Voice actor Amir Talai talks about how he breathes life into the demonic Alastor in “Hazbin Hotel” – Awardsdaily

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Amir Talai voices the ever-smiling radio demon Alastor in Amazon’s Hazbin Hotel. The adult animated comedy introduces us to Charlie Morningstar, the Princess of Hell who seeks out sinners in her Hazbin Hotel to rehabilitate them and help them earn a place in Heaven. Talai’s Alastor has many plans in the series, including trying to control Charlie and free his own soul.

Here, in an interview with Awards Daily, Talai talks in detail about how he discovered Alastor’s voice within himself early on, how much fun it was to play such an unknown character and why he’s in no hurry to learn everything about him.

Awards Daily: Alastor seems like an incredibly entertaining character. His tricky nature and his sinister undertones. What’s it like getting inside his head?

Amir Talai: It’s a blast! It’s funny because I can definitely relate to him keeping a smile on his face, but there could be other things going on underneath. I love that he’s so into the smile because it definitely keeps the other characters guessing. I think it’s a really fun element of his character. Like you said, he’s a trickster, he’s just having fun, and yet there are times when he has extremely nefarious things in mind. There’s pretty much always a subtext with Alastor, and it’s fun to carry those different thoughts at the same time.

Awards Daily: Since so many aspects of his life are a mystery, did you have your own thoughts or come up with a backstory for the character?

Amir Talai: You know what’s funny? I don’t like doing that. I know there are actors who write a whole notebook for themselves. But I like to go as blank as possible so that I’m not filling the booth with a lot of stuff that could be right or wrong. I just like to make a lot of different decisions in the booth and let Vivienne (Medrano), who knows everything, make the decisions in the edit that she thinks will work best.

I don’t know if you were a fan of the show Lost, but they never told the actors why they were doing something. Often the actors would want to know the backstory and they would just tell them not to worry about it and just do the scene. I think there’s something really freeing about that. You just go into the moment, do the scene and trust that the rest of the team will make it work for the final product.

Awards Daily: My favorite moment in the show was Alastor at the end when we first see him singing really vulnerable about how he almost died, but then we also get more details about his darker desires and things he might be planning. I’m just curious what it was like to sing in that moment and play that role?

Amir Talai: It was great! Alastor is similar to a character I played in the musical Annie, Bert Healy. But what’s different about Alastor is all that comes up under the surface. That’s the moment when he’s the most broken and there’s no one there to see how broken he is. Yet he still has that fire, he still has that strength that I’m going to overcome and show everyone. It was fun to really explore that. I love that that’s your favorite part of the show because a lot of fans feel the same way. I think people really responded to that moment where there’s no one there, so even though he’s still smiling, he’s pretty broken.

Awards Daily: Alastor has this old-fashioned radio voice distortion over his speech. When will this be added in production? Is there any preparation needed for this in the way you speak to him?

Amir Talai: In the booth, I don’t think about it. I work as if it’s not happening and then the production team adds the radio filter afterwards. What’s interesting is that some people noticed and some didn’t. The strength of the filter changes, sometimes it’s very strong and there were a few moments where you couldn’t hear it at all. So people have learned that that’s not his voice. That’s a decision that Alastor makes. He decides where the filter is. The moment his staff breaks, there’s no filter at all. So at that moment he’s clearly lost and doesn’t have the means to turn the filter on. I think it’s really interesting to let Vivienne and the production team decide when we turn it up and when we turn it down for maximum impact.

Awards Daily: You’ve been working as a voice actor for a long time now. Has it always interested you?

Amir Talai: Oh yeah, definitely. One of my first inspirations was Michael Winslow in the Police Academy movies. I just remember being absolutely in awe of him and dreaming of being that talented and having that kind of job. Before I even moved to LA, I was doing voiceover in San Francisco and I did a webcartoon before there were really webcartoons. I don’t even remember what the platform was, but I did a lot of celebrity impersonations. I did Macy Gray, I did Tom York, all these musicians. Then when I got to LA, I had trouble getting into voiceover until I booked a Family Guy through my TV agent and that got the ball rolling. But then after I did Kung Fu Panda, weirdly, I didn’t get a voiceover job for three years and I literally wanted to quit voiceover. I met with this new sales agent and he was like I should talk to our voiceover department. I said I’m really not interested, I think I’m done with voiceover. But he said, no, no, just meet with them. So I said OK, met with them, and suddenly I started booking again. Then, years later, Hazbin fell into my lap. So it’s crazy to think that that one conversation ended up having such a huge impact.

Awards Daily: What’s it like to sing and do the voice at the same time? Animation often uses different voice actors for singing and speech. But in this show, all the actors speak and sing.

Amir Talai: It’s fantastic. I love that Vivienne was so intentional about casting people who can do both because it just feels more seamless. I love rehearsing in advance with Sam (Haft), one of the composers, because some of the songs are pretty challenging, so it’s fun to just do two lyrics and absolutely nail them and then move on to the next two. If I was playing these songs eight times a week on Broadway, they’d be awesome. But to be able to take our time in the booth and really nail them so that when people hear the soundtrack, they’re just blown away, that’s a blast.

It’s funny, you never know what role you’re going to get that requires you to use all your different skills. And then something like Hazbin Hotel falls into your lap. The vocal quality is perfect for it, the accent that you happen to do well is exactly what they need, you get to sing, there’s comedy, there’s darkness, there’s opportunities for improvisation. It feels like a perfect combination and when I found out it was a musical too, I thought, “Oh my God, this is incredible.”

Awards Daily: Where does Alastor’s voice come from? Was there anything in particular they asked for? Or did you make it up?

Amir Talai: It’s really wild. Like I said, I played Bert Healy in Annie at the Hollywood Bowl and Bert Healy is the one who sings You’re Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile. It’s just this one scene he has in the musical and Vivienne wanted to cast that role. I guess some of the usual suspects weren’t quite her thing. She went on YouTube and typed in “Bert Healey singing” and a bootleg of me popped up. She was like, that’s the guy. So they brought me in to audition and I said something like, “You know, I actually played Bert Healy.” They said something like, “Yeah, we know.” What I’d done for Bert was a pretty straight-forward old-fashioned radio man. (In voice) “So, it’s time for another edition of Happy Hour with Bert Healey.” Then Alastor was about using what I had done there with the specific vocal quality and the accent and giving it that darkness or that sometimes s***** cheekiness and the singing. It was about taking the germ of something I had years before and then blowing it up into something deeper and cooler.

Awards Daily: You mentioned that you don’t really think about the backstory, so I assume you don’t have any real predictions or hopes for your character’s future?

Amir Talai: You know, it’s funny that sometimes people ask me if Alastor will stick around for five, six, seven seasons. That’s the only hope. Because honestly, everything Vivienne, Sam and Andrew (Underberg) have asked me to do has been so much fun that I trust them completely. Whether they decide he’s redeemed and goes to heaven, or he becomes a horrific serial killer and brutally murders Charlie. Whatever they want, I trust them completely and I know it’s going to be super, super fun. If he turns out to be loved or despised, I’m sure it’s going to serve a great story. So I’m not thinking ahead. I’m just smelling all these incredible flowers.

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