In the wake of the racial reckoning inspired by George Floyd’s death, Kamran Nikhad, a San Jose-based Iranian American voice actor, noticed that a lot more people were talking about increasing diversity in his overwhelmingly white industry, but there wasn’t an easy way to accomplish it.

“People were asking, ‘Why is Jake Gyllenhaal starring in “The Prince of Persia?’ ” he recalled in an interview with The Chronicle. More studios were pushing for better representation in voice-over roles by people of color, and Nikhad had been contacted by voice actors seeking Middle Eastern roles, but there was no mechanism in place to connect them.

Now, a database created during the pandemic is helping actors and studios do just that. In just over 18 months, thePeople of Global Majority Voiceover Listprofessio提供信息的声音nals from diverse backgrounds, has grown to include more than 1,800 actors around the globe. Its aim is to create more equitable job opportunities for talent that has long been overlooked. More than 180 agents, casting directors and production companies now consult the PGM VO List to make their projects more equitable.

The list, which uses the broader term “people of global majority” rather than “people of color” to describe those it includes, was started in June 2020 by Los Angeles voice actor Edward Hong. Hong saw that, as with “Prince of Persia,” white voices continue to dominate the industry in movies, TV, video games and other forms of entertainment, even when it comes to characters that represent the global majority.

Questions about how best to adapt works in foreign languages for English-speaking audiences are at least as old as the tired “subs vs. dubs” arguments that have plagued anime discussions since the 1980s. Mostly white A-list Hollywood actors portray characters in the hit films of Hayao Miyazaki. Video game dialogue has also turned many veteran voice actors into minor celebrities. And Netflix’s recent rush to acquire more Korean-language movies and series in the wake of the success of “Squid Game” is creating an even bigger market for dubbing work, or ADR – automated dialogue replacement.

Hong and Jennifer Sun Bell, a fellow voice actor who works as one of his outreach coordinators, say they are promoting the list in order to close representation gaps and provide more opportunities for performers of color to voice characters that look like them.

“It started as a response to George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement,” Hong told The Chronicle in a Zoom call from his L.A. home. That movement, he said, “spread into all realms of everything, like issues when it came to racism, when it came to hate crimes, when it came to representation in the media. It wasn’t long before it trickled into the voice-over world,” where “white actors would voice Black characters on TV shows like ‘American Dad.’ The question became: Where do we find these actors of color?”

Said Sun Bell: “Diversity is starting to come to life in shows and games, but a majority of entertainment is still predominantly white. Driving around L.A., and social media, still shows me this by their billboards of shows and who’s winning the awards.”

Exact statistics regarding disparities between performers of color and their white peers are nearly impossible to come by, especially when one factors in the numerous independent and hobby voice-over opportunities available.

香港说,尽管缺乏明确的麻木ers, “the majority of casting breakdowns still defer to white; the ratio tilts heavily away from the global majority. Also, going by stats found in on-camera TV shows and films, while diversity has increased, (people of color) still account for 40% of representation and when broken down further, rarely do they play the main leads.”

Among performers of color, he said, the majority of available voice-over opportunities favor East Asians.

“The most and severely underrepresented (are) in the Indigenous, Southwest Asian (Middle Eastern) and Pacific Islander categories,” he said.

In 2020, Hong began answering questions regarding closing representation gaps via an Excel spreadsheet and Twitter talks. His list was launched at the end of June that year, with information collected mostly through industry contacts. From there, he began crafting a database, but the effort required more outreach. That’s where Sun Bell, who had launched her voice acting career a few months prior, entered.

“I saw Edward doing everything himself and thought, ‘This guy is going to burn out. I want to help,’ ” Sun Bell said. “These actors have always been here, but there are so many people with blinders on.”

Now, with the list at some 1,800 names, what is their biggest success so far? None other than the global sensation “Squid Game.” Netflix casting directors for the streaming series used the list to find actors to dub the English voice-overs for the Korean-language show, including Hong in the role of Player 244.

As streaming services scramble to import the hottest Asian properties, they’re starting to take note that performers with connections to those cultures can increase the quality of the product.

“The (voice-over) community is very niche, so if you get in with a casting director, they tend to work with the same people over and over,” Hong said. “But … it’s been almost exclusively white people. The point of the list is, look, we’re not going to take all your jobs away. We just want people who can understand this culture and pronounce these names correctly.

“It’s not even just PGM” roles, Hong said. “People butcher German, French and Italian names, too.”
Another impact the list has had is exposing performers who don’t live in major studio hubs like Los Angeles, New York and the Dallas-Houston-Austin area. Geography used to be a major factor in exclusionary casting, but technological improvements have removed this barrier to entry.

San Jose resident Nikhad, for example, is flourishing after joining the PGM List. He’s done a lot of video game work, including “DC Battle Arena” and “Return of the Obra Dinn,” and has landed podcast gigs too, such as the role of Hades in Parcast’s “Mythology” podcast on Spotify.

“It’s been a hell of an experience having work every week, and it’s all because of the list,” Nikhad said. “People are re-evaluating who they reach out to. There may be some cynicism from the suits, but on the ground level directors are asking, ‘Why not?’

“People say voice-over is colorblind. That the best person should get the job,” he added. “Ideally, yeah, but the reality is that the best actor may not get to try out because of their race. What you aren’t seeing is who is getting access to the audition in the first place.”

Krysta Gonzales, the diversity, equity and inclusion manager at EUX Media in Los Angeles, said the list means there’s “no good reason for the status quo to persist.” As both a manager at a production company and a voice actor herself, she says it is a necessary step forward.

“The PGM VO List is the critical connective tissue that the voice-over industry desperately needs,” she said. “It’s been a nurturing digital space for artists of the global majority to build relationships and support each other. And the access to work and training opportunities it provides for historically excluded artists is an exciting step in the right direction.”

Voice actress Carmilla Jo, who lives in the East Bay, agrees.

“I’m not part of a union. I’m not part of any agencies. I did have the opportunity to audition for a Netflix role that I would have never gotten if I was not part of PGM VO. That was really cool to even get the opportunity to do!” she said. “It’s been very nice to be able to audition for professional, paid projects. … It’s really encouraging.”