#15 Learning and Growth in the Voiceover Industry with Carrie Drovdlic

In this episode, voice actor Carrie Drovdlic shares her thrilling journey into voice acting and its positive impact on her mental health. Carrie reveals how overcoming limiting beliefs and building self-confidence transformed her career. Then she spills the tea on the challenges of working by yourself, the power of coaching, and the hustle required in the industry. Plus, hear about her love for weightlifting, Star Wars, and her favorite karaoke jams. This episode is for all my aspiring voice actors out there!

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Background
• 3:13 From Rock Star Dreams to Voice Acting
• 6:14 Overcoming Limiting Beliefs
• 8:01 Continuous Learning and Growth in the Voiceover Industry
• 12:03 The Impact of Voice Acting on Mental Health
• 25:45 Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone
• 29:47 Age Shouldn't Limit Your Opportunities
• 31:35 Balancing Family and Voice Acting
• 35:25 The Importance of Effective Time Management
• 48:00 Perseverance and Hard Work in Voice Acting
• 49:07 Self-Acceptance in Voice Acting
• 52:07 Lifting Weights and Attending Track Meets
• 53:08 Favorite Childhood Movies
• 54:45 Go-To Karaoke Songs

Transcript

Shay (00:00)
Hey everyone, this is Shayla Tharp and you're listening to Having a Laugh. Today we have Carrie Drovdlic a voice actor, singer, freelance writer, mom of three. Most recently she can be heard lending her voice to the King Arthur video game. I saw

Carrie Drovdlic (00:16)
Yes, King Arthur Legion 9. My character is... I'm an NPC called Flora and Flora sets the hero on his quest. So check out Flora.

Shay (00:19)
Thank you. I couldn't read Roman numerals. Ooh.

Love that. Love it. Thank you for coming to chat with me today. You were the first voice actor I'd ever spoken to. Isn't that weird?

Carrie Drovdlic (00:40)
How did that, how is that possible?

Shay (00:42)
Well, I mean, I was doing this and, you know, we just don't really speak to anyone but ourselves. And you happened to be the first other voice actor I had ever spoken

Carrie Drovdlic (00:51)
were right

Isn't that so when we did the the spiked eggs podcast thing, isn't that interesting? Time is wonky on me. But they did you see that they are award winning now? The award winning spiked eggs podcast so fabulous because you've been on a couple of those I think haven't

Shay (01:03)
Yes, which... I don't even know when that was, but months ago.

Yeah, and that's amazing.

Yeah. Yeah, I think I did too or so, but yeah, they were lovely and super professional and I really liked working for them. So it was great. then, and then they of course had us work together, which was like the first time I was like, this is lovely. Like, yay.

Carrie Drovdlic (01:27)
Yes. Yes, good client.

Yeah.

Yes, and even though I had spoken to many voiceover artists before that, I'd never actually worked one -on -one like that before. So that, for me, was a new thing, which I really, really enjoyed. You've got a lot more experience doing that than I, because you have more live acting experience and in -person acting experience. So it is, you know, my training really almost right from the beginning was just in voiceover. And so I'm used

Shay (01:46)
huh.

Carrie Drovdlic (02:04)
creating the scene myself and doing all the imagination myself. so it almost for me, had to adapt and I had to kind of figure out how am I gonna work with another person? I've never really done that before, but I really, it was great because it helps.

Shay (02:19)
Really?

Carrie Drovdlic (02:24)
You know, it fills in the gaps of your imagination and just helps bring the scene to life even better. So yeah, that was really, I really hope I get more chances to do that because that was delightful. Yeah.

Shay (02:27)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah, no, I much prefer being able to work, you know, with the other partner and I mean, that's how I was trained. So I, the last year, it was hard for me to get used to just me speaking to myself. And I was like, there's nothing coming back. Nothing.

Carrie Drovdlic (02:48)
Mm hmm. Yes. Yeah, you have to have a really rich imagination and a real ability to visualize a whole scene in a very bland, tiny room. You know, you have to be able to expand your mind far beyond that. And some days that's easier than others. You know, sometimes that creative engine runs.

Shay (02:56)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Carrie Drovdlic (03:13)
so smoothly and other times, whew, it's tough.

Shay (03:17)
Mm -hmm. Yeah, I know. so, have you always been interested in voice acting? Like, what were you thinking as a kid you were gonna do? of course. Yeah.

Carrie Drovdlic (03:28)
I was going to be a rock star or maybe a Broadway star. I would have been fine with either one. Yeah. Yeah, I did a lot of singing when I was young. So my dad has run his whole life a video production company. He did it for a while out of our house. And so he had microphones and cameras and all this stuff. Like back when people didn't really have that stuff. I'm going to show my age probably a lot in this podcast.

Shay (03:52)
You

Carrie Drovdlic (03:53)
So I would, and he did that kind of on the side, he had a day job. And so during the day, like in the summer especially, I'd go into his work area and like set up a microphone on a stand and put on my Donna Summer album because I loved Miss Donna Summer back at this time. And man, I would just go to, like I had a whole show in my head that I was doing, like I used her album.

and just from the songs on the album created a whole plot to a whole musical. I should have sold it to somebody at some point. Yeah, I performed the whole show for my audience of no one. And that was how, you know, we didn't have the internets back then. So that's how I spent my time in the summer was trying to be a rock star. But no, I got into voiceover really late, you know, and there's...

Shay (04:27)
Mm -hmm.

Carrie Drovdlic (04:42)
you had there's somewhere you asked something about regrets and I was like I think you know had I known about this earlier in life I definitely would have done it I think I'm definitely in the right place I spent a lot of time trying to fit myself into a role that I didn't really fit in very well I was in science and and healthcare for about 15 years and I enjoyed that I liked that a lot but it really never it never felt like

fit in there very well. I didn't realize at the time because I just thought, well, this is hard, everybody works hard and, gosh, not everybody's lucky enough to really fit in their job anyways. So I'm just going to do what I'm going to do. So when I did finally make this switch to voiceover, it was pretty great because I felt like I could finally, after a long time of kind of making myself smaller and quieter,

I could allow that little girl Donna Summer singing part of myself to come back out again. it took a while, I have to say, it took a while to be able to shrug off the suburban mom, need to act this way kind of thing to tap into that again. And it was a struggle. But, and interestingly, also part of my mental health progress as well, which I will be happy to talk about. And

whole process was, it's been great because it's been liberating and freeing, but it really took time. had a lot of self -consciousness at first, which is why when I very first started doing voiceover, I thought, well, I'll do medical narration because I had already been working in the science area. have master's degrees in science and I thought that certainly makes sense. Yeah, and I can use that to market.

Shay (06:30)
And that's super helpful.

Carrie Drovdlic (06:34)
But as you probably know, I mean, that's a very competitive field. And when you're just starting out, very difficult to stand out in auditions, very difficult to market yourself when you have no experience, right? So I wasn't getting any of that work. And this audition popped up one day for, and you know, those medical narration auditions were getting like hundreds of people. And this is on a pay to play site. So like 100 people are auditioning for that.

Shay (06:59)
Yeah.

Carrie Drovdlic (07:03)
This, and back in 2017, again, I had just started out. This audition pops up for a scared Japanese teenager for a video game. Now, in today's current climate, I don't think I would audition for that job. It's probably not appropriate. In 2017, I didn't really have that. I just thought, oh, I can do a Japanese accent. Obviously, I wouldn't do that now. But at the time, I thought,

I don't know if I can do that, but only 17 people have auditioned for that job. And I like one out of 17 odds, better than one out of 100 odds. And that was one of the first jobs I got. So that took me really down this weird path that I never thought I would be on because it was a lot of the weird roles that people didn't want to audition for. So they were so, you know, I, my first year of working was kind of a lot of really odd.

Shay (07:35)
Yeah.

Carrie Drovdlic (07:55)
jobs and a lot of grandma voices. got hired a lot for old lady voices and stuff like that. And so again, I wasn't expecting to go into, I was expecting to be a voiceover artist. I wasn't expecting to become a voice actor, but life takes you where it's going to take you. And so then I really had to push myself to allow myself to be vulnerable and open up and not be self -conscious.

I did a lot of training with the Global Voice Actors Academy, which I highly recommend. think they're a great organization. The coaches there are fabulous. And doing that regular workout with other people, seeing what you're doing in the booth and that kind of thing, I finally...

Shay (08:27)
Mm

Carrie Drovdlic (08:39)
got rid of all that self -consciousness and was able to just let it fly and make a complete idiot of myself in front of other people. And once you can do that, it's big difference. so now I do mostly character work. I could have never, never guessed that. Could have never thought that that's what would have happened. And I still haven't done a single medical narration job.

Shay (08:49)
You're free.

It's so interesting. It is really kind of random how these things happen with voiceover, because I had assumed I'm coming in to do medical kind of, I don't want to say I assumed I would get medical narration as well, because I just have a very reading kind of voice. People like to listen to me read things. Thank you.

Carrie Drovdlic (09:08)
I just kind of gave up on that.

Yes, you have a soothing voice. Yes, it's been a lovely.

Shay (09:37)
Yeah, I too have not gotten a medical audition at all. They're like, we don't want to hear you talk about science. No. I don't know who's doing it, but it's not us.

Carrie Drovdlic (09:43)
Yeah. No, no. It's so funny. I actually have a friend who specializes in it and God bless her, she's doing quite well with it. So yeah, they are out there.

Shay (09:54)
I just thought, you know, I'd be a shoo -in. I was like, I know medical terminology. It's gonna be great.

Carrie Drovdlic (10:00)
Yeah, that's what I thought too. was like, I can say all those words and I have, you know, I've got these, I have a master's degree in molecular genetics and biochemistry that I'm using all the time, by the way, in my daily life. That comes up a lot.

Shay (10:04)
Yeah.

They don't wanna... Yeah. Yeah, yeah. All the time. also thought like, people are gonna want me for video games, cause I'm a strong character and I'm sure that will happen,

Carrie Drovdlic (10:26)
Yes, I'm sure it will.

Shay (10:27)
as of right now. It's mostly just audio books or like sexy characters. You know, something that's great about voiceover is you can get to be those characters you wouldn't be cast in real life. Because like no one would cast me as the sexy character because I'm just like, but like my voice is sexy.

Carrie Drovdlic (10:34)
Hmm?

Same girl, same. Yes, it is the sexy voice. And I love, I think that's what's so freeing about it. And I love that piece of it. I don't know that I would be comfortable doing in -person acting because of kind of some long -held, you know, self -esteem issues and maybe a little body dysmorphia and all that. That would be hard. I love the anonymity and protection of my booth.

Shay (11:05)
It's rough.

I love it. I love it. I really didn't expect to like that aspect as much. was like, I'm going to be alone. Like, no one sees me. But then I'm like, no one sees me. No one sees me. Amazing. I love it. Yeah.

Carrie Drovdlic (11:14)
Yeah.

Nobody knows what I'm doing in here. Yeah, I had to, it is sometimes embarrassing because my family will sometimes hear me and sometimes that does make me a little self -conscious. I once had to do a scene where my character died of self -combustion, spontaneous combustion. And I asked my husband to take the dog for a walk because I was like, I can't, I can't do this while you're here. Like I just can't

Shay (11:44)
no!

Mm -hmm.

Carrie Drovdlic (11:52)
Like I'm fine with everyone else in the world hearing it after I'm done with it, but I can't have you hearing me while I do it. So

Shay (11:59)
Isn't that strange? I am the same way. I'm like, if anyone's in the house, get out. I need to just do this and then y 'all can hear it later. But right now I need to scream.

Carrie Drovdlic (12:04)
Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. It's amusing sometimes. When my daughter was younger, I was doing a video game job and she came to check on me. Are you okay? She heard me like dying and screaming in pain. she had to come to

Shay (12:25)
So how long have you been doing voiceovers then?

Carrie Drovdlic (12:29)
Well, really since just since 2017, but I didn't I really didn't start pushing full time until about 18 months ago. I really was doing it kind of more part time and and really as I look back on it, more hobbyish in the first two years. But part and part of what I love to talk about today is my my my voice over career and success is kind of wrapped up in my success in getting my mental health improved.

Shay (12:44)
Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm.

Carrie Drovdlic (12:56)
And because of that, it gave me the confidence to really go for it and really try. The journey that I had to go on is, well, really the journey that everybody has to go on in mental health is that our thoughts control our beliefs, our beliefs become our actions, our actions become our habits, and our habits make us who we are. So the fundamental thing is that we have to fix

Shay (13:04)
Good.

Mm -hmm.

Carrie Drovdlic (13:23)
our thoughts and our thought patterns. And if your thoughts are what mine were five, six years ago, which is you're worthless and you're a failure and you suck, you know, it's kind of hard to have any kind of success or confidence when this is your thought pattern, because this is the way that you're going to present yourself to the world. So I started, and I had long had a lot of anxiety sprinkled in with a little OCD.

And some really crippling self -esteem issues because I had never learned how to have inner confidence. All my confidence came from external things. Now luckily, I was an only child and a high achiever. And so I was able to, for many, many years, rack up degrees and awards and basically go for something and work hard and get it. And then I would feel confident, right, because I achieved this thing.

Shay (13:52)
Mm -hmm.

Right. Mm -hmm.

Carrie Drovdlic (14:20)
But when I wouldn't achieve something that was devastating, right, because I had nothing internal to prop me up. And then, you know, when you get into, when you start to have kids, I stayed home for a while with my kids. That's when I started to do some writing. So this is well before doing voice acting. I'd left the science and medical field. I came home and was doing science writing very, very, very part -time.

So now all of a sudden I'm mostly a stay at home mom, which of course is an important job and I'm glad I did it. And I think it's a wonderful thing to do and it's great for your kids and all that. But it is soul crushing if you are somebody who needs continuous feedback and accolades to feel good about yourself. Because even the behavior of your kids is no measure.

Shay (14:50)
Mm -hmm. Yep.

Carrie Drovdlic (15:11)
because even the best parents are going to have kids that act out every now and then because that's the kid's job is to find out where the boundaries are and every kid is going to push. Good kids, bad kids, whatever. So that's a hard period of life. And I think that is particularly difficult for stay at home moms. Any other job that you have,

Shay (15:19)
Yeah.

Carrie Drovdlic (15:33)
you get some kind of feedback in some way, whether you're doing a good job or bad job, really. You have maybe an end of the year review, or you're landing auditions, or you're not landing auditions, whatever it is. But it's hard to know where you are when you're a stay at home. I'm like, how am I doing? I just can't even tell. And so I got this kind of self -esteem spiral. And so I went on this journey of getting control of my thoughts. finally.

After a real low point in 2018 where my anxiety got so bad that I was like lying on the floor of my closet, you know, like in a ball, I finally said, maybe I need to reach out and get some help. I'd always been like, I can, I know what I need to do. I can do this myself. I don't need any help. Right. Like I'm like, just got to just buckle down and, and you know, that

Shay (16:08)
Yeah.

it. Mm -hmm. I'm an adult.

Carrie Drovdlic (16:27)
Admitting that you need some help, just like any 12 -step program will tell you, is the first step in getting better in anything. And so yeah, so I got some therapy. I started a meditation practice, which I can't say enough about the benefits of meditation. Anybody who's skeptical about it. I think young people are more open to it, so I don't know that I necessarily need to convince your audience. people my age, and even me, I was like, I'm not going to do that new age crap. That's stupid. It's absolutely worthless.

And it is kind of worthless the first time you do it, because I think meditation is like the gym for your mind, right? And so if you go to the gym one time, it means nothing. But if you meditate for five minutes a day for six months, your brain will be different. Like it'll be structured differently, and you'll have more control of your thoughts. So important.

Shay (17:14)
Yep.

Carrie Drovdlic (17:18)
I started a gratitude practice, which also, if you listen to Brene Brown at all, does change the biochemistry of your brain to be more positive and happier. What's the other thing I did? I did a little bit of work, like CBT work, cognitive behavioral therapy work, where I don't know if you've done this, but I kept a notebook of all of my irrational thoughts. And there were a lot of them when I started to dig right down into it.

Shay (17:34)
Mm. Yeah.

Carrie Drovdlic (17:48)
You know, you are told to like when an event happens and you're having anxiety and your thoughts are running away with you, in the notebook you're supposed to write down the event, the irrational thought that you're having, and the rational thought that you could be having should you choose the rational thought. Are you familiar with that process at all? Okay, yeah. So you know what I'm talking about. And again, at first when my therapist was like, you should do this, I was

Shay (18:09)
I am, yes.

Carrie Drovdlic (18:17)
That sounds really stupid and that's never going to work, right? Like it is so dumb. And everything that I've said, like, that's stupid and it's never going to work. All of it has worked, but you have to work it. Like you have to do it every day. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. It all works, but it won't work the first time.

Shay (18:18)
No, yeah.

Yeah, all of it was smart and worked. Yeah. other day I was like, right, the other day I was working out and doing my meditations and I was like, so you mean working out and doing meditations is helpful. okay. Well, great. Now I got to do that.

Carrie Drovdlic (18:48)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah, it is. Yeah, mean, it sucks because you have to... We want... Yeah, that's the thing is you have to... I was just gonna say we want an answer that's easy and quick because we are conditioned that way. And in the modern era, we can get a lot of things easy and quick. So the fact that we... But you can't

Shay (19:00)
You have to put that work in.

Mm -hmm.

Carrie Drovdlic (19:16)
a more fit body, easy and quick, and you can't get a more controlled mind, easy and quick. Those are the two things that you still can't do quickly or easily. And so yeah, you do have to do little bits every day and they accumulate over time. And this was a disappointing thing to learn because, I was thinking, I'm going to go to this therapist and he's just going to like say the right thing and I'm going to go, boom, I'm better. Woo! You know, and yeah, like we're going to

Shay (19:43)
I'm done, yep.

Carrie Drovdlic (19:46)
dig down to the root cause of all this and I'm going to address that and then it'll, the sun's going to shine. Yeah, but as you know, just does, fortunately doesn't work that way. So yes, I spent a good two years doing that. And at the same time, this is going to seem odd, but I started powerlifting. And this has really been life -changing as well. And I can tell you the very day that like things opened up for me, which

opened up the voiceover career for me too. It was in May of 2019 and I had been training during this power lifting. And you have to understand, I'm not really athletic and I'd never really done sports. And I had this idea in my head that like, I'm not a strong person. I'll never be able to lift like over a hundred pounds. Like that's crazy, right? Like there's no way I can do that. And so I trained with this trainer and every time she would put more weight on, I'm like, are you sure? Because I'm not the kind of person that can do that, right? Like I'm not a, I'm just not that kind of person.

And finally I went to this lifting meet and I benched 115, I dead lifted 205 pounds. And I remember the moment sitting in my car afterwards and I thought, I just did something that I didn't think I can do. How many other things are out there that I don't think that I can do that I actually can? And that's when like, I read this book, actually I'll grab it. It's

Shay (20:53)
There you go!

Carrie Drovdlic (21:13)
You are a badass, which I highly, highly, highly recommend. Yeah, so good. So she talks about limiting beliefs, right? And that's when my limiting beliefs in every area of my life started to come down. And in voiceover too, because I was like, you know what, Carrie, you've started too late and you're never, you don't even have time to like really create a career here and you're too old and people aren't gonna hire you. You know, this was the thought pattern going on and on and on my head.

Shay (21:15)
I have it. I have

Carrie Drovdlic (21:42)
And literally once I lifted that weight that I didn't think I could lift, I started to think, maybe I could actually do this thing that like I've wanted to do. You know what I mean? And so that's when I really started, that's when I really started getting into training and really trying to improve my skills. And that's when I kind of was able to open up myself a little bit more creatively and be vulnerable and be silly and that kind of thing. So that was a really seminal moment

Shay (21:43)
Mm -hmm.

Carrie Drovdlic (22:11)
just allowing me to jump in before feeling completely ready, which I think is really, really important in life. If you wait till you feel like you're ready, you'll never do it, because you're never really gonna feel like you're Right, yes. So I think.

Shay (22:22)
you'll never do it, and, cause they'll never be ready. Yeah. It's like the thing where people say, I'm not ready to have kids. And it's like, well, is anyone ever ready?

Carrie Drovdlic (22:34)
No, no one's ever really ready. Yeah. Yeah. So I highly recommend that you are a badass book to anybody who is thinking they want more out of life, but thinking maybe that they can't get it or they're not the kind of person that can do that. I fully believe that that idea now that, I'm just not that kind of person.

Shay (22:36)
Mm -mm. You just gotta do it.

But

Carrie Drovdlic (23:01)
I don't even believe in that anymore. think literally, like if I can do the things I'm doing right now, literally anyone can. Because I'm not any kind of special person in any way. Like if I can get my mental health under control, I think most people can. Obviously not people with huge chemical imbalances. That's a different thing. But like kind of everyday anxiety and just low self -esteem, I think that those things are within your grasp if you do the

Shay (23:18)
Right.

And so what does your life look like now? Do you, every day are you working out? Are you full -time voiceover? How has it changed from that day that you lifted to

Carrie Drovdlic (23:40)
Yeah. It changed slowly, but yeah, so I kind of picked up steam and voiceover as I went. So now I do this summer, I'll give you what was before the summer started because the summer's been a little slow. But before the summer, I was working pretty steadily in mostly full time. I'd say I spent maybe probably six hours a day doing voiceover, not recording that whole time though, wouldn't that be great?

Mostly marketing, as you know. Spend most of your time. I'm either auditioning or sending emails or maybe improving my marketing materials in some way or all this stuff. Social media stuff. I started a YouTube channel earlier this year. I've only got a handful of videos on there so far, but I'm not looking to make money there. I just thought...

Shay (24:09)
Right.

the admin.

Nice.

Carrie Drovdlic (24:34)
I feel like I know all these things now. I like to help people out and share them so like novice voice over artists can go there and learn a couple of things. So yes, and that takes a lot as you know, like that whole social media piece, I had to learn how to make videos and learn how I'm still, I can make some pretty rudimentary videos for YouTube, but they're serviceable. But you know, there's that all that stuff takes time. But I like it because,

Shay (24:46)
Yes.

It really does.

Carrie Drovdlic (25:00)
It's fabulous for me, not to get too far down this road, but my mom has dementia and that's something that looms and I worry about. And so every time I can be active and learn something new, I think this is only good for my brain to keep learning and keep doing new things, keep challenging yourself, keep jumping into things. Even if you're not quite sure you can do it. Earlier this year, there was a really good example of that. think you

I can't remember if you commented or not, but I had this opportunity to go do an audition for motion capture work. And I really, like it just came about because I happened to do something with the woman who works there. You know, it is sometimes who you know. But they were looking more widely too, but I thought, my gosh, I don't know. Like that was one where I really like kind of stepped back for a second and thought, I haven't done.

Shay (25:34)
Yes, yeah.

Carrie Drovdlic (25:56)
like theater, and I had done theater training as a young person. actually started college as a musical theater major, because remember I wanted to be on Broadway. So I'd had theater training and I'd had stage movement training and stage combat training, but that was 30 years ago. So I was like, don't, I have no idea if I can do this. And I know that the only way to do this is to go there and do it all out. Like I can't go there and be like, I can't.

Shay (26:03)
Right.

Yeah.

Carrie Drovdlic (26:24)
And again, like I talked about, I don't love doing that in person. It's uncomfortable for me. like this wall that I've got. But I was just like, you know what? What do you have to freaking lose? Just go there and do it. I think part of the reason that we age sometimes in the way that we do is we stop putting ourselves in those positions of jumping into things.

Shay (26:32)
Mm -hmm.

Carrie Drovdlic (26:51)
before we're really ready and then just kind of figuring it out. You know what I mean? And we are, if the lifting has taught me anything is that we are all far more capable of doing things than we think we are. And if we can get out of our own way, what we can accomplish is amazing.

Shay (26:55)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah, we are our own worst enemy, I like to say. My mom yesterday was doing, I was doing some yoga and I was like, come on, join me. Like I want her to try and just do it. And it's excuse after excuse and I'm over 60, I can't. And I'm like, you can. It's because you're saying you can't. I know you can. It's your thoughts that are stopping you. But there's no reason you can't get on this floor.

Carrie Drovdlic (27:12)
Yeah. Yes.

Yes.

Shay (27:38)
and roll around with me, even if it's bad, you can.

Carrie Drovdlic (27:41)
Yeah, any movement is good. Just moving is so good for you. you can cut this out later if you want to or not, you can give her, somebody to follow on Instagram is TrainWithJoan. I find her so inspiring. At age 70, she started working out. And you should see her now. She's 73, 74, something like that. And she's

Shay (27:46)
Yes.

that'll be great. Yeah, no, I'll send

I think I have. Yeah. Yeah.

Carrie Drovdlic (28:05)
Yeah, she looks fabulous. And you don't have to go that far. But I mean, it just shows you that, like, you don't have to just sit and accept it, you know?

Shay (28:13)
That's what I'm saying is like 60 hitting 60 is not that death sentence. It's

Carrie Drovdlic (28:17)
Oh no, don't feel like, trust me, I don't feel like 60 is that old anymore because I can see it. yeah.

Shay (28:22)
Yeah. I'll say it. Yeah, no. Literally, I thought 30 was like over the hill and I'm past it.

Carrie Drovdlic (28:30)
It's done. I'm done for now. Yeah.

Shay (28:34)
I was like, well, well, okay, well, we're still here, so you gotta just keep doing it. You have to.

Carrie Drovdlic (28:38)
Yes. Yeah, I mean, it's unfortunate you do kind of have to you have to work at least as hard or maybe a little bit harder as you get older, which is a bummer. But again, what's the alternative? Just getting old and sitting in a chair like it's just I'm just not going to do it. Just not going to do

Shay (28:46)
I feel like harder. Yeah.

crippling deaf.

Exactly. just feel like there's you have to just do it. You have to do it or or you will. The alternative is just bad. Like this last year for me was really, really bad. Worst, you know, I had been through so much, but it was just a shift for me. And I ended up, you know, pretty much isolated and not moving for like a year. My body, I

You know, I gained weight and all of a sudden I couldn't even do like the basic things like getting up and out of a chair. And I was like, Oh my God, this is scary. Scary. I don't want to become 60 years old and not be able to get up and out of a chair. I will have to just do yoga to get up and out of a chair. Just the basic little things that you don't even think about pulling yourself up, getting out of a shower, you know,

It's all just the basic things that also help your mind, help just continue, you know, your body and everything. I mean, I do the daily walks now as well. And it's, my dad's like, you need to get your heart rate up and, you know, get going. And it's like, no, I'm actually just walking to walk. that mental health to get out. It's so, it's changed my life. And I lived in London previously. like walking was a huge part of my life.

Carrie Drovdlic (30:06)
Wonderful.

Mm -hmm.

Yeah, that's huge.

Yes, edit your up essentially.

Shay (30:24)
And yeah, and I forgot, like, so when I came back here, I just quit walking anywhere, quit doing anything. And I was like, I need to start walking again and just to walk. I don't care if it's exercise. I just need to go out. And it has really helped my mind, my body again. And I'm like, yeah, I can, I'm alive. It's okay. We're okay.

Carrie Drovdlic (30:45)
Yeah. It's having this really creative process. Just don't take your phone. Don't listen to anything. So last year, I redid my video game demo. And I did a workshop at a regional gaming conference, a workshop on how to voice a video game character. And that was one where I of leapt in, because I'd never taught a class. I felt like I knew enough to teach a class like that. But I had never actually done it. And so I just applied, thinking again,

Shay (30:49)
Yes.

Carrie Drovdlic (31:14)
I'm just going to jump off the cliff and build the parachute on the way down. Like if they pick me, I'm going to figure out how to do it. And again, it's from the lifting that it gave me that confidence to do it. But that workshop and my entire video game demo were essentially created on walks. Because I would go out and I would start to visualize how the workshop's going to go. we should have this. I should print out scripts so everybody can see. Like all of the ideas that came to me, I should do this. And I should have them.

Shay (31:18)
Yep. Yes.

Carrie Drovdlic (31:44)
They came to me on walks and I would practice my video game demo copy while I was out walking, which I'm sure was very amusing to anybody who happened to be going by hearing me going, no, no, you can't. You know, like just very funny. I'm sure you probably thought I was schizophrenic, but so, but it is like that the power

doing something, even if it doesn't have to be walking, it could be knitting, but it's something where you're not plugged in to a screen of some kind. Your body is doing something that it can do without thinking about it too much. It just frees up your brain to expand itself. It's so important.

Shay (32:26)
Yeah. Mm -hmm. Yeah. Speaking of the walking and saying your lines, it just reminded me of when I was giving a masters in London. I lived next to the school and every day you just see people walking by like, Hamlet. And it's just like screaming out in the lawn. I was like, my God, guys. They're all just trying to learn their lines before they get to class. Just great.

Carrie Drovdlic (32:54)
That is fabulous. And I think it feels like in that environment, that would be really freeing because like, gosh, who cares then if everybody's doing it. How wonderful. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. That's beautiful. It's not the same here when I go to the Kroger in Columbus, Ohio. It's right, right. So yeah, it's not, people will look at you a little funny. Yeah.

Shay (32:57)
Honestly.

It was. No one cared. No one cared if you're outside singing, if you're outside whatever. It was just do it.

Yeah, no, I'm in Iowa currently. It is not the same.

They're like, are you good? And I'm like, just an actor. Hi.

Carrie Drovdlic (33:24)
I mean, that's right, I should wear a sign. It's okay, I'm just practicing my acting. So funny.

Shay (33:29)
I'm just learning.

what are some of the other like big hurdles you've had for voice acting besides like your own self? Is there outside forces that have been struggles?

Carrie Drovdlic (33:39)
Awesome.

Oh, that's interesting. We moved in 2018, and that's always a problem because I mean, the only real outside struggle and it goes into the moving is just that I am a mom and my husband works full time. the money that I make is kind of extra money. His is the salary that we're living on. he, you know, and as it's been for 20 years, and it's fine. This is what we worked out and it works for us.

I take care of most of everything else. And so the biggest thing for me has been time from the beginning. especially from in the beginning, like whatever I was going to do for my job had to come last. Like everybody else had to be taken care of, right? Dinner had to be made and the house had to be cleaned and people had to be where they were supposed to be. And then if there was time left.

I could maybe do a couple auditions, right? Which is the life of a mom, and it's what I signed up for, and I'm not gonna complain about that. It just is what it is, as the kids say. But thankfully, as my kids have gotten older, the time has shifted, and they can be more responsible for themselves. And I've got two drivers now. So it's except for that he wasn't there on time to take his sister today, but that's another story. So it's shifted a little bit. And now my husband, who's been doing his career,

Shay (34:32)
for you.

wow,

Carrie Drovdlic (35:01)
you know, really full on now for a really long time, is kind of pulling back a little bit and not working as much. And so he's like, he's a good husband and we have a great relationship. And he's like, hey, why don't I start taking some of these things that you've been doing so that you can put more time into your career? And that has been a huge help, a huge help. So it has, it's been, no, I'm still.

Shay (35:19)
Right on.

Carrie Drovdlic (35:27)
I'm still not making that much more money, unfortunately. I was hoping that that would just all of a sudden crank that up, but we're getting there. We're getting there. This year's already on track to be much better than last year, and hopefully I can just keep continuing that process. So that's the biggest thing is time and energy, I think, are the biggest things. And just every once in a while, and maybe being in Iowa, you can relate. think...

Shay (35:35)
Yeah. You will.

Carrie Drovdlic (35:54)
Am I really going to be able to do the things I want to do in Columbus, Ohio? Because I know with COVID, it did make it a little more likely that you can have some big success outside of Los Angeles or New York or Atlanta or even Texas now. But I don't know. And so this is a year of transition for me, it seems, because I feel like I've been working a lot of the indie jobs and

The indie jobs have been getting kind of bigger and better. I would still love to land a AAA game. I had a AAA game audition this year, which was brand new. Like I'd never had even an audition for a AAA game until this year. I see like I'm inching, inching, inching up. I still haven't had a national ad, but I've gotten shortlisted for a lot of national ads. So like, and that hadn't happened before. So I feel

Shay (36:39)
Yep.

Carrie Drovdlic (36:49)
I'm on this kind of precipice of maybe being able to be pretty successful here, but I still, and I want to make sure that this isn't a limiting belief that I'm giving myself. I just don't know how realistic it is if I'll be able to pop up to that other level from Columbus, Ohio. And maybe it's possible, but I don't know. And if not, that's OK, because there's even just below that level, there's still a lot of work to be had. And you can still make a fine living doing that.

Shay (36:58)
You

yeah, yeah.

Carrie Drovdlic (37:18)
It's more of an ego thing, I guess, that I would love to run with a big dog someday.

Shay (37:28)
of course. I mean, yeah, I would too. I've not had a AAA audition yet, and I'm still like, ugh, I want that. Just the audition.

Carrie Drovdlic (37:38)
Yes, yeah. I mean, I was stressed about it. But what I did was I got coaching. So I had been with GVAA for years. And Christina Melizia, who you might know there, she's the founder. She's a fabulous, fabulous coach. And so when I had that audition, just contacted her and I said, can we have a coaching session real quick so you can help me really?

prep this audition. I'd never done that before for any other audition I'd just done myself, but I was like, this one I need a second set of years. I need somebody to push me. I find too, I haven't quite, every time I do that, every time I get some outside help and a little push from a coach, they always elevate it in a way that I hadn't expected. And so the other thing I think I need to work on this year is how to get to that level without somebody pushing me there.

Shay (38:04)
Crip.

Yeah, I think that's helpful.

Mm -hmm.

Yes, I am in a similar boat. I'm always like, oh God, why didn't I think of that? Or it's not that we can't do it. We're just, we're thinking about 400 different things and even the mic quality and the audio quality, you know, we just need sometimes that outside person to be like, hey, what if you just did that? And I'm like, oh yeah, oh yeah, cool. And then.

Carrie Drovdlic (38:38)
Yeah. Yes. Right.

Yes, yeah, yeah. Or even just somebody to say, like, you need to punch it a little bit more here. And then all of a sudden you do, and then that just sparks something creatively that you then go like, yeah, then I could do this. And they're like, yeah. So yeah, mean, literally sometimes you just need somebody to just go boop, just a tiny little, just a boop.

Shay (39:02)
Yeah.

I And I love it. I think that's why coaches are important. And I think people should have training and I think, you know, all those things. And I think if you're going to do an important audition, call a coach. Just have a double eye on it. But, you know, you don't need every single audition, but those big ones. Yeah, no kidding. No kidding. What's your favorite medium?

Carrie Drovdlic (39:33)
Yes.

No, no, and who could afford that, frankly? So,

Shay (39:45)
for voice acting. Do you like video games then? Is that your fave?

Carrie Drovdlic (39:49)
I do like, I like character work of all kinds. I like the, I like animation and video games and audio dramas. I do love audio books too, but I hate the editing and the processing. Man, but I just this year, so I've done, I think I've done like just over a dozen audio books. And just this year, I decide, the last one that I did, I decided.

Shay (40:01)
Yeah. You too.

Carrie Drovdlic (40:13)
That's it. I'm never editing my own audio book again. And so now I have for the next audio book that I'm working on, have somebody I'm outsourcing that piece of it. yeah, there's God bless them. There are people who specialize. You send them raw punch and roll audio. They send you back a complete audio book. And it is to me, well worth the money because think of all the time. Yes, you're, you're going to pay them almost half of what you're making depending on what you're making.

Shay (40:16)
Yep.

I didn't even know you could do that.

Woo!

Carrie Drovdlic (40:42)
But you are saving two thirds of your time. know what mean? it's, money -wise, I think it still works out because you're saving so much

Shay (40:45)
Never mind. That's so true. It takes so long.

Yeah, it, it, for me, mean, audiobooks have been great because it's been giving me some stable work here and there, you know, it's, it's great. And I do love reading the books and I love talking, but yeah, it's just long form takes so long. It takes so long for me to like read an hour, for me to read like an hour worth of material. takes like three hours to complete and do

Carrie Drovdlic (41:12)
Yeah, it's long form for a reason.

Right. Right.

Shay (41:22)
And I've recently just upped my rate because I, you know, I was, when you first start, you're doing like, oh yeah, like $60 an hour for an audio book. I'll do that. Yeah, something now? No, we upped that. I was like, I can't do that at 60 anymore. Absolutely not. No. And people don't get it. They're like, what? You just read a book. And it's like, no, no.

Carrie Drovdlic (41:31)
or royalty share or whatever.

Yeah.

Yeah, same.

my gosh. Yeah. If only you knew how long it took to make it sound so perfect.

Shay (41:52)
I gotta memorize the characters, what they sound like, what the end goal is. I gotta memorize all these things and edit and it just takes so long.

Carrie Drovdlic (41:59)
Yeah. Yeah. You got to read the book first and you got to make a chart of your characters. And then for one book I did, gosh, it was a 22 hour book total. And I think there were 19 characters. And so the author and I, I made like a sample file for each character beforehand and sent it to him and said, what do you think of these voices?

Shay (42:20)
so smart.

Carrie Drovdlic (42:22)
And then I keep the sample files. later on, you if that character doesn't show up for four chapters and you're like, wait a minute, what does that character sound like again? You can go back to your, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So tell me if this happens to you, cause it happens to me. When I speak in a character voice for a really long time, after a while, I can't tell if I'm speaking in that character voice anymore. I'm like, wait, is this my voice?

Shay (42:29)
that happen to me? I'm not like I have no idea what they sounded like I don't know god that's embarrassing

Yes, that does happen to me.

Carrie Drovdlic (42:50)
Or is this a ca I can't tell anymore, it's been so long. It's so weird.

Shay (42:53)
It does happen to me. It is weird. mean, I've done a lot of recently, there's an app called like Pocket FM and they do long form audio dramas. And I've done a couple of those and it's months of my time speaking in one person's voice. And yeah, and then like when it was done, I was like, I was not only heartbroken, but I continued to speak as this person.

Carrie Drovdlic (43:22)
you

Shay (43:23)
later and I was like you guys know that happened to my character last week

And they're like, Shayla no, stop. Yeah, yeah. And then of course, and I think it's just like an actor thing. I think we have that parroting. My mom complains about all the time, because I just parrot what she says. And she's just like, stop copying me. And it's like, I don't even mean to. It just popped out. You said it. I copied it. Sorry.

Carrie Drovdlic (43:30)
Person doesn't exist, honey. Person's not real.

yeah.

not surprised. I voice actors have to be natural mimics, think, anyways. I mean, that's how a lot of people get started doing impressions. Difficult to make a living just doing impressions, but some people do. And a lot of people get started because they love a particular character or voice, which I totally get.

Shay (44:00)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah. I was doing the British accent when I was like 11. I thought it was the coolest thing and I listened to Julie Andrews speak nonstop for my whole upbringing. Then when I got to my masters in London, I took three hours a day of voice work and they were saying, pretty much have it, but you sound like you're an older generation. Where did you learn? I was

Carrie Drovdlic (44:16)
Mmm.

Nice.

Julie Andrews! That's off.

Shay (44:41)
Julie Andrews. And they're like, that's great, but you just, you're not in this era. We need to bring it back. You know, so you can mimic too hard. It's dangerous.

Carrie Drovdlic (44:47)
Right, yeah. That's so funny. Yeah. Is that why you went to England? Because you loved it because you're an Anglophile so much?

Shay (44:56)
No, I went because I just needed something different in life and I wanted to explore and I wanted to get my masters and I wanted to just do something outside of America. I just felt very trapped at the moment. So was like, let's, let's just go see what it's like. And it was wild and I loved it. And, but there were, yeah, so many accents and different variations that I had never heard. And it was just such an eye opening experience.

Carrie Drovdlic (45:19)
Yes.

Shay (45:25)
And that's actually where I learned that I might be able to be a voice actor because one of the semesters we had to do voice acting and narration and they had a little booth and the teacher was like, you might be good at this. And I was like, okay. All right. He was like, yeah, you could read books. You know, you've got a deep voice. It's beautiful. And I was

Carrie Drovdlic (45:48)
us.

Shay (45:55)
okay. Because I had always been so afraid of it because it's so, I have such a deep voice and I was always kind of made fun of, you know, younger because I just straight, like it just popped out. I always had a deep voice. I was always tall. I was just always afraid of it. And then, you know, and like so many musical Broadway people are those beautiful Sopranos. And, you know, I was just like, yeah, I was just like, there is no room for me. And it really opened my eyes that he was like, no.

Carrie Drovdlic (46:16)
Right, right, Disney princess voice. Mmm.

Shay (46:25)
there is tons of room for someone like

Carrie Drovdlic (46:28)
How awesome that now that's what you're using to make your living. Not only has it not held you back, but you're like, no, no, I'm doubling down on this. I'm going to use this that you guys were making fun of me for. I love that. That's fabulous.

Shay (46:33)
Right?

Yeah, it really, it changed so much for me mentally to just accept it and then use it. It took a long while, but we got there and I don't, I mean, I just love it. I love this medium of being able to be creative and hide. And hide.

Carrie Drovdlic (46:51)
Yes, I love that.

Yeah, it's really perfect for me too. Yeah, again, if I had it all to do over again, I would definitely have started doing this way earlier.

Shay (47:12)
Uh -huh. Oh yeah. Way sooner. Absolutely. Like even - I mean I must have been 29 when I started or whatever and I - even that I was like I wish I would have started at 10.

Carrie Drovdlic (47:21)
Oh gosh, ancient. mean, gosh, yeah. Like I started, what did I, what's a surprise? God, what were you waiting for? I started at 47, so you know, whatever that tells you. I keep, every time it comes up like, oh, you started too late, blah, blah, blah. Then I circle back around to, well, what's the alternative?

Shay (47:25)
I should have bought a house at 10, got some stocks.

I don't know.

You know, but you never know.

Now.

Carrie Drovdlic (47:49)
Like what am I going to do? Just go, well, I can't do it. I quit. No, I'm not doing that.

Shay (47:49)
Never.

I'm above the age of 45. I can't.

Carrie Drovdlic (47:58)
Yeah, I'm just, I'm not doing it. And I have heard so many people say basically like, play the long game. The longevity is what matters. So the people who are truly successful in the end are just the people who don't give up. know, just keep working, just keep doing stuff. You'll just, you'll keep improving, you know, and yes, you probably have to have some amount of natural talent to start.

Shay (48:12)
Just keep working.

Carrie Drovdlic (48:23)
and that people who have more talent maybe won't need as much training as people who have less talent kind of thing. But I fully believe that you can, most people can, if they work hard enough, train themselves into being very good at this.

Shay (48:37)
Yeah, yeah. It's again, it's that I think you need to believe in your voice and accept what your voice is. Because if you have any of that self -consciousness like, I sound really weird. No, shut up. That's the whole point though is you're unique. It's your voice. No one else has it.

Carrie Drovdlic (48:49)
Yeah, well, right. Yes. Right, and you especially can't have that when you're going to edit a 22 -hour audio book because, whoo, you'll get very tired of listening to that voice. I once had somebody ask me, oh my gosh, somebody asked recently, it was at some kind of networking event that was not specific to voice actors. the icebreaker question was, do you listen to music while you work or do you like it quiet? And I was like,

Shay (49:01)
Yeah.

There are some times. Ooh!

Carrie Drovdlic (49:19)
I was like, well, first of all, I have to have it completely quiet. And second of all, I listened to the sound of my own voice for hours every day. That's what I listened to. I wish I could listen to music. That'd be great.

Shay (49:26)
hours.

I know, I really wish I was one of those that could really do both, but I cannot. I need to be listening to what I'm saying. Did I slip up? But then you're like, God, my voice is quite low and I'm falling asleep back here.

Carrie Drovdlic (49:39)
Yes. ASDs, yes.

I have fallen asleep while editing my audio books before. I actually took a video of it because they knew I was going to fall asleep. And so I'm like, I'm at the keyboard and I just kind of go like, I just slowly fade off to the side. It's a great audio book though. Don't let that fool you. It's not boring. My performance is amazing, but it was just a long day. Yeah.

Shay (50:03)
No, yeah, all of mine are fabulous.

It is. It just becomes this monotonous kind of droney tone that you hear all day long and then plus I speak after this so it's just, it's a lot but just accept it and I think it's great. Can I ask you some rapid fire questions? Oop, did I freeze?

Carrie Drovdlic (50:20)
It is.

Yeah, I love

I'd be happy to answer rapid fire questions. can't, I can't, I tend talk. can't, I can't guarantee a rapid fire answer, but

Carrie Drovdlic (50:37)
Yeah, I don't know what happened. Sometimes my husband resets the router when I'm not looking, so that might have been that.

Shay (50:37)
Ha

No, it's fine. I literally was just like, can I ask you rapid fire questions? And you're like, I'm out. No.

Carrie Drovdlic (50:49)
Yep. that's right. Now, what I was going to say is, I'm happy to. I just can't guarantee rapid fire responses because I attended. So, yeah. OK. OK.

Shay (50:56)
No, that's fine. Take as much time as you need. What is something people get wrong about

Carrie Drovdlic (51:03)
I think probably in my everyday life they think that I'm pretty like formal and serious and quiet and if they saw what I do when I'm in the booth making an animation character they'd be shocked.

Shay (51:10)
Mm.

Yeah, that's a good one. Do you have a favorite voice actor or a favorite animated character that's been voiced or?

Carrie Drovdlic (51:26)
Okay, wow, I mean, I love Grey Griffin, of course, and Azula is amazing. Like, what a tour de force performance. But probably my favorite voice actor is Christina Melizia because one, she's fabulous, and two, she's so friendly and supportive and encouraging and great. So I'll say her.

Shay (51:30)
Yep.

The friendliest people are, that's what makes it. What is your guilty pleasure TV show?

Carrie Drovdlic (51:47)
Yes.

Yeah, I don't watch a lot of fiction anymore, but I know I'm late to the game, but I've been watching Yellowstone. Which I don't, I don't love because there's nobody to root for. think everybody's awful and I don't, like nobody, I like, like I love Stranger Things because like everybody's good and you can root for them and they're good people. There's not a single one of them in Yellow. I'm like, I don't care. I don't even care if the protagonist loses his rant. She's terrible. Anyways, yeah.

Shay (51:57)
Okay.

I love that you're watching it and you're like, but I don't really like it.

There's someone.

Yeah, yeah. I actually have

Carrie Drovdlic (52:21)
So I'm clearly enjoying it.

Shay (52:23)
I actually haven't seen Yellowstone, but I've seen the prequel to it. 1912, I think it

Carrie Drovdlic (52:29)
okay. Yes. With Helen Mirren and... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I absolutely understand that. I'm sure.

Shay (52:32)
That's the reason I watched it, let's be honest. I just wanted to watch her and she does fabulous. Speaking of a beautiful voice, hers, I'll just, she knows what to do and I love it.

Carrie Drovdlic (52:41)
Yes, she does. She knows what to do. So beautiful. You know, my British accent and English accents, I struggle with them. I need to probably get a little training simply because I watch a lot of British stuff. And so I can hear all the different accents. And so when I try, I just mash them all together. And it's a big mess. So I need to get training on some specific ones.

Shay (53:00)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah. Honestly, I

I still really struggle. have a generic London Down and I can do a bit of a a Cockney based one and like an Essex because I lived in Essex but that is and they come and go it depends like when I lived there it was so much easier because I heard it 24 7 but now

Carrie Drovdlic (53:24)
Nice.

Yes, when you're immersed it makes a big difference.

Shay (53:34)
Yeah, now I gotta Google before I do it. I'll like YouTube Helen Mirren and then like listen to her for like two minutes and then I'm like, okay, we're back. Yeah, but it takes a minute. What is the last thing you Googled?

Carrie Drovdlic (53:41)
Yeah, now you got it. Awesome.

Columbus Metropolitan Library. But I'll tell you why. But actually, this is a good thing to tell your listeners because I was doing it because once a month, I volunteer my time and I record a show of health articles for a reading service for the blind. And they always need help. it's a great, I started with them simply so that I could get practice doing long form narration. I started with them like six years ago.

Shay (53:49)
Okay.

beautiful.

Carrie Drovdlic (54:14)
And I don't really need the practice anymore, but I just continue to do it because I like to contribute. it's, can I give their website? It's voicecorps .org, corps being C -O -R -P -S, like voicecorps .org. They are, I mean, they're kind of a regional thing. They're not really a national thing. It's regional to like Ohio and probably some surrounding areas. But they have almost 24 -7 programming for the blind and vision impaired.

Shay (54:20)
Yes, of course.

Carrie Drovdlic (54:42)
And they're always looking for donations and readers. And you can, since the pandemic, one of the tiny benefits of that is that you can do it from your home and upload it to a Dropbox folder. Yeah.

Shay (54:42)
wow.

Mmm.

I love that. I didn't even think or know about that. I'm... I wonder if they have that around here.

Carrie Drovdlic (54:57)
Yeah. It's a... I don't know. But that's a good thing to look into because again, you're... especially if you're just starting out. That's how I practiced and learned punch and roll doing those shows. Because... you know, obviously I try to make them sound good and make them sound professional and stuff, but it was a nice way to ease into getting comfortable with long form narration. It's an hour long show.

Shay (55:13)
yeah.

Carrie Drovdlic (55:28)
that I punch and roll and process kind of minimally, not as much as I would process an audiobook. So the whole thing maybe takes two hours to maybe two, two and a half hours, depending on the day, once a month. It's a minimal commitment and a great organization, voicecore .org for your listeners.

Shay (55:41)
Yeah.

I love that. Lovely. Thank you for telling me that. What was your favorite childhood movie?

Carrie Drovdlic (55:54)
It was Star Wars. I

Shay (55:55)
Okay, which one?

Carrie Drovdlic (55:57)
A new hope because it came out when I was five. Now I have dated myself. So that was a big deal. And so my dad, think I had mentioned that he was a video producer. He was also the owner of the cable company. He was really on the cutting edge of a lot of technology. like we were like, this is going to sound, if your listeners your age, they're going to be like, how old is this lady?

Shay (55:58)
Okay.

Carrie Drovdlic (56:20)
because we were like the first people that I knew that owned a VCR. Like people just didn't have VCRs, right? And somehow he had gotten some bootleg copy on VCR of Star Wars because again, like back in the old days, like if a movie came out in the theaters, it'd be out in the theaters for a while. And then you wouldn't see it again for like a couple of years until it was on TV. Like, and then we just couldn't, there was no place to see it. There was no place to stream it or get it or rent it, Video rental stores hadn't even really started yet.

Shay (56:34)
You couldn't have it.

Carrie Drovdlic (56:49)
So I don't know where he got this VHS videotape, but I will tell you that I played it probably a thousand times. Like it was just like on repeat at my house and it didn't even have the beginning. The beginning was cut off. never, I had never even seen the very, very beginning until years and years later. It didn't matter to me. That was, I was, I was watching that all the time. So yeah. Yeah.

Shay (57:10)
Aww, I love that. I think that's so sweet. I love getting to know people's like, what did you burn VHS -wise? Like, what has a hole in it?

Carrie Drovdlic (57:18)
It was Star Wars and New Hope, yeah. And I had some Barbies, but I didn't really play with them. I played with my Wookiee stuffed animal and my Jawas factory and my Luke Skywalker and C -3PO figurines. my gosh, no, I sure haven't, but that would be quite a dream. Yeah.

Shay (57:32)
Have you voiced any Star Wars stuff?

Really? I was just, I mean, even not for like official Star Wars stuff. Have you done any fan Star Wars voice stuff?

Carrie Drovdlic (57:48)
No, I hadn't even really thought about it, of doing something like that.

Shay (57:50)
I got one a couple months ago and I was really happy about it. I mean, but I'd never seen Star Wars. So I'd seen Bits and Pieces, obviously. I was a... We're cutting out. I'd seen a couple clips in there because my brother was obsessed, but I was just, I don't know, a rebel, rebel warrior guy person.

Carrie Drovdlic (58:02)
I'm going to end the call now and, sorry, can't hear you.

Good, you want to be a rebel, that's good. You don't want to be part of the Empire.

Shay (58:20)
Yeah, and I was like, you don't come near somebody. Nice, yeah, got it. Nailed it. But I thought that was cool. was like, great, Star Wars, check. Yeah, start looking for someone that's just, I need some rebels and some other things. Just some back in the back characters. What is your go -to karaoke song?

Carrie Drovdlic (58:25)
Nailed it!

would be cool. Yes, I do want to have that in my credit, so I will be doing

Yeah, love

Hopelessly Devoted to You by Olivia Newton -John. I've actually won a couple of karaoke contests. I've won money singing that song. So, yeah, so that is definitely my go -to. Because that was, if you were to ask me, what was your second favorite movie growing up, I would say Grease. So, yeah.

Shay (58:51)
yeah.

Yeah!

Mm, solid choice, solid choice. I too was, that was on replay nonstop in my house as well. To the point where my mom was like, we lost the VHS, I just, I don't know where it went. And I was like, I know, I wholeheartedly believed her, found it when I was home. What is your favorite hobby?

Carrie Drovdlic (59:14)
Yeah, big deal.

mom. They are so tricky, those moms.

Yeah, that's funny. saw that question and I thought, what the heck am I going to say? Well, I guess, so I lift very heavy weights and I teach other women how to lift heavy weights. And I go to a lot of track meets. It's not really a hobby, but I have my son is a college track athlete and my daughter is a high school track athlete.

Shay (59:40)
There you

to happy.

Carrie Drovdlic (59:53)
And they, like my daughter came in fifth in the state in the 400 when she was in eighth grade. And my son does really, I don't know how they run so fast. I run like a snail, but they're very fast. And so yeah, I spend a lot of time going to my kids' events and lifting heavy weights. And that's pretty much all I have time for.

Shay (1:00:11)
You have fast offspring. And finally, what song do you have on repeat lately?

Carrie Drovdlic (1:00:13)
Yeah, I thank goodness.

Are you familiar with Lauren Daigle? She's a Christian singer and I'm going to, my daughter wants to go to her concert on July 29th. She's going to be here at the Ohio State Fairgrounds. And so we are listening to her setlist on repeat in preparation for the show. Yes.

Shay (1:00:22)
No.

on repeat.

Aww, that's lovely. That's gonna be fun. I love a good fairground.

Carrie Drovdlic (1:00:40)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Ohio State Fairgrounds are nice, as I'm sure most state fairgrounds

Shay (1:00:43)
Yeah. Do you have a whole bunch of artists that come?

Carrie Drovdlic (1:00:47)
I think so. Yeah. mean, the state fair gets pretty big people. She's not singing at the fair. She's just singing in her own concert. know, the high state fair is a pretty big deal. So, you you know how Midwest state fairs are. They're big deals. Yeah. yeah.

Shay (1:00:54)
Okay, yeah.

trust me, ours is coming up in like a month. People are going nuts. yeah, no, that's why I asked. I know they're big.

Carrie Drovdlic (1:01:10)
Did you ever read any David Foster Wallace? He has this fabulous essay on going to, I think it's the Indiana State Fair. But he grew up in Indiana, but then he moved to New York and became a very famous writer. But he was writing for a magazine and he got assigned to go back home and go to the fair and write about it. And I love the way he writes anyways. I actually have never read his fiction. I've only read his nonfiction.

Shay (1:01:14)
didn't know.

fun.

Carrie Drovdlic (1:01:39)
But yeah, I highly recommend reading that, especially if you're from the Midwest. It really resonates and you can really identify with a lot of the things that he says.

Shay (1:01:50)
There's something about a Midwestern fair that is just, I mean, I used to love them. And when we had them every year, was, yeah, we're going to the fair. Big freaking deal. It is like the biggest thing of the year. And you know, when I was away for the last like eight years, I didn't even remember it. It wasn't even a thought in my mind.

Carrie Drovdlic (1:02:01)
Big deal.

Yeah, and when you when you become a parent too, you see it as completely different light too because you just hemorrhage cash the whole time. Everything caught your eye. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Shay (1:02:21)
Oh, I bet. Corn dogs here, popcorn. Forget it. And the tickets now, I was going to go to this year's fair, but I was like, I'm not paying 200, you know, for, I mean, yeah, but it's to see like everybody, I think for like the week. So like that's perfectly fine. But I just don't want to, I just don't have it anymore. No.

Carrie Drovdlic (1:02:36)
For entrance tickets.

I see. Yeah.

Yeah, I wouldn't pay that. No, no, wouldn't pay that.

Shay (1:02:51)
And I only wanted to see one person anyway, so I was like, I'm not, I'm not doing it. Well, you survived my podcast. Thank you so much.

Carrie Drovdlic (1:02:56)
I'm not doing

I mean, I would say I thrived because I had such a good time. You are delightful to talk to, actually. It's been... And I love your humility and it's amazing.

Shay (1:03:03)
Yay! I know.

Great. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed getting to learn and know about you and please come back any time. Okay.

Carrie Drovdlic (1:03:21)
Okay, fabulous.