Posted in: Audio Dramas, TV | Tagged: Curious Matter, exclusive, interview, kevin smith, quantum leap, Tiffany Smith
Tiffany Smith (MOTU, Supernatural) spoke with Bleeding Cool about her work on Curious Matter: Audio Drama Anthology Season 3: “The Exile.”
Podcasts and audio dramas have been a proliferating medium in the streaming age, especially during the pandemic, and the opportunities for creativity have been plentiful. Tiffany Smith, who’s been active in the live-action and voiceover worlds, has been active for the Curious Matter Audio-Drama Anthology, serving as an actor, co-producer, and voice director. With season three’s The Exile, Smith, who plays Bryce Gordon, spoke with Bleeding Cool about how she got involved with Curious Matter, the networking she’s done from previous work like Quantum Leap, and connections made for recruiting for the project.
Tiffany Smith Breaks Down Curious Matter Audio Drama
Curious Matter: The Exile follows a disgraced ex-federal agent exiled to Mars and is forced to join the Marsport Police by a clandestine organization known as T-Sec. In a desperate bid to find a way home to Earth, Bryce finds herself forced to join the local police and must navigate dangers from every angle as she discovers firsthand that there is little difference between criminals and law enforcement in this frontier world.
Bleeding Cool: How do you get involved with Curious Matter?
The audio drama ‘Curious Matter’ came up because during the pandemic, like a lot of [other voice actors], I put together a voiceover booth in my closet, so I had a space to work and audition. I met Colin Ferguson through friends years ago, and Colin was working on a project, an audio drama. I was like, “Hey, Jonathan Pezza was doing this cool sci-fi audio drama, and I listened to a bunch of audio dramas.” He was like, “I feel like you might be great for this role. Do you want to chat with him?”
I remember I had so much fun recording season two with him, and we got along so well by thinking about sci-fi and fantasy and how we could make it because he does binaural audio dramas. It’s like you can hear the ships moving all around you and it was so cool to me and felt ‘War of the Worlds’ where you’re listening to a radio drama. You feel like you’re right in the middle of it all and then when season three came around, he reached out to me and was like, “Hey, I had so much fun working with you on season two. Would producing be something you would be interested in?” I absolutely am because I love creating and pushing in every direction I possibly can.
I asked, “How can I bring my friends together to work on creative things? How can I continue to make stuff, and how can I keep being creative, whether it’s voiceover or producing in that way?” Season three came up, and Jonathan, basically what the seasons are…past seasons were all anthologies. What I did in season two was three or four episodes. This is the first season that it’s fully one story for all eight episodes and as many episodes as well.
It’s based around a public domain sci-fi book, and this one’s from ‘Police Your Planet’ [by Lester Del Rey], so we always focus on sci-fi. Jonathan, an incredible writer, wrote all the main episodes by himself. I helped creatively produce the episodes, and then we started recording and pulling together a group of incredible talent, which is one of those things in this industry. I feel incredibly lucky I’ve made such great friends who also happen to be wonderful, kind, and insanely talented humans. When we started doing this project, it was during the SAG-AFTRA & WGA strikes.
Voice-over and audio drama was something you can keep doing and the wonderful thing about it was adding days to insurance for actors. In a time when it was good for us to create, all I wanted to do was make stuff, and I was like, “This is going to add days for your insurance.” That felt amazing to get to create with my friends and add that aspect in there that a lot of us were starting to get nervous about during that time.
We’re about to launch and we have Kevin Smith, Tricia Helfer, Trace Lysette, and Raymond Lee from ‘Quantum Leap’. It’s crazy because of all the people that I brought in, and it’s all people I’ve worked with. The episode of ‘Quantum Leap’ [I was in] and Ray and Caitlin [Bassett] were both like, “Absolutely, we’d love to come do this.” Eugene Byrd, also from ‘Quantum Leap’ and through friends, was the connection that ended up helping us to get Tracie Thoms to want to be involved and Tracie knows Trace. It’s this amazing chain where it’s like one person comes in and it’s like, “I had so much fun. Let me talk to this friend. If you’re looking for a role like this.” It’s been an absolute blast, and I feel lucky that, like I said, it’s amazingly talented people. I’m proud of this show that we put together.
Curious Matter also features Phil LaMarr, Anjali Bhimani, Todd Stashwick, Milana Vayntrus, Alison Haislip, Sandeep Parikh, Amy Vorpahl, Malcolm Barrett, Kevin Avery, Sujata Day, Alexander Matos, Jeff Torres, and Kelli Dawn Hancock. New episodes premiere biweekly Tuesdays on Apple, Spotify, and other platforms. You can also check their Kickstarter here.
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