Dominican actress Jane Santos lent her Hispanic voice to two “women with well-placed ovaries who are at the same time full of compassion and warmth for others,” as former First Lady Michelle Obama and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris put it. -an interview with Efe.
Santos is the only narrator of the audiobook published on Tuesday this week, “Las verdades que sustenemos,” the Spanish version of “The Thruths We Hold: An American Journey,” the memoirs of the first woman to become the country’s vice president in her story.
He previously did the same with Michelle Obama’s “My Story”; with “Don’t Go Back,” by philanthropist Melinda Gates, and with novels by Isabel Allende, Stephen King, Danielle Steel, or Margatet Artwood, among other works of “voice acting” or voice acting.
Born in Santo Domingo, Santos came to the United States 10 years ago and has acted in Hollywood movies and series such as “Criminal Minds” or “General Hospital”.
A “CHALLENGEABLE” TASK
In response to Efe’s questions, he says diversity is a growing value in the film’s mecca and, while acknowledging that there is still no equality between white and Hispanic actors, he says the industry is “trying” to close the gap.
As an audio book narrator, Santos has to use his acting skills, because it’s not just about reading the book, but rather he has to play characters and sometimes many in the same profession.
Before you record and agree with the director and producer of the audiobook on how to approach it, do an in-depth reading of the work and research the author of the book and his style.
As he tells Ephesus, his “seal”, with which he managed to make a name for himself in “voice acting”, is to “shape the voice and attitude” of the character based on his character and his main qualities and to look for the words. its sounds authentic and faithful to the text.
“If the version has already been made in English, I listen to it carefully, to be as immersed in the story as possible and to be as reliable as possible, although with my own style,” he adds.
Storytelling is always a “challenging” task and in the case of people with flesh and blood who are also public figures, it means carrying a “great responsibility on your shoulders”.
Santos says he doesn’t know if Kamala Harris, who recorded one of the versions of the audio book “The Thruths We Hold” with her own voice, listened to the Spanish version, but would like it to be so and approve of her work.
Kamala stole our hearts
In this regard, he emphasizes that he never leaves his admiration for a person to whom he must give his voice to interfere with the outcome of the narrative.
“Kamala Harris stole the hearts of so many women, so many people, because of those beautiful features she has,” says Santos, who highlights from the vice president her firmness and warmth, qualities she said he found in his wife. of former President Barack Obama when he recorded “My Story.”
In the books of the two African-Americans, he found women with interesting life stories and great responsibilities, who at the same time have closeness and compassion for people and are not afraid to talk about aspects of their private lives, such as the crisis. conjugal case of Michelle Obama.
The audio book “The Truths We Hold” is available on Megustaleer.com and Audible.com, according to a press release issued on the occasion of its launch.
“It was an honor to tell the story of such a successful, strong and intelligent woman and to be able to make known the vice president of our country in a transparent way. The book has many interesting anecdotes and offers many lessons, it is an inspiration for all,” Santos said in that statement.
One of Santos’ last works in this field before Harris’s book was the audio book “The Queen’s Gambit,” which coincides with the Netflix premiere of the popular series based on this book by Walter Tevi.
The actress and narrator says that she really enjoyed making the audio books of the Chilean writer Isabel Allende “The Japanese Lover” and “An Island Under the Sea”.
But if he wanted to do something, he would give voice to a novel by Julia Álvarez, an American writer of Dominican origin who wrote, among other works, “In the times of butterflies” or “How the García girls lost their accent”.
Regarding her work as an actress and how, in general, Latin actors can be more considered in the mecca of the film, she says that the most important thing for this is to have screenwriters, producers and filmmakers willing to make “stories Latin ”good.