{"id":22735,"date":"2022-07-22T23:30:51","date_gmt":"2022-07-22T23:30:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/that-voice-youre-hearing-it-might-be-julia-whelan\/"},"modified":"2022-07-22T23:30:51","modified_gmt":"2022-07-22T23:30:51","slug":"that-voice-youre-hearing-it-might-be-julia-whelan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/that-voice-youre-hearing-it-might-be-julia-whelan\/","title":{"rendered":"That Voice You&#8217;re Hearing?  It Might Be Julia Whelan."},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Julia Whelan climbed into the double-walled, foam-insulated booth in her home office near Palm Springs, Calif.  In preparation, she had refrained from alcohol the night before, had avoided dairy since waking at 6 am and had run through the humming and vocalizing<em class=\"css-2fg4z9 e1gzwzxm0\"> <\/em>of her warm-up exercises.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Her glass Ball jar filled with water, her Vaseline lip therapy at hand, she was ready to work.  So was the man wielding the jackhammer in her backyard, a not-subtle reminder of what it means to be a victim of your own success.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Whelan, 38, is the soothing, assured female voice behind Gillian Flynn&#8217;s thriller \u201cGone Girl,\u201d Tara Westover&#8217;s memoir \u201cEducated\u201d and more than 400 other audiobooks, as well as the narrated versions of many articles for New York, The New Yorker and other magazines.  She has been so prolific that she and her husband splurged on a backyard remodel, which included blasting a hole in the ground for a swimming pool.  The problem is that in her business, quiet is an occupational necessity.  \u201cI&#8217;m done trying to dodge noise,\u201d she said, removing the \u201ccans\u201d (headphones) from her ears.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">A former child actress, Whelan was 15 when she was cast in the ABC drama \u201cOnce and Again,\u201d Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz&#8217;s follow-up to \u201cThirtysomething.\u201d  Then as a 30-something herself, Whelan found she could more successfully blend personal happiness and professional achievement if she moved her performances from the stage to the page.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">She has emerged as one of Audible&#8217;s most popular narrators, said Diana Dapito, the audio company&#8217;s head of consumer content.  \u201cYou have a lot of driveway moments with Julia,\u201d she said, meaning that you can&#8217;t turn off the car and stop listening, even once you&#8217;ve arrived home.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Taylor Jenkins Reid, the best-selling author of \u201cDaisy Jones &#038; the Six\u201d and \u201cMalibu Rising,\u201d became friends with Whelan when she narrated Reid&#8217;s 2015 novel, \u201cMaybe in Another Life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">A few years later, when plans were underway for the audio version of her 2017 book \u201cThe Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo,\u201d Reid let every publisher know that she wanted Whelan for one of the characters.  She was told \u201cdon&#8217;t hold your breath,\u201d that Whelan was so sought after that six months&#8217; notice was required.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">This delighted Reid.  \u201cWho doesn&#8217;t like to see their friends in such high demand?\u201d  she said.  (Reid called in a favor and booked her friend to help narrate the book.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The range of Whelan&#8217;s work is sweeping.  Between bursts of construction, she recorded \u201cpickup\u201d for an article that would appear in The Atlantic.  This means that she had already narrated the piece but was redoing a few sentences in which she had misread or mispronounced words, including one about Russia&#8217;s justification for invading Ukraine.  \u201cThis was not genocide,\u201d she said, and paused.  \u201cIt was defense against genocide perpetrated by the Kyiv regime.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Then she turned to the narration of a forthcoming book.  It is a novel Whelan herself has written, \u201cThank You for Listening,\u201d which is set in the audio industry and centers on a successful woman who lives her life mostly by voicing the words and experiences of others \u2014 that is, until she gets paired to read a famous romance novelist&#8217;s final book with Brock, an enigmatic male audiobook narrator.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cQuestion,\u201d Whelan said into her microphone, speaking as Sewanee, her female protagonist, who is texting Brock.  \u201cAny interest in doing something other than romance?  A friend is casting a Clancy-esque book and needs an alpha assassin sound.\u201d  She stopped the recording, hit rewind and reread a passage she garbled.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Her narrating voice, slightly different from her regular speech, is crisp and low-pitched.  There is no singsong, no upspeak.  Her narration is a raised eyebrow and a tilt of the head.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cI have an absolute voice crush on her,\u201d said Olivia Nuzzi, New York magazine&#8217;s Washington correspondent whose work has been narrated by Whelan.  \u201cThere is some Joan Didion quality to her voice, detached but not uninterested, with a conspiratorial tone that makes her a very compelling storyteller.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<h2 class=\"css-1bxm55 eoo0vm40\" id=\"link-20c887c0\">&#8216;Narrating a book really is a performance.&#8217;<\/h2>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Whelan wanted to write \u201cThank You for Listening,\u201d due out from Avon on Aug.  2, because the heard-but-not-seen dynamics of audio is, she said, \u201cperfect for rom-com material.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">It was also an opportunity to peek into the audiobook world.  \u201cIt wasn&#8217;t until I got into the recording process that I realized just how meta the whole thing is,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">As Whelan spoke, each tone shifted from conversation to controlled, from chatty to narration.  \u201cThis is what happens when I get into storyteller-mode,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Once she has taken on a project, she reads through the book once or twice, deciding on themes to highlight when she gets into the recording booth by using different tones and accents, and emphasizing certain words.  \u201cNarrating a book really is a performance,\u201d she said, \u201cand it can be harder to do than acting, because I can&#8217;t use my eyes or a facial expressions to convey something to the audience.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Whelan grew up in Salem, Ore., the daughter of a firefighter father who served in the Oregon House of Representatives for two years and a homemaker mother.  They divorced when she was a teenager.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">An only child, young Julia devoured books and lost herself in make believe.  By the time she was five, she was acting in local theater productions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">She began to travel to Los Angeles.  In 1999, she auditioned for the \u201cOnce and Again\u201d creators Herskovitz and Zwick.  After she did a reading as Grace Manning, the teenage daughter of a suburban Chicago divorced woman (played by Sela Ward), Zwick said they knew they had found their young actress.  \u201cWe looked at each other and said, &#8216;Check that box: Done,&#8217;\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cThere are people who you meet at an early age who you know understand things that cannot be taught,\u201d Zwick added, mentioning actors like Claire Danes and Evan Rachel Wood, whom he also worked with when they were children.  \u201cJulia is one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Whelan played Grace for three seasons until the show was canceled in 2002.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">As a working child actress, Whelan had been primarily home-schooled and tutored, so when the show ended during her late teens, she decided to embrace a traditional educational experience.  She attended Middlebury College in Vermont and spent every junior year in a study-abroad program at Oxford University.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Returning to Los Angeles in 2008 after a hoped-for Rhodes Scholarship didn&#8217;t pan out, she thought she would pick up her career as she had left it.  She booked movie-of-the-week roles, a guest spot on shows including \u201cNCIS\u201d and \u201cThe Closer,\u201d but the big auditions didn&#8217;t work out and she felt a lack of momentum.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">At her Middlebury graduation, she had been approached by a friend&#8217;s mother who worked for Brilliance, an audio publisher.  The woman told Whelan of the opportunities in the expanding medium of audiobooks.  After a year back in Los Angeles, Whelan called the woman and said she&#8217;d like to give narrating a try.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<h2 class=\"css-1bxm55 eoo0vm40\" id=\"link-201111f6\">&#8216;Putting little curls on certain words.&#8217;<\/h2>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Whelan began taking on audio projects and got her big break in 2012 with \u201cThe Witness,\u201d a best-selling novel by Nora Roberts.  It was the first of more than five books (and counting) written by Roberts that Whelan would narrate.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">A second breakthrough came when Whelan landed a gig to narrate the female main character of a thriller written by Flynn.  The book was \u201cGone Girl.\u201d  After reading it, Whelan said, \u201cI thought, &#8216;This book is going to be huge.&#8217;\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Flynn had been familiar with Whelan because she had been a fan of \u201cOnce and Again.\u201d  \u201cThere are n&#8217;t a lot of actors that I think could do Amy,\u201d Flynn said, referring to the \u201cGone Girl\u201d antiheroine Amy Dunne, particularly an audio-only version of her.  \u201cJulia has a way of putting little curls on certain words,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The book became a blockbuster, and the success of the audio version made Whelan start to take her side hustle more seriously.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Also in 2012, while she was filming a Hallmark movie, \u201cThe Confession,\u201d her father died after suffering a heart attack, bringing on a period of grief and self-reflection.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Whelan was 27 and decided that she would give herself until she was 30 to find a firm career path.  In 2014, just before the milestone birthday, she was cast in a pilot for a television series, but when it was n&#8217;t picked up, she felt ready to change focus.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">About five years ago, she became romantically involved with Geof Prysirr, who had been her acting coach and guardian when she was living in Los Angeles as a teenager.  She is aware how that comes off.  \u201cIt sounds more sensationalistic than it is,\u201d she said.  \u201cThis is a good man who kept me very safe in this ridiculous industry.  And then I fell in love with him in my thirties.\u201d  They bought a house near Palm Springs and moved there full time.  They married in 2018.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">As she spent time subsuming herself in the writing of others, she began to think more about her own creative ambitions.  She had been hired to rework an existing screenplay that was set at Oxford University.  After that, at the suggestion of film producers, she went on to write a novel, \u201cMy Oxford Year,\u201d about a Midwestern student on a Rhodes Scholarship.  It was published in 2018.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">That year she was also contacted by an entrepreneur who was working on a start-up called Audm, which offered audio narrations of long-form magazine articles.  Whelan began to narrate for the company and was later hired as head of production.  (The New York Times Company acquired Audm in 2020.) Whelan no longer works for Audm, though she frequently narrates articles as a freelance contributor.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Just before the pandemic, she began \u201cThank You for Listening,\u201d combining her writing with the experiences she has collected as a narrator.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Writers say that Whelan has helped them understand their own work.  \u201cWhen I listen to Julia read my stories, it sounds like she is calling you over to tell you a great story,\u201d Nuzzi said.  \u201cWhen I write now, I try to think like that, that I am calling a reader over to tell them a great story.  It has completely changed my approach.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">When Flynn was preparing to write the screenplay for the film adaptation of \u201cGone Girl,\u201d she decided against rereading the book, opting instead to listen to the narration.  \u201cJulia gave me the benefit of listening to Amy and seeing the world through her eyes,\u201d Flynn said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Whelan said that she also learns about her writing when she experiences it as a narrator.  \u201cThere is something about it that changes when you&#8217;re performing it,\u201d she said.  \u201cI read the book out loud during every stage of its revisions but it&#8217;s different when you sit down and have the microphone in front of you, when I finally am inhabiting all the characters and the story comes to life.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><script async defer src=\"https:\/\/platform.instagram.com\/en_US\/embeds.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Julia Whelan climbed into the double-walled, foam-insulated booth in her home office near Palm Springs, Calif. In preparation, she had refrained from alcohol the night before, had avoided dairy since waking at 6 am and had run through the humming and vocalizing of her warm-up exercises. Her glass Ball jar filled with water, her Vaseline &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/that-voice-youre-hearing-it-might-be-julia-whelan\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">That Voice You&#8217;re Hearing?  It Might Be Julia Whelan.<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":22063,"url":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/you-s-john-cornyn-ted-cruz-say-brittney-griner-is-wrongfully-detained-call-for-her-release\/","url_meta":{"origin":22735,"position":0},"title":"You s.  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