Otaku USA Magazine
A Chat with J. Michael Tatum on Acting Philosophy, Character Soundtracks, and Why He Hasn’t Finished Watching Attack on Titan
by Danica Davidson April 20, 2025

J. Michael Tatum has acted in more than 400 roles, with some of his best-known including Sebastian Michaelis in Black Butler, Erwin Smith in Attack on Titan, Tenya Iida in My Hero Academia, Tomoe in Kamisama Kiss, and Kyoya in Ouran High School Host Club, to name only a few. He has also directed anime, written ADR scripts, and narrated audiobooks. Tatum, who previously did an interview with us alongside Brina Palencia about Black Butler – Public School Arc-, took some time at last weekend’s annual Kalamazoo Comic Con in southwest Michigan to give Otaku USA more of a deep dive on his work. He talked about getting the acting bug, his acting philosophy, Iida’s quirky soundtrack, how he honors Erwin, and more. (Contains major spoilers for Attack on Titan season three.)

How did you first get the acting bug?

The first time I got the acting bug I was very little. I grew up on stage, you see. My first role was in a children’s production of The Velveteen Rabbit. I played the rocking horse. I was nine, ten, something like that.

I had a pretty profound speech impediment and I had to take speech therapy for it. I learned that through memorization of preexisting material I could deliver lines more or less flawlessly, if I practiced. It gave me a slightly different relationship to my voice because I had to really study; it didn’t come naturally. My speech therapist had ties to theater, and she was like, “I think you should find your confidence by maybe doing some stage work.”

I tried it out and I just loved it. I loved it the minute I went on stage as this kid playing a rocking horse in this really cool costume. I was like, “Oh this, I’m an actor.” I knew it then. My journey has since been very winding and back-and-forth, but from that moment, when I was on stage for the first time, that’s when I caught the acting bug.

What was the winding journey that led you into anime?

Oh, it’s like any acting job. I got out of acting when I was in my twenties, because, you know, it was that time in life to focus on making ends meet and being a responsible adult, whatever the hell that is, and trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. Because I thought acting was fun and I really, really enjoyed it, but I didn’t think it was possible to make a living in it. I certainly felt that way at the time. And so I gave up on acting. It was a thing that was behind me that I thought of very fondly, but no longer thought of as something I did anymore. I was in a whole other career.

I was working in marketing when a friend of mine who happened to be a voice director for Funimation, Chris Bevins, was like, “Hey, you used to act. I need some voices in this new show that I’m about to voice direct. Are you interested?”

I needed to be convinced. I was like, “Eh, you know, I work on stage. This was ten years ago. I’ve never done voice work. I think you’re best maybe sticking with professionals.”

He convinced me to audition for a part and that’s how I started. And that was twenty . . . twenty-some odd years ago. Yeah, crazy to think about.

How familiar were you in the anime before that?

A little. I hadn’t watched a lot of it since I was very young. But I knew some shows, like Cowboy Bebop, Trigun and all that I knew very well. That was cool. But I certainly wasn’t versed in it as I would become. [laughs]

So then you got into anime. How did that go from there?

I mean, you’re looking at it. It was a side hustle for a few years, and then I was given a chance to direct. It was kind of back in the wilderness years of dubbing in Dallas, where we were just a bunch of theater kids getting together making dubs, and there wasn’t a lot of oversight. [laughs] So we kind of got away with murder. I had a ball breathing life into these shows that Funimation got the license to dub. Everyone in those days kind of did a little bit of everything. If you acted, odds are you may also engineer or you may also direct or write or all of the above. Like any creative job, you had to wear a lot of hats to make ends meet. I started directing because I was asked to direct a show that I was in. They were like, “Hey, since you’re already in the show, you know a lot about it. Do you want to be the director?”

I was like, “Sure, I’ll do that.” So I quit my day job and began doing voice-over work full-time. It hasn’t stopped since. [laughs] Lucky me.

I was really interested reading your philosophy about acting, about approaching characters, bringing out part of yourself, being present. Is that a philosophy that developed over time?

It is. I’ve had many different teachers over the years, and my relationship and craft have changed, have deepened as I’ve gotten older, as I work more and find myself facing different kinds of challenges at every stage of my career. You tend to revisit certain basic principles and be like, “Does that work? Is that something that still works for me or is that something I need to look at differently?”

Where I’m at now is feeling that every character I play is really just a version of myself in a different story. That the character the audience sees is always a product of the story they’re in, the outward pressures forcing certain traits into a rearrangement that becomes that character. I realize that inside of me is every single character I could ever possibly play, is every kind of human. We’re all made of the same building blocks. It’s like a game of musical chairs; where is everything when the music stops? And that’s the person. So I think, “Who would I be if I was in this situation?” That’s where the character emerges. It’s not a stranger that I’m trying to make a connection with, like they’re something other than myself. It’s really connecting with something in myself and going, “Oh, it was me all along!”

That’s come with time. I used to look at it very differently. I used to think of a character as a guy out there that I had to get to know because the relationship wasn’t obvious. And the more I did it, the more I realized, “Oh, yeah, every time that’s just me. I get this guy because I would do that in his shoes.”

Everything else is just kind of technique; he has an accent, or his voice sits lower or higher than mine does. Those are just little techniques you apply to give a little flavor. But the emotional reality of the character is, “That’s me. I feel that. I’m feeling that.” And I’m speaking for them through what I’m feeling, if that makes sense. It’s a much more kind of Zen-like approach, I suppose, than I was inclined to be part of when I was younger. I used to do so much research and script back story. All that’s still very useful. But the older I get, it seems more like I just kind of flow. I’m just going to go with it and see what happens. Whatever comes up, I commit to it and give that to the text. It seems to work just fine because I still get hired, so I must be doing something right.

What sort of research would you do?

Depends on the show. For Attack on Titan, I did a lot of research into military life. What does someone’s day look like who’s the commander of a regiment? What is the chain of command? How do they code switch, depending on the situation they’re in?

Everyone is unique. This character might be different; this character is crazy and thinks he’s a god; this other character is very wealthy and looks down on people. Some of the research I do is I really sit down and think, “Where is this person coming from? What are their circumstances, and what elements of that situation are they most in tune with?”

So you do a lot of prep work.

I sound like I do a lot. It’s really discovering as you go. It’s a byproduct of the performance, in that my relationship with a character starts out very much a blank slate, and I find it as I go. I find that’s usually what the character is doing, too. They don’t know who they are necessarily. They may have an idea who they are, and it may be just as valid as anyone else’s idea of who that person is, but it’s not until you get into the story and see them change and grow and go through things that they begin to understand who and what they are, right alongside the invisible audience. The prep work . . . I make it sound like I spend weeks, and I don’t have the luxury of that most the time, but I do have an idea. While I’m reading the text and performing it, I’ll develop a relationship with the character so that as we go, the character emerges naturally over time.

When we were talking about Black Butler, you said you listened to Baroque music to get into the mood. Do you typically have a soundtrack for a character?

I do, quite often. In the old days, when I lived about forty-five minutes to an hour from the studio in Dallas, I had plenty of time to listen to a playlist on the way in. If it was for an ongoing character that I knew I’d be in for multiple episodes or seasons or whatever, I would have a playlist to get into the mood.

What are some of the playlists you have for characters?

My God, I mean, I have 400 characters. We’d be here all day. Sebastian is very Baroque and kind of Classical, Erwin is metal [laughs], others are soundtrack music or Broadway musicals. It depends on the flavor of the character. Sometimes the music is totally not what you might think. Because I’m like, “For some reason, I’m going to listen to this music.” When playing Tenya Iida, for example, there’s a piece by the composer John Adams called “Fearful Symmetries,” which is a very quirky, bizarre, highly chromatic and rhythmically complicated minimalist piece. Minimalism is not necessarily the best way to describe it, but he’s often classified as a minimalist, though I don’t think that’s accurate. The piece is lovely, and I thought, “This is just Iida energy.” I might be the only one who feels that way. But there’s something about that piece that makes me say, “Oh, yeah, I can completely hear Iida. This is Iida’s inner soundtrack for me.” So that would be on the playlist for Iida.

I thought it was really interesting you said you stopped watching Attack on Titan after Erwin died.

Yup.

And you said that was a way to stay connected with him.

It’s a way to honor him, in a way. He’s a very real guy for me, as it turned out. I played him for seven years, something like that. I developed a pretty profound relationship with him. I knew he was going to die. I knew ahead of time because I worked on the show as a writer and I read quite a bit ahead. I just realized I felt a lot for him. I’m very honored to play him. He reminds me of a lot of people I’ve known, and so in some ways I was trying to honor very real people and capture something of their experience in that performance. So when he died, it didn’t seem right for me to go on ahead of him and know things he didn’t get to know.

And I will get around to watching the rest of the show one day, because it’s a great show and I’m very proud of my friends and colleagues’ work on it. But I need time. Erwin is very real for me. When he died, it was like losing a friend.

There’s a wonderful Classical music story where Puccini died in the middle of one of his famous operas, Turandot. The last act was composed by a friend and a protégé, I believe. When it premiered, the conductor, I believe it was Toscanini, stopped during the live performance. Just stopped. He turned to the audience and said, “Here the composer laid down his pen.” They observed a moment of silence, and then continued the piece. It was such a lovely sentiment. I’m a sucker for gestures like that. So that’s kind of what drives my not having seen the rest of Attack on Titan after Erwin dies.

But you’ve written on the show. Do you know what happens?

I don’t know what happens. Well, I do and I don’t. I don’t know what happens because I’ve read it. I only wrote the first two seasons, and at that time the manga was still coming out and I didn’t have the option to read that far ahead. But I know what happens because people have told me.

In the scene where Erwin knows he’s going to die, when he’s about to do the cavalry charge, and he gives that big sigh? That sigh gave me chills. It was like, “Wow, I feel that.”

Thank you. I’m very flattered that that affected you. That’s very validating.

That was a very real moment. It was such a rare moment of vulnerability for Erwin. He plays it so close to the vest. For him to have that brief moment where you see him being unsure of himself . . . he knows he’s going to die, but he’s not sure how he feels about having to lead everyone else to their deaths. That’s such a great moment. I’m glad they put it in the show. I’m glad we got to see that. And I’m honored that it affected you. That’s the idea.

So Black Butler has started up again. Can you say anything related to working on it?

I can say I’m really looking forward to it. [laughs] I understand from fans it’s one of the more popular arcs in the manga.

What else are you working on? Is there anything you can talk about?

Nope! [laughs] Nothing I can talk about, I’m afraid. It’s all under NDAs. I am a very busy bee, I can tell you that. A very, very busy boy. This year is shaping up to be one of my most chaotic.

I like to be very coy about that, so forgive me. I cannot wait to be able to talk about the things I’m currently working on. But at the moment I’m looking forward to more Black Butler, I’m looking forward to more Spice and Wolf, which I understand has more coming down the pipe, I hope. I’m looking forward to a lot of things.

I also thought it was interesting you’ve done some audiobooks.

Yeah, yeah, the Spice and Wolf audiobooks, Brina [Palencia] and I together. I don’t do audiobooks as a rule because they’re just too time-consuming and it’s exhausting. I have such respect for people who do them, but they’re not my thing. But Brina and I love the Spice and Wolf story so much we couldn’t resist when someone reached out to us to see if we’d be interested. We’re like, “Yeah, let’s explore these characters more.” They’re among my favorites.

Is there anything you’d like to say to the fans?

I’m always so grateful for the fans, and their sensitivity to what we do. It’s so wonderful to come to cons like this and get to meet people face-to-face. Thank you all so much for being so willing to share your love of what we do and what we get to be a part of. It’s really lovely and it’s really the best part of what we get to do.

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Danica Davidson is the author of the bestselling Manga Art for Beginners with artist Melanie Westin, plus its sequel, Manga Art for Everyone, and the first-of-its-kind manga chalk book Chalk Art Manga, both illustrated by professional Japanese mangaka Rena Saiya. Check out her other comics and books at www.danicadavidson.com.

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