. Positivity, what you put out in the universe comes back to you, sometimes multiple-fold. It is a blessing to have the chance to read for projects, whether it’s cartoons, or commercials, or anime. Commercials, they’re not that, you know, *fun*, because they’re not character driven, but it helps pay the bills. You know, you land a major ad campaign that runs on a national network, and you get a piece of the pie. That’s like free money every few months. It’s like, “Hey, it ran this much, and you get this much.”

So yeah. I’ve been super, super blessed. I’ve come a long way, but got a long way to go. That’s another thing that any freelancer has to have their attitude, “I just want more. I just want to keep going,” even if it doesn’t work, during the downtimes, you say, “Hey, you know what? There’s always a light at the end of the tunnel, so I’m going to keep on doing the best I can.”

I’m very, very grateful for the fans in the convention circuit for supporting the industry that I am very, very proud to be a part of. I started as a fan, and now that I get to be a part of it is an indescribable sort of thing. It’s just hard to put in words how cool it is to be in pop culture, not just a fan of pop culture. So yeah. That’s a little blurb about me that went for 5 minutes.

I think remaining passionate is key. It’s kind of like feast or famine. You have a good couple of weeks, couple of months, followed by three dry months where nobody’s calling you in. So if you’re doing well, and the paychecks are rolling in, and you’re keeping your bills paid, maybe spend a little extra on yourself, treat yourself, yes, but you also need to put some away to ride the dry times, too. And usually, the end of the year, and beginning of the next year, is usually dry. Till then it’s like, “OK, I got no other job skills to fall back on, what can I do?” Well, it’s too hard to get back into Radio now, because the internet has changed everything. It was hard to get back in then, in the early 90’s, back when I broke into radio.
When you say to yourself, “You know, I meant to do this. This is what my soul craves, and I feed it whenever I finally get to go into the booth and record.” So that’s like the little bit of reward that keeps me going. I know that eventually, whatever’s meant to happen will happen.

And you know, I’m human, I have envy of other people, it’s like, “Oh man, they got to be on that cool cartoon,” or something, like, “Ahhhhh!” But it’s like, you know, I also applaud them, because they deserve that too. They’re very talented, they fought hard to get there, and they’re having their moment. And I know that I’ve had a lot of moments so far, so it’s proof that if you stick to it, your time will come. So that’s kind of what keeps me going. Also the support of fans, and family, and friends, it’s like, “Man, you’re doing it! You’re living your dream! We’ve known you your whole life, and this is what you always wanted. You wanted to do voices for animation, and you’re doing it. That’s so cool!”

And when you look around you, and you meet people, or even when you have friends or family members who aren’t doing what they really want to do, they’re just doing a job to keep a roof over their heads, and I always say, “The Tony Robins part of the answer, Motivation,” You gotta find your passion, and take steps towards achieving that passion.

You know, there’s doctors out there making six figures a year, but they would rather be writing, making no money, but their heart is into writing stories and creating. Or artists, or actors, or anyone out there now that the internet has created this great new breeding ground for content, which the common people have access to. You can make your own fortune, and a lot of people have. They busted their butts to do it, but they’re doing it. So it’s that self-employed work ethic. “Yeah it sucks, I’m not getting called in,” but you know, it’ll happen eventually. It always does. Because I’ve always believed in it, and I’ve always tried my best, and here we are.

Yeah, carving a niche is so hard; it’s cluttered, the podcast, forum, Twitch Streams, YouTube, there’s so many things but it’s also really encouraging, too, that people can do a talk show, video show, podcast as well, in any subject they want. And it’s instantly accessible globally. Unless you’re a flat-earther. “Flat Earth Society - we have members around the globe!” “What?”

Haha! Married, yes, very happily.

I used to be very cynical about relationships, that jaded, single, “I’m never going to find love, and it’s all about people using each other, and manipulating, and hurting,” this horrible, horrible outlook. But with my wife, Christina, she has helped literally turn my life around.

She has enlightened me to having an open mind about things like therapy, counseling, dealing with mental illness, dealing with your past, dealing with who you are, and what made you, and what you can do in a constructive way.

Because until you’re 18, yeah, you can sit there and go, “My parents did this and that,” but once you’re 18, it’s on you to take your horrible upbringing or dysfunctional family, and now you can learn from that.

I used to think, “Aw, I can’t afford a therapist,” and “I can’t afford antidepressants” and all that. Luckily I make enough that I’m qualified for insurance, and we’re forced to all get insurance anyway, that’s another can of worms- but having now worked with several different counselors and different approaches and everything, it’s helped me learn that a good counselor just learns to ask the right questions. And they listen to you, and you’re actually the one doing the healing. You’re the one actually fixing yourself. So she opened my eyes up to that. And she supports me, she goes to the cons with me.

Yeah, self published author.

Ryter Rong. R-Y-T-E-R

Yes, I will do that! Her first self-published novel came out a couple years back, and it’s about Irish Slavery from the Cromwell era. It’s historical fiction, rather, a fictional story about a little Irish girl slave, and an African American slave that came over on the same boat. And the owner-slave master wants to breed them when they’re old enough to become unique livestock.

So that’s kind of the background of that, it’s got a little mysticism and supernatural elements in there too, but generally it’s the trials and tribulations the slaves and people of that era had to deal with, especially from the Irish perspective. You usually hear about indentured servitude and all that, “We’ll give you a plot of land and all that,” well, you know, you do your research and find out a lot of people just get shot in the head, and they buy more for a nickel or whatever. It’s just awful.

So my wife, like when she was investigating her own genealogy, decided to look it up, was like, “Wow, I have Irish in my ancestry, and 2% African American. Where’s that from?” And she’s doing the whole family tree thing, going way back, and “Wow! Wow, ok.” So that was pretty interesting. Because it’s a controversial subjects, that’s why she came up with a pen name like “Ryter Rong”, it’s “Right” or “Wrong”. Putting that stuff out there.

And we knew each other since high school. Been friend all along, and we reunited on MySpace, remember that? A lot of people reunited with high school friends, and yeah. Back in the fall of 2018, I went to visit my family in Dallas, and she was in Dallas her whole life, and we met, went out, it worked, and here we are today.

Actually, no, I’m not- I’ve never seen a full episode. When we record we only see our footage, our roll, and they queue up the next line, where ever it is in the episode, and the director tells us what’s happening. We don’t get to keep the scripts or anything, and it’s been here since I’ve recorded, Capone was the last role I had, but they told me in the Japanese he has more stuff to do.

Oh, great! Funimation like cursed themselves. They’re like, “Ah, it’s only a one-off character, and then it comes back 300 episodes later, and it’s this huge story arc, “But now they live in LA! Oh, god.” But now we can record now, like how I recorded for Dragon Ball Super in LA. So if in One Piece my guys come back apparently, I’ll be able to do that without having to fly out of pocket just to record more stuff, but yeah. It’s amazing, even though I haven’t personally invested time, for lack of time, into the show, I know the fandom is still there, and we’re super grateful for the fans.

I landed the role because I was already on the audition list, on the talent roster with Funimation, even though I already lived in California by then, and when we first recorded Cobra, he was just like in Movie 8 or whatever? And then that story arc, I happened to be in town when they got to both of those story arcs, and again with Capone. So it was kind of like we have this friend in town, we’ll throw you on a role, we got something in mind for you. As opposed to what usually happens, which is, “Audition for this.”

So I’m very blessed in my career, not just with One Piece, but with lots of shows and games where sometimes I don’t even try out at all, and I’ll get a call or email saying, “Hey, we want to bring you in for incidentals, or background characters.” And then I’ll still get to work, which is great. Skip the whole audition, and the fingers crossed thing, it’s like “Hey, we know what you can do, you’re good. Today we want you to come in and you’re going to voice a broom. And then a talking car, and then a demon.” “OK.” And then you’ll be a little boy, and then an old man, and then a monster or something - that’s so cool. You just go to work, look like you do, dun’ matter, go in and record, and then go back to your day. It’s really neat.

Well, the recording process is always the same with video games, where it’s one actor at a time, and we’re hearing, as we record our dialogue, we’re hearing the audio, the Japanese audio, as the reference point because it’s being animated to that. So we have to match the timing. If the line takes three seconds, then the English equivalent that I’m recording has to match that. It can’t go over. It can go slightly under, but it can’t go over.

So there’s timing things. There’s very little - there’s maybe 10% or less of actual dubbing to the video where the footage is animated and all that, sometimes I’m not really even told about the plot. They’ll go, “Your guy is this,” and you know, we see the context on the script, we’ll have they layout of a screenplay, where this guy says this, and this guy says this. But it’s on an excel spreadsheet, so you can divvy it up where only my lines show.

And I have to trust the director, or someone from the video game company to say, “Hey, this is what’s happening in this scene, this is why you’re asking that question, or you’re responding to this question” and all that.

I’m super stoked, when I get a call, and it’s something I’ve heard of, it’s like, “Oh yeah, we’re bringing back Fire Emblem.” “Oh! I’ve heard of that! Back in like the 90s?” And then Awakening comes, and it’s this huge thing, it’s like, “All right, we’re going to bring back some of the games, we’re going to animate it, put it on mobile,” And I’ve been so blessed to not only do Frederick, but Bartre, and Valbar, and Validar, in some of the series since then. It’s super cool. Even though I’m not much of an RPG guy myself-- I am a gamer, but a casual gamer, a button musher-- I like just mashing buttons on fights and shooters and racers and platformers, a little bit of everything.