The voice of Ash Ketchum!

Now to the voice of Pokemon in the UK… We grew up listening to the voice of Ash Ketchum in the original Pokemon series, who turns out to be Veronica Taylor! Chris Berrow caught up with her and asked first of all how she got the job of Ash…

Veronica - I watched it in the mornings. I watched it when it was on Saturdays. I went to work and worked on it and you know, it was just truly extraordinary.

Chri - And it wasn't just Ash that you played.

Veroinica - I played Ash's, mom and also May, um, a few Pokemon. And some other characters here and there. Um, a lot of times it was, you know, when you're in the booth they would just say, Oh can you do this? Could you do this one for may? I definitely auditioned for Ash's mom, I auditioned like main characters like that, but other ones like Gary's cheerleaders or you know, things like that, we would all just, you'd get just get thrown into that. Yeah.

Chris - And you played pokemon as well?

Veronica - Yeah, which is really quite a challenge in the inflection. I mean seriously you could watch pikaChu and just watch for the whole episode and be totally satisfied. She does such an amazing job. I played Diglett and Goldeen and Centrit. My daughter and I both played Centrit in the very beginning. They didn't want me to play anything other than Ash and then they were like, okay, you can play Ash's mom. And then after awhile they let me play other things, whereas everyone else got to play a couple of characters, you know, Brock was James and Misty was Jesse and you know, different things like that.

Chris - So you're, the voice of "Diglett Digg", which O now remember.

Veronica - That's right. I played Diglett as a worm and I just found out it was a mole recently. So I feel like I need to go back and redo the whole thing.

Chris - In that first series that you were mentioning, I'd forgotten this, but Ash and pikachu split up for a while and I think that was it.

Veronica - That's right.

Chris - The time when you were on the way to actually having the baby, you know you are quite pregnant at that time. So obviously emotional scenes, probably emotional moment for you in life as well.

Veronica - Yeah, there's a lot lot going on there. Well, it's surprising in a cartoon for children that there was so much going on. There's so much about loss, there's so much about, I'm lost in terms of having to lose a favorite pikachu later on. Your friends come and go. Um, you have to, gosh, you lose a battle. How to, how to get back, how to have good sportsmanship, all of those things that you really get to dig into. And when you're dubbing, you don't have a lot of time to think about it. You don't see the script ahead of time. So you're really playing the moment. So it's a great acting exercise in terms of that. And so I feel like all of my training comes together to be able to be in the moment. And yeah, I think, um, being a mother and having to take care of your unseen baby and then your now crying baby. It does help you to understand about being a trainer and what it takes to put yourself aside and care for others and help others along towards their goals while you are trying to achieve yours. You know, there's a lot of big picture stuff in Pokemon.

Chris - And just finally on the voice itself, where did that actually come from?

Veronica - He just kind of came into here so he's kind of back of my throat and you know, he's got a lot of energy. Um, and with that it gave me a lot of room for his emotional journey so he could be way up high and then, you know, really endearing and come down. So he had a lot of space in there. So in terms of that, it was, it was a great voice to work with. Yeah. And it's a great party trick cause it sounds a lot different from my voice. And you can do this all day if you like. Hey Chris, thanks a lot. You're reallycool. Hey Chris, I choose you!