LET’S TALK ABOUT SAILOR MOON: AN INTERVIEW WITH VOICE ACTRESS LINDA BALLANTYNE

MOON COSMIC POWER!

Sailor Moon has captured the hearts of many for the past 20 years, and Linda Ballantyne provided the voice of the iconic heroine in the English dub of Sailor Moon S and Sailor Moon Super S.

Ballantyne grew up in Scarborough Ontario, Canada and had enrolled in the Theater Studies Program at York University for one year. However she decided to take some time off school until she was really ready to make the commitment. When she was 26 she enrolled in the Ryerson Theater School at Ryerson University and loved it.

“In the theater program you studied everything, not just theater. You are doing any kind of voice, any kind of movement, and all kinds of dance — stuff like that. One of the courses they had there was a voice over course and as soon as I got in front of the microphone and put the headphones on I just fell in love with it. I knew this was what I wanted to do, that I could do it, and I was really good at it,” she said.

Ballantyne’s hobbies outside of acting include: Running, and doing anything creative with her hands. She said that she could have also done set design and costume design as she would have absolutely loved it.

She loves anything to do with the arts and shares the importance of being creative.

“I think if you don’t do something artistic all the time, you start to fade and you don’t know what’s wrong with you, and you feel so lost. When I am not busy in the industry and I’m not doing something with my hands or artistically I lose my mind and I am just a terrible person to live with. Then I’ll do something creative with stained glass and I would feel great again.”

Ballantyne’s journey with the Sailor Moon series began with auditioning for the role of Serena/Sailor Moon in the S and Super S seasons.

The role of Sailor Moon/Serena was played by Terri Hawkes for so long and Ballantyne shared that she felt terrified when she stepped into the role of Sailor Moon.

“That’s funny because when I went in there and got the part of Sailor Moon, I remember heading downstairs to my basement and my husband was there with a friend of his, I sat on the stairs and said I got Sailor Moon. And my husband went ‘what?’ and asked what part in Sailor Moon and I said Sailor Moon! The needle dropped when his friend mentioned that’s what his kids watched. I went ‘what have I done? Here I go taking over this part that is already iconic,” she began.

“I went oh god I am not Terri Hawkes. I grew up watching Flintstones and watching Barney Rubble on Flintstones, and there was two different Barney voices, and there was one Barney voice that I hated. Suddenly I realized I am gonna be that other Barney and it was terrifying.”

The recording process used a dubbing technique called The Rythmo Band, and Ballantyne explains how the rythmo band works.

“Rythmo band was a lot like doing karaoke really, as the words went by you said the words as soon as they hit a bar. The thing about the rythmo band was that it was all hand written- so it was on a piece of film that was projected onto the wall with the cartoon underneath it,” she said.

“Say you were stretching out a word and Serena was saying ‘Oh Darien’ but she was really calling out to him, they would write it out really really long, and so the word would just go, and go, and go, and you just had to follow it. As soon as that word hit the line you said the word for as long as that word carried over the line.”

Ballantyne said it was confusing to begin with but once she got the hang of it it was easy, but shares a hurdle that she had to overcome.

“The only problem with it is, I hate reading out loud. They say you become what you most fear and I was that kid in class that could not read out loud to save my life. I can read no problem but when I had to read out loud I would freeze up. Couldn’t do it, and I would be stumbling over words and I would just be trying to get through it.”

Ballantyne went onto explain that recording the voice of Sailor Moon/ Serena required her to get very physical with her body.

“They put a bar in front of me because I am so physical when I do any kind of voice over, my arms would be flailing all over the place especially when I was voicing Serena as she was such a goofball. The fight scenes, and all the transformations are killer on my vocal cords, and when you are doing this everyday you’re doing a lot of screaming, especially in this show.

So we would save all the screams, and all the fight scenes to the very end and for the last hour or so I would literally be doing the fight scenes, and during those you are throwing your WHOLE body into these things. I would walk out of the recording session just feeling like I had the biggest work out in my entire life,” Ballantyne said.

During the English production of Sailor Moon a few cuts and edits had to be made in order for it to be introduced to a young audience, and to also comply with censorship laws. One of the most notable changes was changing the relationship between Sailor Uranus/Amara and Sailor Neptune/ Michelle from lovers to cousins.

Ballantyne shared her opinion about this change.

“I was like what’s going on? They don’t look like they’re cousins, what’s happening here? The producers said in Japan they are lesbians, but the audience isn’t ready for it. Back then the audience really weren’t ready,” she began.

“It was a turning point- things were starting to happen but it was geared towards a young audience, and the producers felt that the audience wasn’t ready for it. Nowadays I don’t think they even think twice about it, they just put it on no problem. It’s nice to know that things have moved on since then, and for that reason I’m glad that they are doing the re- dub right now because they are getting the story right.”

“The reason why they did the Sailor Moon Says at the end of so many of the episodes, was because they had to take out so many parts- if they showed let’s say a child on a bicycle without a helmet they had to cut that out. Because a kid had to have a helmet if they were riding a bike. Any kind of weaponry -they show a gun at all it had to be holstered. The character couldn’t be holding a gun at all. Because they had cut out so much of the show they had a minute which they had to fill so they created Sailor Moon Says to fill up that time.”

Ballantyne had no idea that Sailor Moon would be this huge phenomenon when she started voicing the title character, until two years ago.

“It was always fairly big but not a phenomenon that’s for sure. In fact I didn’t have any idea that it was a phenomenon that it is today until about two years ago. I didn’t really tell people that I did Sailor Moon very often because to me Sailor Moon was Terri. I always thought that ‘no one is really interested people like Terri they don’t like me.’ So I would just throw it aside.”

Then a fan reached out to Ballantyne on social media asking if she could come to a convention. After giving it much thought, she sent an email to Anime North which is a convention held in Toronto Canada, and asked out of curiosity if they would be interested in having her as a guest, since she voiced Sailor Moon.

They gave her a big yes.

“When I got there I was absolutely terrified because I really thought the people would be vicious and it couldn’t have been more the opposite. And not only that I was overwhelmed by the amount of fans that were there. I didn’t even know what cosplay was. So I waltzed into this thing and all these people were dressed up as Sailor Moon, it was overwhelming and amazing.”

Ballantyne fondly shared her favourite Sailor Moon episode that she recorded.

“I loved when she got drunk, and it was fun doing that because the producer was french and so when I started doing all these different lines, she started pulling these french lines out of nowhere and I started doing that for fun.”

Sailor Moon is full of episodes that can pull on your heartstrings, and Ballantyne shares the two scenes that pulled on hers.

“Certainly when her friends were all laying around her and Serena is pounding on the ground and she doesn’t know what to do, so I really love digging deep for the emotion in that. And also the scene where she is falling from a building with Rini and she’s going (Sailor Moon voice) ‘Rini No…’ And she thinks Rini is dying.”

Ballantyne looked back on her time while working on Sailor Moon, and what she learned most of all was making the character of Sailor Moon/Serena her own.

“It took me a while to get into the role because they desperately wanted me to sound like Terri, as much as possible. And I’m not Terri, and my voice is a lot lower than Terri ‘s. I was really struggling to try to sound more like her and they would be directing me to sound higher, louder, and Serena started screaming a lot (does Serena’s scream) And I hated what was going on so I would go home crying. My husband said I had to trust myself . He encouraged me to make this character my own, and make it a character that I wanted her to be.”

The most rewarding experience for Ballantyne in being a part of Sailor Moon’s history, is the fans.

“Getting to meet the fans is for sure the best part of it all. Because I love the fans so much. They are like no other fans I have ever seen, they are so dedicated, they know so much about the show, and I have so much pride in it now because of the fans. I got to meet literally hundreds of thousands of people, and it’s so overwhelming and that’s the best part because I have so many people coming over to me and tell me stories about how Sailor Moon saved their lives.”