 What do Pamela
Weidner (left), the English-language Skuld in the dub of Oh My Goddess,
and Dave Underwood, the voice of the Almighty in the same dub, have in
common? Both played Lucy in the musical "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown."
Weidner was in high school when she played the part. Underwood, who was
not a girl at the time and has never been a girl, was eight years old and
attending a Catholic boys' school where there were no girls to handle that
part. "I was a soprano then," Underwood said. |
 That Charlie
Brown link extended to two other Goddess cast members. Scott Simpson, who
was Keiichi in the anime dub, played Linus in an amateur production. Juliet
Cesario, best known as Belldandy, tried out for a Charlie Brown production
in high school and wasn't cast for the show. After a year's voice training,
she got a part in a production of Grease the following year. |
 Weidner admits
she's a bit of a brat, which made her role as Skuld easy to handle, but
she also enjoys playing parts that makes audiences fell good. Underwood
is developing a reputation as a bad guy in anime dubs: he hints that he'll
be "a total scumbag" in an upcoming release. |
 Simpson said
his long monologue in a Goddess episode was one of his favorite speeches
in the series - but it was aimed at Cesario, with whom he lives. Cesario
enjoyed the spells she cast in the series, especially the one that rebuilt
the old run-down temple. All of the actors admitted that dubs aren't word-for-word
translations, that they're interpretations aimed at getting the story across
to a general audience and not necessarily for hard-core anime fans. |
