Tyler Rhoads has a passion for acting and voice directing and does so with various Netflix’s series. Rhoads takes us behind the scenes of Netflix with the evolution and significance of Netflix’s and how a few Netflix projects correlate with his family regime. Also, he speaks on what it takes to be a voice director and his interest in acting.
ATM: What is your observation of a Chinese teenager from working on Flavor of Youth?
TR: This was a beautiful, quiet, and universal story. It is three movies that are intertwined together thematically. The first one is Rice Noodles. It really hits home for me. We have a lot of traditions around food in my family. On my mom’s side of the family, we have fried chicken for holiday meals instead of your traditional dinner. For Thanksgiving and Christmas, we always made fried chicken. It was passed down from my grandma, her mom, and down to my mother and me. All these memories and experiences are tied into soup. It is either traditional to your area or family. It was something that hooked onto me.
ATM: What are the reactions while they partake of fried chicken happens?
TR: It is very special to us now because my grandma has passed away. In addition to being familiar and that we look forward to for the occasion. It is our way to remember her. This again in the story, in the end, he loses his grandma. The very last scene is him going back to school and ordering the noodles. He had just been there for his grandma’s passing. It is the same thing for us. Not only the eating of the meal but the preparing of the meal. My grandma used to make the meal of mash potatoes gravy, rolls, fried chicken, and everything on the table. She did it on her own because she was used to it. We have our jobs because she is not there. If I am not frying the chicken, then I am making the dinner rolls. This is a part of my job for the meal. It is a way to remember her.
ATM: At what moment in your youth, did you find your way into adulthood?
TR: We are hitting on a major thing for me again, which is food. When I went to college, you had to cook and fin for yourself. I started cooking. A recipe book was one of the first things my mother gave me when leaving the house. It was of things she used to make and things I liked. It was all written in her hand writing. It was a lot of the recipes we had while growing up. I learned how to cook all these things. Food is a big touchstone for me. I tend to cook a lot for friends. I love having people over for dinner. It is a way of nourishing their relationships and your friends with food. It helped with being homesick for sure. You get this little taste of home when taking your mother’s potato salad to a barbecue. Even though you are not there, missing family and your hometown, you kind of carry it all with you.
ATM: What is your observation of playing a character in Hitting the Break that came from a small town?
TR: I grew up in Jefferson City, Missouri. It had about 75,000 people while I was living there. Things are a little at a slower pace. You tend to know everybody. If you do not know everybody, then you know someone who knows them. It is much harder to have secrets. There are no secrets. Everyone knows each other’s business and everything that is going on. Relationships in a small town are stronger in my experience than in a bigger city. Living in Los Angeles, I have lived in a bunch of apartments complexes out here. I know a few of my neighbors but I have not met everyone. In Missouri, I knew everyone in the neighborhood.
ATM: How could you fit the title Hit the Breaks in your own life?
TR: It is a play on words. Obviously, Randy was an ex Nascar racer. There is the car analogy there. He moved to a smaller town and life slowed down a little. It is simplified to how to hit the brakes on life a little bit. Another meaning is catching a break or giving a break. Maybe it turned out to be exactly what they needed at the time. I’ve had experience with this in my life. Taking opportunities or shaking things up. Moving from Missouri to Los Angeles has shaken up my life. It turned out to be the best thing I could do.
TR: There is so much content in the dubbing industry. Netflix is one of the biggest distributors for content. They are out there buying everything. They have all sorts of stuff. Babylon Berlin was a very high-profile show from Germany. It had a very high-profile director and an insane budget. They spent a lot of time making this movie. They ended making it a television show. Netflix buys the distribution rights and we get it. We put English voices over it for the American audience. There is a lot of opportunity for this kind of work in voice directing.
ATM: Netflix has come a long way. I remember their commercials used to come on like clock work on television. The price was around $6.
TR: It was better than getting two DVDs in the mail per month.
ATM: They have come a long way within the last 10-15 years.
TR: I agree. This is the future of the industry. You see last and last on networks. It is more about streaming and on demand content.
ATM: Some people have said they like to watch things that are instant. They do not like to sit to watch a whole season on regular television. A typical season on television is 10-12 episodes, which is spread out to 10-12 weeks. People go to these streaming platforms because they want to watch the whole season in one night. There are so many cliffhangers.
TR: Binge watching.
ATM: This is how binge-watching became the popular term. A person does not have to wait this long amount of time to know what is going to happen.
TR: The On-Demand viewing is not scheduled anymore. You do not have to miss dinner with your friends because of Grey’s Anatomy’s season finale is on. Even if you are watching something on Hulu or Amazon Prime or CBS All Access. You do not have to change your schedule around for T.V. You can watch it whenever you want.
ATM: In the past, you did not know what is coming forth. I would imagine it was difficult. There streaming platforms have brought families and friends together. Some families are sitting down watching movies again. In the 20th century, they did this, but they stopped for a short period of time. People are making nights to watch Netflix. This is bringing out the American family culture.
TR: The power dynamic has shifted from the consumer to the viewers. We have a lot more control over what we see and when.
ATM: These are also more platforms for indie filmmakers. Before there were no platforms or they did not have a voice. This is made a route for them to sell their films too and helps them break into the industry quicker.
In relation to your Voltron project, how would you feel if the next species of humans were robots?
TR: (Laughs). Hahaha. Personally, I am terrified of robots. It is inevitable that they are going to take over the world. We are getting closer and closer. If they were all giant saving robots like Voltron, then I would be okay with it.
ATM: Wait. Why are you so terrified of robots?
TR: Oh gosh. Oh no. They are going to turn on you. You cannot trust a robot. You can quote me on this. {laughs}
ATM: What’s your experience with the adapted and your readapted version for Fauda.
TR: This was a fun project. It was originally from Israel. It got the original Israel version and adapted it to the American voice. It was a little of a different project. The client requested that we use native Israeli actors or actors with native speakers in this show. We worked with Hebrew speaking actors. If you watch the show, then they would have very thick accents when speaking English. We also had to do a remote recording with the actors. He was over in Israel filming an on-camera series while we were recording here. We had to do a remote session with him.
ATM: What elements of acting did the actor expose in the session?
TR: It was tricky. You get energy and vibe. It is a little easier to connect face to face than it is over the phone. He was a professional and knew what he was doing. It was an easy session and he was easy to direct. I only worked on the season of Fauda. They had already recorded the first season before I came to the studio. He was playing a character that was recurring from the first season. He knew everything that was needed for his character. We told him the story we needed to tell him.
ATM: In La catedral del mar, do you think the ruling class tactics for controlling with proletariat is still used in American society today?
TR: Yes. Without getting into politics. The idea that the people running are a little disassociated with the people who do the actual work. This is a universal truth, and everyone can relate to it in history. You see this pop up sometimes throughout history. This is what makes the show relatable.
ATM: How prime was the human connection between individuals during the 1300s?
TR: It must have been difficult to live in this day. The lead character’s wife was carrying heavy stones from a beach to a construction site where they are building the church. They must wear these special caps with a little flap on the back because the stone would cut into their skin. This was a difficult world to live in. This is not saying how women were treated back then. If you watch this show, then it is a brutal world for the women on this show. We have certainly civilized since then. There is a woman who says bring me to the Kings camp. This guy just back hands her and rapes her. It is brutal. Even though it is not obvious, this is when you see things and say it is still not okay for women in our civilized world or not developed places where it is harsher.
ATM: They had no sense of humanity that women were not human.
TR: They were not. They were more seen as property back then. This was a terrible time to live in.
ATM: What are the interesting times while working on a show with a strong female lead in Ingobernable?
TR: She was really the main person. Her husband Diego came out of nowhere to win the presidency. He did it on the back of her money. Her father was a wealthy businessman. He was a very well-known personality throughout the country. Someone else did the first season. I came in to direct the second season. I worked with the actors who were already intimately with the characters. This was one last thing for me to worry about.
ATM: What do you contest that happens when a wife or female lose faith in their husband?
TR: This is what kicks it all off. Diego is having an affair and she steps up. He gets murdered and she is on the run. We explore a little of the happier times for Diego and Emilia in the second season. We see a lot of flashbacks to their happier life. As Emilia in the present day starts undercovering the conspiracy that led to the assassination of her husband, she is uncovering these things now, we see in the flashbacks the turning points in their relationship. Diego falls in the influences of the cartels and the armies. We see a bit of his corrupt and the toll it took on their relationship. We go back to see the arc and see the moments where the relationship falls apart.
ATM: Describe your relationship and high interest in video games.
TR: I love video games. I would love to work more in this field. I would like to get more involved in this in the next years. Video games are interactive stories being told. Red Dead Redemption 2 just came out. It is a Western video game. The storytelling is compelling. It is being told beautifully through the videos. The voice acting is some of the best voice acting I have heard on a video game. This is such a huge market now.
ATM: As for Far Cry 5 and others, how does your take and perspective on video games changes once going behind the scenes of it?
TR: You hit on a lot of the work I have done. This might sound corny, but I like good storytelling. This could be as an actor, on camera, or doing voice-over work. I write a little bit. The adaption is all about telling these stories. This is what I really love. This is what gets me going in the morning. I like to keep telling stories whether they are in front of the camera, behind the camera, on the keyboard, on a mic, or behind the mic.
