Taliesin Jaffe

Taliesin Jaffe was a child actor in 1980s Hollywood before most of his current audience was born. He is Kenny in Mr. Mom, Christopher Floyd in 2010, Ludwig Müller in Explorers, a face in an episode of Amazing Stories, a run on the sitcom She's the Sheriff. That is a specific and short-lived kind of career, and when it ended he went where a number of former child actors with good voices went, into anime.

For years he worked behind the microphone rather than in front of it, directing and writing English-language dubs. It is unglamorous and technically demanding work: matching a performance to lip movements animated for another language, rewriting dialogue so it means the same thing in a different number of syllables. It taught him a precision that shows up later.

Then came the second act nobody planned. Jaffe is a cast member on Critical Role, the web series in which a group of voice actors play Dungeons and Dragons in public, and improvising a character on camera for hours at a stretch turned out to be the thing he is best at. He plays Percy in the animated adaptation The Legend of Vox Machina, Mollymauk and Caduceus Clay across the second campaign and its animated version, and the Lightkeeper in Candela Obscura. He has also voiced the Flash in fighting games.