Emmy award-winning voice actress from Birmingham talks about recording in her “wardrobe” studio

This story is republished with permission from The Birmingham Times

If unconventional success could embody one person, it would be creator Erika Eileen Wade, an award-winning voice actress, writer and producer and founder of Glenda’s Baby Productions based in Birmingham.

Wade, 33, born and raised in Fairfield, is nominated for a Southeast Emmy Award this month for her work as a performer/narrator on Alabama Public Television’s Yellowhammer History Hunt.

It would not be her first award for the series, but it would be her first award personally.

Yellowhammer History Hunt is a compilation of educational videos highlighting historic places and people from Alabama. Wade said she recorded these voiceovers in her makeshift home studio – her “coat closet.”

The first Southeast Emmy Award was given in 2022 for the Yellowhammer History Hunt, with the second Emmy for the same program following in 2023.

She received her first Emmy “after recording in my closet while I was trying to stop my dog ​​- which I had just bought – from barking under my coat. They took the audio and mixed it,” she said.

She also won several Telly Awards (awards for video and television projects of all kinds) for her talent as a voice actress for “History Hunt”.

The perfect creator

Her diverse and celebrated resume has much more to offer.

Wade also recently wrote the script for a film set in Birmingham that has generated so much interest that she is currently in a bidding war with production companies, she said.

“I can’t say much about it, but it’s about an issue that’s very close to my heart: black women and mental health.”

When asked about her formula for success, she said it’s an innate gift. “My marketability isn’t something you can learn,” Wade said. “I have a natural empathy that I can get from reading a script, then I translate it into my voice and deliver it as if I’m speaking directly to you. I don’t just talk into a mixer or into a microphone. I always visually put a person in my head.”

The gift made room

Wade said her first major award came as a senior at the Alabama School of Fine Arts (ASFA) in the 2007-2008 school year when she won the City of Birmingham Spoken Word Champion Award for Word Up!, an honor given to young people who express themselves creatively.

This led to her getting a job as an opinion editor for the Birmingham News and learning that she could “make a living by creating things.”

Wade graduated from ASFA in 2008 and attended the University of Alabama, where at age 19 she published a book – Eyestodewhurld, an anthology of poetry about political culture, black history and culture, social decay, and other themes of the human experience from the early 2000s.

She then attended the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), where she received her Master of Fine Arts in 2016. That same year, she was “selected as a finalist for the Kennedy Center’s MFA in Playwrights, which meant that she was “selected among the top 22 playwrights in the country at the time” for her play Justifiable Force, which was inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement.

After graduating from SCAD, Wade traveled to Los Angeles, California in 2016 to pursue her dream of a career in show business. And it worked.

In 2017, she performed her one-woman show, The Rhythm/Da Blues, at the Comedy Film Festival in LA. The show, which follows the life of a young black woman named Lena Darling and all the joys and pains of her life experiences, was written while she was a graduate student at SCAD.

On the show’s opening night, she was called by a colleague from SCAD who worked in development and programming at MGM, “and asked if I could be at MGM (Studios) that week to meet with the vice president of development and programming… and based on the script of the same show (The Rhythm/Da Blues), I was asked to suggest some original titles.”

While nothing about her production came out of that meeting, a relationship with MGM Studios was formed and she earned a reputation “as a creative person who can breathe new life into a potentially stale idea,” Wade said.

Emotionally intelligent acting

Not only is Wade an accomplished artist, but she also teaches others how to write and act.

She prefers a method that allows actors to slip in and out of the role rather than becoming completely absorbed in it.

She calls it emotionally intelligent acting. The goal, Wade says, is to play the role without losing sight of yourself.

“Because at the end of the day, acting is only beautiful when you’re doing just that – acting; when you can stop doing it and still be yourself and not get caught up in the role,” she added.

Measuring success

Growing up in Fairfield with her mother and older brother Kevin Brown (owner of Xtreme Fitness and Performance in downtown Birmingham), she always knew her work would involve creative singing and writing projects.

“I was sitting there watching The Smurfs with my grandma and imagining alternative scenarios,” Wade said.

Her grandmother, who lived in the Dolomites community in Birmingham, gave Wade the confidence that gave her the strength she puts into every project today.

After finishing her schooling and graduating from SCAD in 2016, she told her mother that she was going to Los Angeles, California. She moved the following week and will stay in the City of Angels until 2022.

That’s when she returned to Birmingham – all part of her strategy to build her resume, she said.

“It was never just about going to LA and losing sight of Birmingham… It was always about learning as much as I could, building the networks I could, and bringing that back to the city,” she said.

People “thought it was crazy” when she told them she was moving back to Birmingham to create content.

And Wade said she has stayed true to that course ever since, “because the film market (in Birmingham) is thriving and new.”

Growing self-confidence

Wade said her career path has always been secure, but far from perfect.

The confidence you see in her today “in many ways comes from failure,” she said. “In many ways, I was my own worst enemy when it came to moving up in my field. I didn’t believe I could accomplish things.”

And that doubt, she said, is visible to others who “can smell it on you.”

She said she saw colleagues who weren’t as qualified or didn’t want it as much as she did get opportunities because they walked into a room with the belief that they belonged there. That changed her course, she said.

“I woke up and decided that if I fail one day, it won’t be because of me. It will be because the stars aren’t aligned or it’s not God’s will. Then it won’t be me anymore. That changed everything for me immediately,” Wade said.

The name is program

“When I make my first million, my mother already told me she wants half,” Wade said, laughing. “Not 10 percent, but half.”

And Wade said her mother deserves every penny.

Her production company, Glenda’s Baby Productions, is named after her mother, Glenda Brown-Wade.

She is, in the truest sense of the word, her mother’s little daughter and the product of her mother’s self-confidence.

“My mom was always the type of person who understood what I was interested in, and I was the type of person who had to figure it out on my own. So she just provided me with that safety net so that I could go out and do the things that I needed to do, but at the same time know that home is always there.”

And for those pursuing a career in the arts or elsewhere, Wade said the best way to get into the industry and stay there is to know your audience and meet them where they are.”

For more information about Wade, visit glendasbaby.com.