I Am an Actress Anjali Bhimani and This Is How I Work

You can recognize the voice of Anjali Bhimani from Overwatch . You may have seen her on Broadway or on shows like Modern Family , Crazy Ex-girlfriend, and Silicon Valley . And you can see her in We Alive: Frontier , a web-based live-action RPG series from Geek & Sundry and Legendary Digital Networks. She has also starred in films, voiced and even acted in opera. We spoke to Bhimani about her vast acting experience, how she gets into character, and her incredibly busy, fan-focused graphics.

Name: Anjali Bhimani. Location: House in West Hollywood, but now I’m all over the world. Current concert: Actress – screen, stage, voiceover. Currently in live action RPG We Alive: Frontier on Project Alpha (new episodes in January) Current PC: MacBook Pro Current mobile device: iPhone 7S (but coming soon to 10s!) One word that best describes, how you work: Scrupulous

First of all, tell us a little about your past and how you got where you are now.

I grew up in Orange County, California and played a lot in the theater when I was younger. When I realized that I could do this as a real career, I got my degree in theater arts from Northwestern University and started working in regional theater right after graduation. A few years after this show, which I did in Chicago ( Metamorphoses ), moved to Broadway, so I moved to New York, where I started working on television, and also continued to work on stage on Broadway and beyond, directing operas and much more.

After about 7 years of that, I started traveling back and forth between New York and Los Angeles to do more television and film, and in 2010 I officially moved to Los Angeles. the game world thanks to the performance, my role as Symmetra in Overwatch, and also the role of Stingray in the live role-playing show Alpha We Alive: Frontier . I also spend a significant part of the year traveling around the world, both for filming and attending conventions.

Tell us about a recent work day.

This was the last day I shot something out of town in October:

5 am. I wake up in my hotel room, make my morning drinks (something healthy), look at my phone to make sure there is nothing I need to do immediately.

5: 30-6 Do a quick HIIT workout or some yoga to wake up my body and recharge my energy.

6-6: 30 Shower and get dressed to start filming that day.

6: 30-7 Head to the set, use the time to post on social media about How We Live: Frontier later today.

7:00 On set, just a few hours, filming a short scene. During this time, between settings, I also send messages about auditions and possible bookings.

Get a on-camera audition to be taped by LA Night. Fortunately, the time difference works in my favor since I am on the east coast. The bad news is that I will need to remove it before the natural light in the room dies out, which means that I will have it done by 5:00 pm. Take breaks from filming working on your listening cues. Fortunately, there is only one very short scene today. Also get a voiceover for the recording, but you can do it any time of the day, so don’t worry about it.

2-4 Go back to my hotel and prepare the room so I can self-record this listening before the sun goes down and the room light is not good enough. Since I have no one to read with, I end up recording other characters’ lines in audio and then acting with the recording. (Not my favorite pastime because it doesn’t always trigger the most spontaneous auditions, but as a last resort it is necessary.) Spend two hours setting up the lighting and video recording, editing, fixing the sound, and sending it to my manager for casting. Not to mention spending some time working on the actual acting part. (It usually looks like I’m dreaming or talking to myself, so I’m happy to do this in a hotel room while I’m alone. Sometimes I have to do it in public, in which case I put my AirPods in and I hope people just think that I’m talking on the phone.)

4:30 Go back to the computer to watch an online preview of the episode of the second season of “We’re Alive: The Frontier,” with the cast. We all register from all over the country (sometimes from all over the world) and communicate with viewers via Discord and Alpha Chat while we watch together. While watching, I will have a phone and the episode will be streamed live on Project Alpha , the computer will chat on Alpha and Discord, and GIPHY Capture will allow me to capture any moments that I can catch at the moment. (I also sometimes just jot down moments that I want to capture for social media later.)

This observation is one of my favorite things to do right now: experience the episode at the same time as our observers and learn about it and their reactions.

5:00 pm Conference call with a new accountant I work with in Los Angeles.

6 p.m. Another audition comes. This time I have enough time to find someone to record with the next day and shoot in the studio that I prefer. Then I don’t have to worry about the technical side of the matter at all, and I can only focus on the acting. Work a little on the lines – this one isn’t too harsh or emotionally deep, so pick it up and take it off the book within an hour.

19:00 Take a break to call home, Facetime with my better half and puppy.

7:45 pm Record the audition of the voiceover. I waited until the evening, when it becomes less noisy, to do this. Set up a makeshift booth in a room closet by placing pillows around the back of the closet and sitting between them and my coat rack, then shutting the door behind you and using the RODE microphone on my phone to record the lines. … (Every time I do this in a hotel room, I want someone to shoot a video, because it always looks ridiculous.) After recording, use Audacity to clear the audio and send the recordings to my voice agent for listening.

9pm Oops, forgot to eat. Head downstairs to grab a salad from the hotel restaurant.

9: 30-10: 30 Feel a little more inspired today, so use the next hour to film ” I’m Funny Size” in your room. This one will be calledSelf-Inspiration or Self-Inspiration, and it was the result of a conversation I had with my husband and a dear friend of mine a few months ago. Send it to my video editor for title cards and the like.

10:30 Hop in the tub to relax and read for about 20 minutes and then crash.

What is the difference between acting on stage, in front of the camera and voiceover?

In fact, they are more similar than different. The biggest difference is how you use your instrument, that is, your entire body and being.

During a live performance, you know the time slot during which you will travel through the show, so there is a known value in terms of the journey you are going on, but once the train leaves the station, there is no turning back, so you are traveling with the audience. , in spite of everything, until it ends. If you don’t like what you did or made a mistake, you should find a way to weave it into the show that night instead of stopping to fix or change.

In an on-screen project, you may shoot out of order and don’t know when you will actually get to that emotional scene, and when you do, you should be ready to hit it right away. Especially in more impromptu pieces like We Alive: Frontier , where it means you need to stay immersed in the character and story for a longer period of time, or at least have access to all the emotions of the various scenes. any time.

Scoring differs from both in that you focus all the action, work, and emotion that needs to be conveyed on one part of your instrument — your voice — and you need to make sure you can tell the story of the piece. and create a character purely through sound.

Beyond your phone, what apps, gadgets or tools you can’t live without

• My Aerolatte Portable Hand Blender : All the travel and filming makes it difficult to maintain good nutrition and with this in my bag I can make a smoothie, green drink, latte – whatever I need to get through the day without worrying about so that the right thing gets into my body. Helps me not to go crazy at the table with handicraft services on set too.
• A portable tripod for my iPhone: I need to record tapes from anywhere.
• High speed charger for my phone and spare Mophie battery : I HATE the feeling of running low on battery power in my phone, so I obsessively plug it in when I can.
• I don’t know if that matters, but the Do Not Disturb button on my phone and MacBook has changed my life. Since we are currently doing so many different things on our gadgets, it takes me a long time to focus on one task instead of paying attention to every message that comes in.
• My good old Conair videos . I am not ashamed to put them on and walk the dog or ride wherever I go, including most auditions, because they make bad coat days nearly impossible.

How is your workplace arranged?

Since I travel so much, I really don’t have a stable environment. My workplace is basically anywhere: with a laptop, phone, AirPods or other noise canceling headphones (Bose and Sennheisers are my favorites) and an internet connection. So I guess my workstation is … flexible and portable! At home, this is often due to the small dog trying to distract me with its charm.

What’s a common misconception about acting and voice acting?

That they are so different! Acting is all about storytelling, at its core … voice acting is still in effect, just different parts of your instrument are used (or less). But the greatest voice actors are actors just like everyone else you see on stage or screen.

Look at someone like Robin Williams. He was not considered a “voice actor”, but in one of his most iconic performances, Gene in Aladdin , he focused the giant nuclear reactor that was his talent in a performance that we only heard through his voice but felt every part of his creation.

Voice acting is not separate from acting, it is a branch of this tree. You can’t be a great voice actor without being a great actor, period.

What’s your favorite shortcut or hack?

• Never have I spent more than $ 100 than when I signed up for Global Entry through TSA. It has saved me so many hours in queues at customs and security that I can’t even tell you. Plus, it saves me time collecting things.
• If I have an audition and run or drive too much to work on it at home, I will stop and record lines in my Voice Memo app on my iPhone and listen to them on my headphones while I drive or run. Sometimes, even if I don’t focus on it, it even leaks a little more into my head simply because I’ve been repeating for so long in the background. Then the lines are already ready for me in my head when I want to move on to the smallest details of the acting role.
• I like to use EFT – the Emotional Freedom Technique – to help me settle down before listening or in a stressful situation, and also help me in my game by showing me that there are no emotions that control me. Therefore, I am free to feel anything or go as deep or dark as I need for the role, because I know that then I will be fine. I learned this from my friend and mentor Cat Stone, who also showed me how to use it in extreme cases for more serious problems, and it comes in very handy during certain stressful moments (like when I sprained my 12 jaw a few hours before I had to read the play in New York and had to reboot it myself).
• Remind yourself that physically feeling nervous is a lot like arousal. The difference is what you think the result will be, so rely on that feeling and expect it to go well, and you can use that feeling to your advantage without letting it stop you or scare you.

Tell us about an interesting, unusual, or challenging process you have at work.

Although I am a very optimistic person, I find that I have to go through a certain struggle or even pain when I prepare for a role or audition. For example, for Stingray’s role in We’re Alive: The Frontier – which is actually a live-action improvisation where the suggestions come from the master of the game and the dice rather than the audience – I found that I almost needed to make the task more difficult than I thought. they were in order to gain access to the part of me that is fighting for what it wants. I had to put in more of the struggle and pain of what was going on than just playing the “game,” and my fellow filmmakers are investing so much that it’s a great environment to dive into.

Who are the people who help you achieve results, and how do you rely on them?

My husband is number 1 on this list! And not just literally helping me do something that he does whenever he has time (he’s pretty crazy busy taking over the world himself), but sometimes just reminding me that I have everything under control even when I think , it is not so. T.

My work team has my manager, an incredible single mother who kills this for her clients and my agents, and there are many of them to do all kinds of things: television and film, stage, voiceover. , speaking at conventions … I rely on them to communicate with me and each other to make sure all balloons in the air are handled when it comes to my orders because I have too many careers to ADD to focus on just on one kind of acting. I just want to do it all all the time.

I recently also hired an accountant and am looking for an assistant because things got a little more complicated in the past year, and while I could potentially do it all myself, as before, I understand the time I put into such work, it is better to spend on something that only me can do. I don’t want to be on stage or filming and trying to create a dramatic scene, and deep down I am worried about filing my alleged taxes. I finally realized that your energy and time is as much a currency as your money, so you need to budget and spend it wisely.

How do you keep track of what you need to do?

Mostly iCal, although in recent months I’ve come to love Todoist for my essential to-do lists as it helps me categorize, share, and delegate tasks. I have tried other productivity apps that “do everything,” but found that they were more distracting than helpful. I prefer the products to be distilled and specialized rather than general.

So iCal times, dates and schedules, Todoist tasks, and good old posters around the house, because let’s face it, it’s fun. I love to code my stickers by project or theme and turn my office wall into a crazy colorful planner.

How to recharge or relax?

Um … what are you talking about?

Lately, I’ve found that the best break for me is either a 20 minute listening toyoga nidra meditation (I’ve found a few great on YouTube, shouldn’t be out of the ordinary) or even a 20 minute nap. My brain is so busy all the time that I really need to force myself to think that 20 minutes of sleep is an activity and a productive activity. Otherwise, I will think that I cannot rest. Since yoga nidra gives me a very specific task that I am doing, and should be in some way more restorative than sleep, whether I fall asleep or not, I know I am getting a little respite from my busy brain. …

AND I LOVE showers and baths (or if I’m lucky when I travel, jacuzzi) to reset. Something in hot water just helps me to either restart / reset my day or end it.

What’s your favorite side project?

It’s not easy because my life consists of many different projects, so it’s hard to know which ones are “side projects”. At this point, I would say my YouTube web series: I Am Fun Size . This came from a desire to give credit to the gaming community and the fans I have met over the years. This gave me the opportunity to take any difficulties out of my life and turn them into useful things for other people.

It’s so nice when people come up to me who say that they first found out about me through my acting, but then fell in love with this series, and it mattered to them. It has been a huge joy over the last couple of years, especially since I can do this from anywhere in the world.

What are you reading now or what do you recommend?

I am working on Hans Rosling’s Factfulness and am going to relaunch Good Omens for the third time. I have to put it off all the time for some reason and then I have to start from scratch, but given how much I love fantasy and sarcasm, I know this should be a must read for me.

I also highly recommend Dune and the entire His Dark Materials series. Fantasy or not, both of these books create worlds that are impossible to visit while you read them. I think that’s the beauty of fantasy and science fiction as they create a world that is flawed and unsettling, but has a great desire to make the world a better place and be a part of this journey.

Who else would you like to see to answer these questions?

Jennifer Hale ! Since I met her a few years ago and spent more time with her one-on-one, she has become a huge source of wisdom and inspiration to me, and there are some incredible tricks and tweaks in her life that I have already learned. from. I would also love to have Michelle Obama answer all of this, because even before she was first lady, she was a tough ass juggling a million things, including marrying some guy who was a little busy and I’m sure she’s some behind-the-scenes wisdom that I could learn from.

And my brother, because he is one of the most brilliant people I have ever met, and I feel like he does more in a day than I do in a month.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

Also from my brother when I was in high school. He told me (maybe not in these exact words, but close): “There are things in which you are good, and I will never succeed, and things in which I am better, that you do not necessarily love or need to do. So don’t worry about what I’m doing, focus on what you love and be great at being yourself. ” It was then that I really began to develop a love for performing. I don’t know if I would have become an actress without this conversation with the best brother a girl could have.

The second after that was the dentist who said, “You have beautiful teeth. Keep them. Thread .

What problem are you still trying to solve?

How not to doubt yourself. I guarantee that after I send in these answers, I will probably wake up in the middle of the night thinking, “Oh! I forgot such and such ”and I want to call the editorial office. Also, more importantly, how to be a perfectionist and be willing to fill every minute of the day with productivity and getting things done, while still being able to create space in your head and heart to be present and enjoy the downtime and time with your loved ones.

Moderation is not my forte. Therefore, I would like to truly develop the ability to be obsessively focused on what I am doing at any given moment, including snuggling with a dog or spending time with my husband. We place so much emphasis on productivity in our culture, sometimes it seems to me that we do not treat our personal lives with such ambition, for lack of a better term. Or maybe just focus. So, in essence, find a balance between a lot of things to do and a lot of presence in everything.