Interview with Tiana Camacho Otakon 2022

Otakon was incredible; our team had a great time working with the staff, and the con was well put together. However, what we enjoyed the most was speaking with the voice actors. Today we bumped into Tiana Camacho! Tiana has voiced Pokemon characters, Jojo Bizarre Adventure, and more. With only 10-15 minutes on the clock, we did our best to ask all the critical and interesting questions that led up to her voice acting career.

In your career line, has there been a moment in your life when you have used a book, software, or application that helped push your career to where you are right now?

That is a great question. I learned acting at a university, so there were many books I read. "Sanford Meisner on Acting" was my favorite textbook because it helped me get out of my head and understand what it was like to be present with another person. Now voice acting is a little harder because you are by yourself. However, you have the director there, and you must be present with the director, and sometimes when your dubbing, you hear the other actor, so you present with the other actor's performance while giving your own. "Sanford Meisner on Acting" and another book called "The Intent to Live: Achieving Your True Potential as an Actor" is a fantastic book about acting. You are living in the circumstance, even if it's imaginary. I think that is very profound, and it really makes me think about acting very differently.

At any moment, have you ever been stuck while working, but you used a method that pushed you to go on?

Want a cool story? I am in this game in Nintendo called Club House Games: 51 Worldwide Classics. I am one of the cool figurines that talk during the tutorials that teach how to play the game, and that was one of the first things I booked in LA and with my agent with that list. I was like, wow, I cannot believe I am doing a Nintendo title. I was very nervous, and it was the engineer, the writer, the director, and 3-4 executives of Nintendo. We had all of this going on, I am a new actor in LA, terrified, and did not know what to do. I thought about it for a second and said, “Oh God, what is going to happen” so I looked at the script, and this is really funny.

I must figured out how I will deliver this and just feel like a regular human being because I am so nervous, I do not know what to do, and there are a lot of important people in the room that I need to keep them all happy. So, this is what I did. I focused on one executive that was a women in the industry. I figured, well if she is working in this industry, a woman in a high position, she probably dealt with a lot in her position. So, I decided to make jokes that will make her laugh. The moment I made her laugh many times, the rest of the higher-ups laughed as well. At that moment, I think the best piece of advice I can give is not about making everyone in the world like you or perceive you better. It is about how at that moment, you can be something to one person, and if you can do that, you can affect everyone around you by just doing the right thing and being kind—showing happiness, expressing a means by which to transmit joy to them. It is not about pleasing everyone, it’s about finding your person and going for it.

Ever had a coach you looked up to and needed to improve when going back to work?

I trained in commercials before I trained in character voice acting. Because of my perception, I already know how to do character VO because I have already done acting and know how to be a character. I wanted to learn about commercials because if you book enough of those, you make a lot of money and do not have to worry about when your next paycheck is coming because you have enough saved. So, I learned commercial from Paul Liberti in New York City. He is a beautiful human being. He is good at teaching people and getting everyone together; he is just a powerhouse of a human being. He has voiced Professor Elm from Pokémon, he is one of my Pokémon cast mates. Although he showed up years before I even touched, I was a little girl when he was Professor Elm. This is the guy to go to as one of the best voice-acting coach ever!

Do you have a lucky charm, something that gives you good energy, clothing, or a piece of something that brings positive energy to your life around you when working (voice acting)?

That is a good question. I have it in my purse right now, it is this little duck as a witch. This was given to me by a fan at a convention, Colossal Con in Ohio, my first ever. I just told this story to my panel. This is a strong story. A 14-year-old girl came with her parents and wanted a print censor version of my "Cells at Work" character. She buys the print, looks up to her dad, and says, “Is it ok?" She had a bag of ducks. Father says yea go right ahead, so she comes up to me and says, “Hey, I am celebrating since I last self-harm, and I want to give you something to commemorate that moment, and I have all these rubber ducks I am giving out to people to celebrate my one-year anniversary of not harming myself. She let me pick because I am super goth when I am not working, so I picked a witch duck. When life gets hard, for me, we all have our big dark moments in this industry, especially because you must keep pushing and pushing, and you really got to care about it. However, whenever I am having a moment, feeling like I am losing something where I must be in life, I get into this specific purse, and I pull out this duck. I look at the duck and say, “This is what it is about” It is not about how other people perceive me, it’s not about being perfect; it is not about being a celebrity. It is about creating work that affects people so that you can help them get through moments like that by giving them something to make the moment easier or heal them. I feel like the role of an actor is pretty much a role of a healer. Many people enter this industry in need of healing. Before they can go healing other people. So, you have people that would do it because of cons and conventions like that, and I do not shame those people. Who does not want to be selling autographs? There is much gratification that comes with that.

Nevertheless, at the same time, this little moment is what this is about. It is about the people who will be affected by this for the positive. That should be everyone’s objective every day. Think about how their work can affect people for the better and make that your focus instead of all the cons that you book, whether you are going to be in this next project, next game, or this anime and getting all the roles you want—getting all that fame. No, this is what is essential. That 14-year-old girl giving me that duck is ten times more important than any of that to me, and that is why I keep that in my purse.