Saskatoon Entertainment Expo: A voice acting lesson from Pokémon’s Alyson Leigh Rosenfeld

Voice actor Alyson Leigh Rosenfeld says she was born to be a cartoon character.

“If you ask my parents, I came out singing and performing,” said Rosenfeld, known for voicing Bonnie and Nurse Joy on the Pokémon cartoon.

“I was the kid who, watching Disney movies growing up, knew the names of the actors who played the Disney princesses, so I wasn’t just a fan of Ariel and Belle, I was a fan of Jodi Benson and Paige O’Hara. So, I always had an awareness that it was a job that people could have and it was one that I wanted to do.”

Rosenfeld took a break from signing autographs at the Saskatoon Entertainment Expo to talk about her how she got into voice work, her approach to characters, and the kind of folks she meets at fan events.

“I’m also a theatre performer,” she said. “I thought I would be, you know, a Broadway baby, and voice acting would just kind of be a fun thing I did on the side, as opposed to kind of the other way around where voice acting is my bread and butter and it just kind of pays for my theatre habit, at this point.”

When working out a character, she says they usually get a brief bio to read. Sometimes they’ll get a photo or a short clip of the character as well. Taking in the characters circumstances, she imagines how they would move and sound.

“I try to create, not just with my voice but with my whole body, who I think the character is,” she said.

“So Bonnie from Pokémon — I got that she was a spunky little sister, with like cute little blonde hair. She loved to take care of creatures, she loved her big brother, and so I was like, ‘ok, so she’s a little kid,’ so I’m obviously gonna pitch it up a little bit. And then it was about her energy, which was really vivacious and spunky, so everything was,” she gasped, vibrating with energy, “this kind of level of excitement!”

Now, having embodied the character, the voice of Bonnie bursts out: “Can you please take care of my big brother?!”

Voicing the monsters on the series proved its own interesting challenge, she says, because the only word each creature can say is its own name.

“So it's kind of like Hodor, right? Like, you've only got this one word, but you've got to convey every emotion and everything you want to express.”

Rosenfeld may not be making her living in front of Broadway audiences, but she says when she meets fans at events like the Entertainment Expo, she gets to see the impact her work has made.

“What’s really fun to me is when I meet people who grew up watching Pokémon and now they have little kids and they're getting their kids into watching Pokémon, and they're watching it together on Netflix.”

It’s really cool to see the fandom span generations, she says.