Growing up in Washington D.C., Anna Vocino always wanted to be a performer. As a teenager, she would go watch Gross National Product (GNP), a local sketch and improv group, and yearn to be up onstage. But, in D.C., it felt like little more than a pipedream.
“D.C. is kind of a one-horse town,” she said. “It was just never in my family’s purview that somebody could grow up and be a performer.”
That all changed when Vocino went to Emory University and joined the college’s improv troupe, Rathskellar. Years later, she would go on to be one of the co-founders of Whole World Improv Theatre in 1994, situating herself firmly in the middle of Atlanta’s budding improv scene.
“I always say I got my 10,000 hours there, between rehearsing and multiple shows a week,” Vocino said.
Vocino now lives in Los Angeles and has made a career out of performing – in particular, doing voicework. This weekend, she’ll take to the screen voicing Mrs. Potato Head in the upcoming film “Toy Story 5,” taking over for the late comedy legend Estelle Harris. Harris, who played the role in the previous four films, passed away in 2022 at the age of 93.
If you’ve ever seen a “Toy Story” film, or an episode of “Seinfeld,” you know that Harris had an inimitable voice. When she landed the role, Vocino knew it would be tough to fill the shoes of such an icon.
“Her voice – I mean, she is that character, and that character is her voice, right? That’s how she speaks,” Vocino said. “I can’t even begin to unpack where that voice came from, because it’s so incredible. It’s so powerful, and it’s so much character, and it’s so textured. It’s everything that she is. The abrasiveness and the lovingness all rolled into one.”
Lucky for Vocino, she has a particular knack for mimicry – or, in this case, voice matching. In the industry, voice matching is the ability to modulate one’s voice to match the tone, texture, and pitch of someone else. It’s used in voice acting as well as live-action ADR (dialogue that is added in post-production) when the original actor is unavailable.
“My number one goal was to honor the character that she created, to bring it to life, to do more of that, and still have the same layers of empathy and character and comedy,” Vocino said of taking on Harris’ voice.
Vocino first discovered she had a talent for voice matching while voicing Kirsten Dunst on the show adult claymation series “Celebrity Deathmatch,” a parody show on MTV that featured exaggerated wrestling matches between celebrities. She always knew she had a talent for mimicking people, but she didn’t realize that she might be able to make a career out of it.
“The voice director of that show … he was like, ‘You know, you really have an ear, so you should pay attention to when these kinds of things come up.’”
Artificial intelligence and its ability to replicate a person’s voice is a huge concern for voice actors, said Vocino. She gave Pixar credit for not going that route.
“Pixar could have AI’d Mrs. Potato Head. They could have retired the Potato Heads,” she said. “But they said, we’re going to stick to talent and storytelling and the human art of voice acting.”
In addition to her work in film and television, Vocino is the owner of a food company called Eat Happy Kitchen. She was diagnosed with celiac disease in 2002, meaning she could no longer eat gluten.
“I didn’t really love what was available in 2002 for gluten-free food, so I decided I was going to start blogging some solutions,” Vocino said. “Well, 10 years later I was eating a lot of delicious food, but putting on a lot of weight. So I shifted and became pre-diabetic.”
After that diagnosis, Vocino pivoted to gluten-free, sugar-free, and grain-free recipes. Her first cookbook came out in 2016, and her fourth – “Eat Happy Cocktail Hour” – comes out Oct. 13.
“I’m trying to use whatever I can at my disposal to be able to grow the company,” Vocino said. “And I have a cool day job of doing voiceover to pay for it.”
“Toy Story 5” comes out in theaters this Friday.
