Preparation Is Part of the Performance

I recently watched a news clip about casting in The Odyssey, and the person on camera mispronounced "Odysseus."

I winced.

Not because mistakes never happen. They do. Live television, recorded narration, public speaking, interviews — any work built around words comes with pressure. But it reminded me how quickly a listener can be pulled out of the message when one word lands wrong. And it made me think about how much preparation goes into it before anyone presses record.

So this week, I'm getting myself back on track — and apparently, the universe decided to send me a reminder about preparation.

Last week, I recorded an English-language essay that unexpectedly included a French poem in the middle.

I do not speak French.

Three months of seventh-grade French and one trip to Paris 25 years ago, while personally meaningful, were not going to carry me through that paragraph.

So I did what narrators do: I prepared.

I listened. I looked things up. I slowed down. I paid attention to the shape of the words, the rhythm of the lines, and the difference between sounding fluent and sounding respectful.

That distinction matters.

I was not trying to pretend that French is one of my working languages. It is not. But the text still deserved care, and the listener deserved not to be jolted out of the essay because I had treated the poem like an obstacle instead of part of the work.

As a voice actor, I spend a lot of time researching pronunciation before I ever step into the booth — names, places, technical terms, medical language, historical references, acronyms, and words I technically "know" but still want to confirm. And that's just for auditions. For final work, the standard is even higher.

Because pronunciation is not a small thing. It affects credibility. It affects trust. It affects whether the listener stays with the message or gets pulled out of it.

Preparation is often invisible when it is done well. The listener may never know how many words were researched, how many names were checked, how many pronunciations were confirmed, or how many times the narrator messed it up before getting it right. (I have blooper reels.)

But they feel the difference. They stay with the message. They trust the voice.

Nobody claps for the research. But they definitely notice when it's missing.

Just ask Odysseus.