Anime Magic! 2024
Ben Diskin is an actor, best known for his voiceover work on shows like Codename: Kids Next Door, Hey, Arnold! and Aggretsuko .
I talked to Ben via Zoom about his appearance at Anime Magic! and his overall acting career.
To listen to the interview with Ben Diskin, click the play button below (or click here to open the audio player in a new tab/window).
This year's Anime Magic! is over, but tickets for Anime Magic! 2025 are on sale now.
Anime Magic! 2025 will be held in Rosemont, Ill. beginning on Friday, August 22, 2025 and running through Sunday, August 24, 2025, and it will be beach themed.
More information, and tickets, are available on the Anime Magic! website.
Mike Reflects
This was a really fun interview for me.
I've wanted to interview Ben for a while—as I mentioned, he's my favorite Eugene from Hey, Arnold!—and he certainly didn't disappoint.
It's always interesting to me to talk to people who are primarily voice actors, and Ben actually hit on one of the reasons why, unprompted.
A lot of people, as he mentioned, harbor the misconception that voice acting is about changing your voice or doing fun/silly voices.
But it's really about acting with your voice, which is a very different thing.
As Ben mentioned, there are some very talented, very prominent voice actors act only with their own voice.
Being able to convey everything you need to convey for the character or scene without expressions or gestures is a talent and skill that I've found some people have a tendency to overlook.
I've even heard people comment that doing voices is a requirement for voice actors to get into character, but that's simply not inherently true. And, in my opinion that sort of attitude short changes voice actors and on-camera actors.
Just because a person can't “do voices” doesn't mean they can't act quite well with the voice they've got.
And I'm glad to be able to highlight that.