J. Michael Tatum has enjoyed a prolific career in voice acting, working as a dub actor in anime starting with Initial D in 2005 and continuing into many other big hits such as Ouran High School Host Club, Black Butler, One Piece, Attack on Titan, Yuri!! On Ice, and many others. Recent highlights have included the role of Tenya Iida in My Hero Academia and Magma in Doctor Stone.

Scoop’s Carrie Wood had the opportunity to sit down with Tatum for a small group interview at Anime NYC 2019, which was attended by several other media outlets. The following interview contains questions asked by several other media outlets beyond Scoop, and several questions were edited or reordered for clarity.

You’ve been doing this for about 15 years now. How has the anime industry and the voice acting industry evolved in that time? What’s different?
J. Michael Tatum (JMT): There are so many things that are different about it that it’s kind of hard to pinpoint. But one of them is the way to get into it now. I kind of fell into it by accident. It was such a small, relatively niche industry when I got into it. I wasn’t even trying to be a voice actor at the time – I had a whole other career lined up. I had been an actor on stage for a while at that point, but I hadn’t don’t anything in a couple of years. This guy that I knew who worked at Funimation was like, ‘Hey, do you want to come and do this acting thing over here? We need some people.’ Funimation at the time was getting more properties, but the talent pool wasn’t that large. You had a lot of actors doing double or triple duty, and they were trying to [stop overusing actors]. Ten hour days is a lot! This guy knew me, and he had me come in.

But that doesn’t happen anymore. In the past 15 years it’s just gotten huge. So now it’s more like, I would guess, a traditional film or television industry where there’s this huge waiting list to get in and audition. With the advent of simuldubs or broadcast dubs that Funimation kind of ushered in, the deadlines are so strict that it’s really hard to get in the door. It used to be – not easy, but easier than it is now. So that’s a big change.

One of the other changes I really like, though, is with simuldubs – especially with shows like My Hero Academia – have really kind of made voice actors for dubbing cool in a way that they hadn’t been before! The perception was, for the longest time, that there was this divide between sub or dub, and you were very hardcore one way or the other. Dub actors were kind of seen as interlopers. We had to kind of compete with that. Back in the day, we were an audio option on a Blu-Ray, and now we’re the first impression that someone has of a show. So dubbing has gotten cool, and I don’t know how that happened, but thank god for it!

Has that led to you getting recognized more often?
JMT: Yes! At cons, I guess it doesn’t really surprise me. Anime fans tend to be very devoted. They know what you look like and they know that you have two French bulldogs or that you’re engaged, things like that. They’re very dedicated, and god love them because for voice actors that doesn’t happen much in most industries. It’s kind of an anonymous art.

But when it happens in public – I’ll be at a Starbucks and someone will go, ‘J. Michael Tatum?’ and I’m like ‘Oh god!’ I’m not ready for it. I become like Don Knotts in public. So it’s kind of weird!

Do you have any favorite roles from your career so far?
JMT: That’s an impossible question, because at this point I think I’ve done almost 300 roles. It’s so hard to keep track of. They’re all a part of me, so I think of them as part of myself. I don’t really distinguish between them, and it’s impossible to pick a favorite. I like to say that my favorite role is my next role!

One of your most recent standouts has certainly been Tenya Iida in My Hero Academia. When you first signed on to the show, did you have any idea of what kind of worldwide phenomenon it would become? Are you at all surprised by its success?
JMT: First of all, it’s such a good show. Every single one of us in it really love it and believe in it and we love the message it sends. And we love the fanbase because, hands down, the My Hero fans have absorbed the message of that show. They are the kindest, nicest people to us and to each other, and it’s sweet to see. Not all fandoms necessarily are like that! Most, but not all. The My Hero fandom has such a wide range of age groups. You have little kids who are watching it and taking something away from it, and you have adults watching it and getting the same experience. It just seems to have such a wide appeal.

I think when we started working on it, it was the hope that it would take off. You always hope that your show will do well. But I don’t think any of us believed that it would be this big. I don’t even know how to describe how big it is. I was in a panel with several of the other actors, and they had us in this atrium and it was like a rock concert! We looked at each other just like… what is going on? But it’s really encouraging to see that, because I can’t tell you how many times as an actor that you work on something you really believe in and it doesn’t really catch on. That’s like 99% of the shows you work on – they don’t get the following that you hope for. Also, the rest of the cast is really cool! And we like hanging out with each other! We don’t have to go and do appearances with people who we don’t like. We all love each other, so we connect at cons like this and we’ll all go out to dinner together. It’s just really nice.

You’ve also been involved with the Dragon Ball franchise. Would you at all compare My Hero to Dragon Ball?
JMT: In terms of reach, yeah, definitely. If you look at the timeline in terms of the waves of big anime popularity, I think Dragon Ball was one of the biggest, along with Pokémon. And now you have My Hero. And there’s shows in between those, of course. But those seem to be what I’d call ‘gateway anime.’ They’re the shows for people who don’t watch anime – but they’ll get into them and then be like, ‘Oh yeah, I love that show… oh, it’s anime? Whatever, it’s amazing.’ And this wave isn’t stopping! Normally when something like this is this popular, it takes off and then fizzles off after a season or two. But the quality of each season has been consistent enough that it’s held on to that spot and is capturing the same audience and bringing new ones in. I think it’s going to be around for a while!

Do you think the appeal of My Hero echoes that of the X-Men at all, just in terms of how it relates to kids discovering that they’re “different” somehow?
JMT: It speaks to that, but I think every kid, especially when you’re in school, you’re trying to figure out where you fit and that larger dynamic of how to play that game of being true to yourself and fitting in. That’s a struggle I think everyone can relate to. But it’s also about finding your power, and how to use it. Deku is such a great symbol of someone who had no hope at all to be a hero, and here they are, the protégé of the hero. It’s just amazing. I relate to Iida a great deal, too.

You even kind of look like him, too!
JMT: Yeah, I wouldn’t say it was a very inspired casting! Sometimes it feels like the creator must have followed me around with a sketchbook. I talk with my hands a lot, I’ve got that hall monitor personality too. We’ll be recording the show and the director will laugh – she’ll explain to me that she’s seen me do exactly the same thing Iida’s doing in the show.

To pivot into video games for a second – you’ve also done Borderlands. The fandom there lost their minds when the third game so much as leaked! What has the Borderlands experience been like for you?
JMT: I haven’t done a lot of video games, but working for Gearbox is hands-down one of my favorite experiences as an actor. I walk out of that studio and I just feel like an actor – which is not always the case with this job. It’s a job, and sometimes you have good days or bad. But the voice director for the franchise is an actor himself, and he’ll have the writers in the room with you, and they really get it. And they love Hammerlock. That voice gives me, the actor, permission to do a lot of crazy things. Every actor has that “permission voice” – the one where I can just have this mask I can wear, and I can do anything in that mask. Hammerlock’s voice is that for me. It’s just a fun experience to record it, and they’re very interactive with the talent there. Especially given that Hammerlock is a gay character, in a relationship with another man – they alluded to it in Borderlands 2, but it’s very out there for everyone to see in Borderlands 3, which I think is very bold and long overdue. But they were very inclusive.

They wanted to make sure that the lines were things I was comfortable saying, that the representation was good. I wasn’t having to play some writer’s idea of what a gay man sounds like, I was getting a say in it. And I didn’t have to change much – they’re very sensitive writers and very keyed in. The game has got to be one of the most inclusive on the market, because there’s not really a character, playable or otherwise, who’s truly heteronormative. Most of them fall into some other area. And they’re just treated like people! What a concept!

There’s been a noticeable change in video games, and in anime to a lesser extent, for a push for inclusivity in media. Do you have any thoughts on that?
JMT: Having been a gay kid and growing up at a time where it was not advisable to be out – I came of age in the ‘80s and ‘90s and the smoke was just beginning to clear from the AIDS crisis, and that defined how we were seen, and it was kind of awful. Now, it’s changed so much. I feel like there are more creators getting into the business who really want to represent those kinds of people… [The issue lies with] them not knowing how to do it correctly and maybe shying away from it. But as they talk to more people and learn more about them, they start to take more risks.

In mass media entertainment, gay people went from being the butt of the joke – if they were even involved – to being messiahs! And there’s gotta be a balance there! They’re starting to make us just real people, that’s finally starting to happen. As to why? There’s a lot of factors, but I’m very glad for it. I can tell you – when marriage was legalized here, when Brandon and I could finally get engaged and legally married… when I was in my teens, I never would have dreamed we’d even be having that conversation. There’s still a lot of work to be done, but it’s slowly turning into a good time to be out.