‘Spy x Family’ Voice Actresses Divulge Who They’d Direct THAT Face At

Spy x Family is one of those rare shows whose charms are so multitudinous that different kinds of people will latch onto the show for different reasons. It’s also devilishly clever and well-written, beautifully animated, and brilliantly acted. It’s an equation easier than most fractions, and it has skyrocketed Spy x Family into the stratosphere of popular TV only halfway through its first season. (Season 1 Cour 1 just ended in July—Cour 2 starts in October, both on Crunchyroll.) In fact, the core familial unit—Anya, the mind-reading daughter; Yor, the assassin mother; and Loid, the spy father—were far and away the most popular cosplays at the 2022 Anime Expo.

“THEY ARE EVERYWHERE,” agreed Megan Shipman, emphatically, in our conversation there. Shipman is the English voice of Anya, and her outgoing and energetic nature reminded me somewhat of her character. Natalie Van Sistine, who’s the English voice of Yor, sat next to Shipman, mirroring her own character in her more reserved demeanor. She nodded and chuckled as Shipman excitedly continued. “It’s kind of insane, because you go to cons and, if you do this job long enough, you’ll see characters you voice sprinkled here and there, but not, like, every other person. It’s kind of crazy to sit there and be like: ‘1, 2, 3, 4, 5…’ It really puts into perspective how big everything is, because you don’t always see that in person.”

“I’ve only done a couple of cons since I starting getting into anime, voice acting-wise,” Van Sistine chimed in, “and I’ve never been to a con before where I’ve seen people cosplaying as a character I’ve voiced. It’s just wild.” Clearly, they were thrilled.

Spy x Family‘s popularity as an anime was deeply foreshadowed by the runaway success of the manga, which Tatsuya Endo began in 2019. Both Shipman and Van Sistine were aware of Spy x Family‘s hit potential when they took their auditions. “Anything you hear about a manga [on Twitter], if you hear about it in your peripheral, it must be really, really good,” Shipman said. (I borrowed these sage words to help explain why I think the Chainsaw Man anime’s reception is going to be absolutely ridiculous.)

Manga experts

Neither had read it prior to getting the audition, but Van Sistine’s partner had the first volume. “As soon as I got the audition, I was reading through it, trying to figure things out, and I just immediately went, ‘You know what? I’m dropping everything,’ ” Van Sistine recollected. An intense read-a-thon commenced.

Shipman bought all the volumes as soon as she was cast. Currently, they’re both fully caught up on the manga. “I think sometimes Chris, our director, will forget [we read the manga],” Van Sistine said, “and then we’ll [be in the booth and] be like, ‘Oh wait, is this the episode…?!’ And he’ll be like, ‘You know, why am I explaining?’ “

Simuldubs like Spy x Family is “basically all we do,” Shipman told me. I was surprised to learn that the English voice actors actively reference the performances of their Japanese equivalents before recording their lines. Shipman explained the process to me: “We always will preview a certain amount of lines in Japanese so we can see the scene [and] know the timing so that we can match the lip flaps. Every line we do, we always watch the Japanese line first.”

This process had an added bonus for Shipman: It helps ease the incredibly difficult task of acting as a child when you are, in fact, an adult. “I’ve redone lines because sometimes it doesn’t sound ENOUGH like a child,” Shipman said. “Sometimes you can slip out if you’re not thinking hard enough about it.” Shipman has played children before (including child-Sanji in One Piece), but Anya is particularly difficult. “What’s interesting about Anya and different from other kids in anime so far is that she really is a kid. Her mindset is so childlike and she’s written so well in that sense that I think that’s what makes her so funny and why people find her so endearing.”

Shipman continued, “She’s a little harder to stay in that childlike voice, because you also don’t want to make her sound too much like a baby. You don’t want to take out too many of those consonants or make it sound too childish, because she is—I don’t know if she’s ‘smart.’ She’s … street smart?” Shipman laughed.

Shipman greatly admires the work of Anya’s Japanese VO, Atsumi Tanezaki. “She’s already so funny that I just want to take [what she did] and basically do the exact same thing in English … and hope that my delivery is just as funny as hers, because she’s hilarious.” I told Shipman that, watching the dub, I was struck by how similar Anya’s energy and tone was in both performances, and she was thrilled. “It’s hard to know until people are like, ‘Yeah, you sound great!’ You don’t want to go fishing for compliments. Like, ‘How great do I sound, guys?!'”

For Yor, Van Sistine found a deeply empathetic approach to humanize even a master assassin. “I—like Yor—also struggle with lots of anxiety and feeling like, ‘Am I doing this right? Am I good at anything? Can I function as a human?’” Van Sistine reflected. “But when I step in the booth—you have to turn all of that off and you have to channel your assassin or warrior or whatnot … I see in her this a similar flip … There’s a lot of, ‘Am I doing this right? Is this going okay? I hope that one thinks I’m insane or [knows that] I at least that I mean well!’ … [And other times,] you’re in Job Mode, and you’re doing something that you were trained to do, and you’ve done enough times, and you just know what it means to go in there and put your game face on—basically just figure out how to do everything else later, but I know how to do this … I can absolutely relate to that.”

So about The Face …

Once in the booth, and armed with their love for the manga, both actresses found themselves anticipating particular scenes. Naturally, one of the most anticipated for Shipman was Anya’s legendary “heh” face. I asked Shipman who she’d give The Face to in real life, if she could give it to anyone. The answer was swift: “Oh god. Just … all of Twitter.”

Van Sistine and I burst into laughter. “That’s probably the correct response,” Van Sistine agreed. “I love them,” Shipman added, “but also, they deserve it. They know. They know.”

Van Sistine clarified, “Overall, we’ve gotten such a wonderful response from this [show]. So it’s definitely not an issue with [Spy x Family]. But there’s definitely a certain point where you have to have that attitude to just function on the internet.” Hear, hear!

“It’s an answer to every question,” Shipman confirmed.

We tried to find a Heh Face equivalent for Yor. Ever murdered someone? Ever punched someone through a ceiling? “I did have this big purse when I was younger,” Van Sistine said, “that I would like, you know, if someone was being really mean, if I was being bullied, I—”

“You were that kid!” Shipman gleefully interrupted.

“I think that’s my closest equivalent,” Van Sistine responded. “I’m not proud of that! … I was definitely like, ‘You’re being stupid! Go away! Leave me alone! Stop bothering me!'”

Armed now with ideations of big purses (used nonviolently, of course) and Heh Faces, I asked Shipman one final, deep-cutting, highly journalistic question: “Do you like peanuts as much as Anya does?”

“Yeah,” she half-sighed. “Peanuts are good. They’re just a great lil’ snack.” Her voice gained a more authoritative tone: “I approve of peanuts.”

(featured image: Wit Studio / CloverWorks)