In this episode of Audicted, cohosts Katie O’Connor and Kat Johnson highlight some of their favorite characters in literature, and share a special conversation with the award-winning narrator Simon Vance. They touch on his process, some of his most notable roles, and more. Download or stream the full episode here.
Simon Vance on his origins as a narrator
SV: I mean, I can go so back to something like age six. So my dad gave me…actually 11, when he gave me a tape recorder. He recorded me at age six reading one of the Winnie the Pooh stories, but at 11 I got a tape recorder, so I started making silly noises and funny voices into it, and I've never stopped.
On crafting the character of Sherlock Holmes in audio
Katie O’Connor: One of the, perhaps, most iconic characters that you've taken on is Sherlock Holmes. We were curious what it was like to voice a character who has been portrayed and interpreted so many times, and what you maybe wanted to do differently, or make sure you absolutely got right with him?
SV: Sherlock Holmes is an interesting case, because of course I grew up with Sherlock Holmes and he's been present throughout my life in so many different incarnations. I think the one that's really stuck with me the most is Jeremy Brett's. I was probably a teenager when he started them, or whenever I watched all of them, and to me he was the quintessential Sherlock Holmes. But there's also so many others down the years, you know, not forgetting Cumberbatch and his version and all the others. The thing is, and what I've said before is, the text is the source. If it's not there, and you try to put something on top of it, it might work, but basically that's not your responsibility. Your responsibility is to take the text and then draw everything you can from that and I guess if you have to then ladle something on top of that, you can. But for the most part, you go to the original. Now, with Sherlock Holmes it's so iconic, so many different versions. I know that I took bits of all of them and in my head, in that play, that movie that I was running in my head, they were all kind of wandering around there in some way. But all of those came from the original text so what I was drawing from them was probably just through them from the text that I already had in my head.
Also in this episode:
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Winner: Celebrity Memoir
The host of The Daily Show steps away from the headlines to tell his own incredible coming-of-age story, set during the final years and aftermath of apartheid-era South Africa. It's a story that begins with Noah's mother throwing him from a moving car to avoid a potentially fatal dispute with gangsters and follows the comedian's path to self-discovery amidst episodes both bittersweet and comical. Attuned to the power of language at a young age — as a means of acceptance and influence in a country divided, then subdivided into groups at odds with one another — Noah's raw, personal journey becomes something extraordinary in audio. His chameleon-like ability to mimic accents and dialects, to shift effortlessly between languages including English, Xhosa, and Zulu, and to embody characters throughout his past are all on display. The result is a stunning memoir, filled with humor and heart. See all finalists in Celebrity Memoir
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Snowscape
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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes tales are rightly ranked among the seminal works of mystery and detective fiction.
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The Vampire Chronicles
Book 1, Interview with the Vampire
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