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Long before he was delighting Hellaverse fans as the titular Helluva Boss, Brandon Rogers was a YouTube sensation. Known for his wildly raunchy, colorfully costumed, and thoroughly fun-to-imitate characters, Rogers built a sprawling fan base around comedy that featured garish makeup, plenty of slapstick, and a proven willingness to tackle taboo subjects. But through all of his usually 

Fast forward a couple of years and Rogers is now a hot name in the voice acting community, not only appearing as Helluva's series lead Blitzo (the O is silent), but also as Hazbin Hotel's news anchor Katie Killjoy, a character who herself closely resembles one of his longest-running characters, Bryce Tankthrust ("I felt like I was auditioning for [Katie] for years," says the actor).

So when we got the chance to sit down with Rogers for a wide-ranging one-on-one interview, we had to ask: what was it like going from live character comedy into the voice booth for such a successful animated show? What follows is his answer.

"Well, it's certainly a lot more work as a voice actor," Rogers began, "Which I didn't realize I was such a stupid little bonehead doodle-cock piece of shit who thought that voice acting was sort of this 'sub-tier' to screen acting. Which it's not. With screen acting, 90% of the reason why they cast you is because of what you look like, right? With voice acting, the whole character has to exist here [motions to mouth], and you have to sell it. 

"It has to be fully acted," the actor continued, "It's purely based on how talented you are. Because you're not selling it with your body or your gestures or your costumes or your hair, your makeup. You only have this, so this better be fucking good. So for the people who land big roles in animated shows and films, there was some imposter syndrome. Because I quickly realized just how much more taxing voice acting is."

Just how taxing is this craft? Let Rogers put it into numbers for you.

"A day on set is 12 hours, right?" he said, "A day in the booth is four. And I used to think, 'Oh, it's easy. Book me for eight. I'll just do twice as many episodes and we'll get them out.' It's four for a reason. You're exerting yourself in a far more condensed fashion than you would on camera. You're just constantly acting, especially because you're alone. You're not working off of or waiting for other actors. It's just you."

"There's also something about only acting with your voice," he concluded, "You're not worried about your physicality, so you exert yourself even more sometimes, because you're just pouring and screaming into this microphone. And four hours can go by really slowly when you're doing that the whole time."

Sounds like something that not just any "stupid little bonehead doodle-cock piece of shit" can do, Brandon, and we applaud you and the rest of the Hellaverse gang for not just going through all that, but for doing it with the love for fans you so clearly have. 

And truly - what an incredible turn of phrase. Speaking as someone whose literal job it is to put words together, I'm saving that one.

Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss are streaming now on Prime Video. For more of Brandon Rogers's comedy, head to his YouTube page.  

 Here's how to watch Helluva Boss and Hazbin Hotel in order.