By Erikka J  ~9 min read

Erikka J is an Emmy-winning Black female voice actor based in Atlanta. She voices Virginia Jones, a 20-year-old main character in “Southern Belle Insults: Bereavement Committee,” a new audio drama produced by Issa Rae’s media company Raedio and starring Keke Palmer, Sheryl Lee Ralph, and Danielle Brooks. This is how she booked that role – as well as a barista radio commercial role opposite Kenan Thompson – at age 44.

Last year, after seven years as lead product owner for their dealer data analytics platform, I quit my job at AutoTrader.

This year I booked a radio spot for AutoTrader, playing a barista opposite Kenan Thompson.

After hearing the finished spot, I sat with the irony for a second…both because it’s funny, and because it’s the smaller of the two things I quit.

The thing I actually quit

For years I skipped auditions.

Not the ones I was wrong for. The ones where the breakdown said the character was in her twenties. I did the math and closed the tab. I’m 44. Twenty-year-olds sound like….well, twenty-year-olds. I’d tell myself I was being realistic and move on to the next casting.

This is the thing I’m quitting. Deciding in advance what I’m not right for solely based on age.

Here’s what happened when I stopped.

“Erikka J, all characters. Buckle up.”

I was invited to a casting for an audio drama. Multiple roles with a brief description of each, the usual instruction to pick the one you want and submit.

I didn’t pick one. I read for all of them.

I slated it “Erikka J, all characters. Buckle up.” and then went through every line in the breakdown, one character after another. Part of that was strategy. Most of it was play, and you can hear play in a read. For the first time in a while, I wasn’t auditioning apologetically.

I saw the domain of the email address for the casting and knew this was a big deal….it was @raedio.com, which is Issa Rae’s audio-forward media company. Rather than freaking out (okay I freaked out a little), I decided it was time to swing big. It was time to play.

The casting ended up being for an installment of Keke Palmer’s audio-based series entitled Southern Belle Insults: Bereavement Committee. I was cast as a young church worker, Virginia Jones, who when asked “How old are you?” responds earnestly….“Twenty.”

The Southern Belle Insults: Bereavement Committee cast includes famous Black female voice actors like Keke Palmer, Sheryl Lee Ralph, and Danielle Brooks (somebody pinch me!!!); Bereavement Committee is available now on Audible.

I have a theory about why I got this role. My take on a twenty-year-old probably wasn’t any better than everyone else’s. But I may have been the only person in that pile who handed them the entire range in a single file, so they never had to imagine what else I could do.

How to sound younger in voice over (shocker: it isn’t pitch)

What I got wrong for years in my commercial auditions was the notion that playing young was just a pitch adjustment. Maybe manufacturing a “Gen-Z cadence” and sprinkling in some artificial upspeak for a little razzle dazzle.

I did pitch up some for these roles. I’m a singer, so my music range is wider than my speaking voice suggests and I can sit comfortably higher than where I naturally speak. But that’s just a small part of it. If pitch were the job, they’d just slap on a plug-in in post.

The rest is life experience, or in this case the lack of it, and it shows up in how a person builds a sentence.

Someone with less mileage hedges before they commit. They end statements with a small upward lift, like they’re checking whether it landed. They apologize inside sentences that don’t require it. They fill silence instead of standing in it. They haven’t yet learned that you can just say the thing and stop talking. Confidence is a rhythm, and you get it from having been right before.

All of that is a worldview, and a worldview is audible. No pun intended. Well, maybe a little intended.

For the AutoTrader barista, I had a specific reference. My daughter is 21 and she is, in fact, an actual barista.

So I didn’t play “a young woman.” I played her. My baby. The way she says “of course, yeah, no problem” to a customer – someone she wants to be respectful to and serve – as one continuous word. The urgency of a coffee shop. The way a question gets tacked onto the end of a sentence that isn’t a question. I hear it across my own kitchen counter a few times a week. I know that voice better than I know my own.

That’s acting the character. Merely voicing the age is what you do when you don’t have a character yet…when you don’t have a worldview to pull from.

In the session, the writer noted at one point “that take was magic.” When I asked afterward if I could use that quote as a testimonial for my website, he sent this instead:

“Erikka was the utmost professional. She has great range and takes direction incredibly well. It was a pleasure to work with her.”

Range. I want to underline that, because a year ago I would have decided I didn’t have enough vocal range to play a girl in her twenties and simply declined those auditions. Sure I had range as a singer, but not enough in acting to play someone literally half my age.

The word for this

I started my “Word Nerd Wednesday” newsletter to share my love of language, along with my favorite commercials or content pieces I come across viewed through the lens of a messaging strategist who also happens to read, and perform, a lot of advertising copy. While crafting the newsletter based on this blog post, there was a word I found that I really liked.

Juvenescence. Most people, if they’ve seen it at all, assume it means youthfulness (think “juvenile” or in Spanish “joven”). Some use it to mean immature. Both are off, and immature is just flat out wrong.

It comes from the Latin iuvenescere, which doesn’t mean to be young. It means to grow young again. To regain youth. When it came into English around 1759, it meant becoming young, growing young in appearance. The “immature, undeveloped” usage didn’t show up until the 1870s, and etymologists will tell you it’s a mistake that stuck.

Its opposite is senescence, the one most of us try to evade with supplements, botox, or your elixir of choice.

So juvenescence isn’t a description of a twenty-year-old. A twenty-year-old has nothing to regain. It’s a word for what happens to someone who has already been young once and finds their way back.

That’s the job of a voice over actor in her mid-forties presented with two great auditions that are casting for characters in their 20s. I don’t have access to twenty because I sound like it…I have access to twenty because I place my mind and energy in the point of view of a twenty-something year old woman, remember the questioning lift at the end of spoken sentences, and take notice of it every time my daughter comes home.

The Raw, Real Deal Takeaway

If you’re skipping auditions because of a number, you’re doing the casting director’s job for them, and you’re doing it badly. Let them decide. They have more information than you do and telling yourself no before someone else does isn’t the kind of confidence that comes with age. Act your age…and commit to the bit.

If you’re hiring voices, consider this: Virginia Jones in Southern Belle Insults: Bereavement Committee is voiced by Erikka J, age 44. The young barista in the AutoTrader spot is voiced by Erikka J, age 44. Neither of those sessions required a younger actor. They required one who could build a character, act it from a grounded space, and get out of the way.

FAQ

Who voices Virginia Jones in Southern Belle Insults: Bereavement Committee?

Virginia Jones is voiced by Erikka J, an Emmy-winning Black female voice actor based in Atlanta. Virginia is a 20-year-old church worker and main character; Erikka is 44.

Who is in the cast of Southern Belle Insults: Bereavement Committee?

The audio drama stars Keke Palmer, Sheryl Lee Ralph, and Danielle Brooks, with Erikka J as Virginia Jones. It’s produced by Raedio, Issa Rae’s media company, and available on Audible.

Can a voice actor play characters younger than their age?

Yes — age in voice acting is built through character choices, not pitch alone: speech rhythm, hesitation, and the confidence level of someone with less life experience.

Erikka J is an Emmy-winning Black female voice actor, singer, event emcee and communications consultant from Washington, D.C., who grew her career in Virginia and is now based in Atlanta. Virginia Jones in Southern Belle Insults: Bereavement Committee is voiced by Erikka J. To check availability or request a custom demo, click the Start Your Project button.