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Lending voices to Parker – Metro US

Lending voices to Parker

Kristin Booth has spoken to, reacted at and also stars alongside Sex and the City siren Kim Cattrall … but she’s never even met her.

“I hope I get to meet her,” the sprightly Genie-winning actress from Kitchener, Ont., says with a booming laugh. “That’s the most challenging thing about animation. You’re not generally in the studio with the other actors. You’re by yourself.”

Booth stars as title character Parker Novak in Producing Parker, a new prime time animated series that premieres Monday on TVtropolis. Her character is the producer of a daytime talk show, The Dee Show, where she must reconcile the neurotic habits of host Dee — voiced by Cattrall.

“Dee is crazy … basically every stereotype of an obsessive compulsive but combined with a ladder climbing, alcoholic, anorexic, self-possessed, self-obsessed woman,” Booth says, laughing. “Parker has to wrangle her.”

And despite having to act with an absent Cattrall, Booth says the actress’ effective vocalisation of Dee informed her own.

“I got to listen to some of the stuff she recorded which helped me tremendously because I knew where she was going with Dee and how Parker would react to that and interact with the way she was playing Dee.”

Still, she cites the process of acting in isolation as one of the most difficult parts of voicing an animated character.

“It’s bizarre!” she says. “You’re in there and you could be falling from a building and screaming and you have to…,” Booth pants, “…do breath. It’s all your voice. You can’t show anything with your facial expressions.”

But in constriction, Booth finds release. “When you only have your voice, nobody can see you,” she says.

The freeing experience allowed her uninhibited use of usually visible acting characteristics to bolster her vocal timbre. “All the weird facial expressions or contorted body movements you would probably do but you know would look ridiculous on camera you can do! And nobody but the director and engineers see you!”

Not being seen on screen might be a deal breaker for most emerging young actresses like Booth, still fresh off film festival successes like Young People F—ing and This Beautiful City. But Booth says she’s always strived to work on projects she would want to watch, punctuating her passion for Parker.

“Here was an opportunity to challenge myself like I had never been challenged before and do something I’ve never really done before but also be a part of something groundbreaking in the way of an adult cartoon geared toward women,” she says. “The things that were enticing me to it were so large, there was no way I could say no.”

Watch it
Producing Parker, a new prime time animated series, premieres Monday on TVtropolis.