One of our favorite interviewees and friend of Bi.org, Nicky Endres, has been keeping awfully busy lately, so we sat down for a second interview. From the pivot into voice-over and audiobooks, to lock-down self-reinvention, to voicing familiar characters on a Strange Planet (2023–), to the importance of authentic voices in storytelling, Nicky had a ton to share.
When we were discussing a second interview, you said you’d “grown into yourself and have more clarity about yourself as a collaborator.” Could you elaborate on this?
NICKY ENDRES: I think the last time we talked was during the pandemic. Since then, I feel like I've really leveled up into myself in many ways.
We actually spoke on the day the lockdown was called.
That's right. I was very, very anxious and worried about everything, but also trying to stay optimistic. I pivoted to adapt and make more room for myself in the changing world. The lockdowns gave me the time to heal and work through a lot of things that I'm not sure I would've had the motivation or the opportunity to do otherwise. Sometimes you don't really know that you have a blockage until it blocks you, and the pandemic — for all the horrors it wrought upon everyone — for me was also a transformative time that allowed me to grow. So I'm happy to be back. [Laughs]
Since we last spoke, you've moved a lot of your career into voice-over work. Was there anything that spurred that shift?
You know, it really surprised me that I didn't fall in love with audiobooks sooner because I majored in English and theater. So much of my undergraduate education has been in literature and performance together. It took a pandemic to confront me with the fact that I've always been really insecure about my voice […], not only with my art and my work, but also physically. I am non-binary. I'm transfeminine. I have an androgynous, sort of gender-expansive sound. I had just assumed there wasn't any space for that in mainstream society. I was so elated to realize that, at least in the year 2020, there was room and people were actively seeking more diverse voices and perspectives.
What do you love about doing voice-overs?
I don't have to look like the characters I'm playing. Of course, more and more companies and shows are devoted to authenticity in casting nowadays. At the same time, it's like, when you're just behind the mic, nobody cares what you look like, what you're wearing, how old you appear, how large or small you look. It's all about how you sound, and how you sound is so much more connected to how you feel. So in some ways, I wouldn't say it's different. I wouldn't say it's better or worse, but it's a different way to act. As much as I love on-camera [acting] and using my face and body with the character, you do the same thing in voice-over but you're the only one who sees it. So you can do whatever it takes to get into the character without having to worry about it looking off.
And you're still able to get in a little eyebrow acting in the sound booth if you want. Nobody cares.
Oh, my eyebrows are all over the place in the sound booth. And otherwise! [Laughs]
Is being queer an important element of your identity you pull from for your work and voice-over?
I definitely think that being queer is an important element I incorporate into my work in voice-over and acting. I often say, “My non-binary trans voice isn't so much a sound as it is a perspective.”
Ooh. I like that.
I'm glad it resonates because it was a light bulb moment for me in my growth work during the pandemic and kind of healing from my own self-limiting narratives. It really isn't so much how I sound in a literal sense, but all the things in my heart and my life and my brain that I bring to my work. [...] Being queer was something I've always been singled out and othered for. People have tried to make me feel ashamed, make me invisible, or shut me up. It's intrinsically connected to my identity as an artist that my queerness and my art are one and the same.
You've really made a name for yourself with your work in audiobooks. There are so many titles to choose from, but I’d like to focus on two titles. Tell me about working on Toward Eternity (2024) by Anton Hur.
Toward Eternity is my favorite book. [Laughs] I'm very lucky. Most of the books I work on, I do genuinely love, or fall in love with. Maybe I romanticize it, but I'm very lucky that I've been cast really appropriately in projects.
Toward Eternity is described as a philosophical sci-fi, which is totally my jam. But it also deals with the theme of language as maybe culture's first technology, and how thought, language, identity, and culture are all wrapped up with each other. It's such a profoundly elegant, sophisticated, deep book, but it's presented in such an accessible, beautiful, economy of words. Hur’s writing is sublime. He's so talented. He's a renowned translator. I feel like I've gotten to know a little bit about him as an artist and writer through this work in particular. We've also become friends. He's lovely.
I absolutely loved it when I heard that Harper-Collins got the rights to produce the audiobook. I reached out to my contacts there and begged them for an audition. And it turns out that I was suggested. The author loved my enthusiasm and what I could bring to it, and he cast me. I get to play some brilliant characters. My heart’s in all of them. And if they ever do a limited series, I definitely want to audition for them as well.
How many times would you say you read the book before you start recording it? Is your preparation for doing voice-over work any different from how you would break down a typical script?
So prepping an audiobook is not that different from prepping a script. I'd say the biggest difference is that, unless it's a multicast and you're only responsible for one character, most of the time, you're reading every character and reading the whole book as a narrator. So it's not just prepping one character and their point-of-view, and their wants and needs. Every single character that comes through the book. So that can be challenging, but also a lot of fun. So you wanna read the book at least twice — once to prep it and look for all the different character journeys and relationships, if anyone has accents, or if there are any surprises or anything that needs a strong setup in the book. Then the second time, of course, you read it out loud in the microphone.
I would love to hear more about your work on Chef's Choice (2023) by TJ Alexander. Did you have to learn a French accent for the work, or did that come from your previous training?
I was approached by the producer at Simon and Schuster because I had studied French, and she asked if I was comfortable doing a French accent for the entire book for a lead character. I was daunted at first because it had been a while. But I fell right into it.
The cool thing about audiobooks is that accents need to be authentic enough to not be distracting, but they also can be a little bit Anglicized for English-language audiobooks. Clarity is the most important thing in an audiobook. With film and television, we can have subtitles and super, super authentic French people speaking French. But in an audiobook, if no one can understand what they're saying, it's too French for an English audiobook. So I was very happy to be able to supply a French accent that was easy to understand for English speakers.
Tell me about winning a Lambda Literary Award. How did that feel?
It felt so thrilling and humbling. I was just really honored to receive the Publishing Professionals Award this year. It normally goes to a producer or a bookstore or an editor or something. But this year they partnered with Spotify to promote audiobooks as a medium, and to bring them more concretely into the theme of what Lambda Literary does, which is to promote LGBT literature.
It was a surprise. It's not something, you know, you submit for [laughs.] So I was chuffed to bits, as they say.
And for me it really ended up symbolizing something deeper. I can't say that I've ever really been run over by imposter syndrome, but I'm not an artist because I care what people think about me. If anything, I became an artist to create that which was not available to me in the world. And so it's never been about fame or recognition, for better or for worse. To a certain degree, I just don't care what people think about me. And receiving this award showed me the beautiful side of caring; that it doesn't have to come from a negative place.
Growing up I was bullied a lot. And so by not taking it personally and internalizing that kind of shame, transphobia, homophobia, and racism thrown at me, I was able to psychologically survive and weather those storms. But this award showed me that it can be really important to receive beautiful feedback.
When people say that someone is inspiring, or that their work is contributing to the movement in the industry and that it's important to people […] I never really considered how beautiful that is. And so I'm so humbled and honored to have been recognized for that. It's helped me grow a lot as an artist. I feel like I'm just at the beginning of another new chapter in embracing my leadership in artistic spaces and meeting others I want to collaborate with.
I loved your work on Strange Planet, creating multiple characters. Did you know about the comic beforehand? Can you share a bit about that experience?
I was a big fan of the comic before it was made into an animated television series, so I was thrilled when I found out I was cast in it. When you audition for these things, everything has code names and it’s all very secret — and sometimes they don't even give you the real script. So, by the time I found out, I'm like, “Wait, I had auditioned for this?!” “Oh yes, you did.” Which was great because it's like a double-blind experiment: I was just doing what I do without being too psyched out as a fan and getting in my head or trying too hard.
Nathan W. Pyle’s sense of humor and sense of humanity is just so wonderful. It’s otherworldly. It's a unique take that's wry and self-aware, but not in a self-deprecating way, in a we-are-all-in-on-the-joke kind of way. It calls people in. It speaks to the commonality of the weirdness of being human.
It was my very first animated gig, so I was coming straight out of class just trying to use my voice in different ways. I don't know how successful I was at it, but I certainly had a lot of fun. All the people working on it were brilliant and so kind and had such a spirit of love for the project. I'm really thrilled to have been part of it.
I think you succeeded, for what's what it's worth. I was like, “Hey, I think that's Nicky!” [Laughs]
We're always working to grow our voice box or grow our queue of voiced characters. [Laughs]
You also worked on a favorite show of Bi.org. Can you tell me a little bit about working on Good Trouble (2019–2024)?
I loved working on Good Trouble. I ended up getting cut out of most of my episode for time, because it was a huge episode. There were all these guest stars, it was a big deal. It was absolutely brilliant.
Good Trouble is also the only show I've been on that didn't make me cover up my tattoos. They really celebrate everybody's individuality and authenticity. I have friends on the cast, and there were also a bunch of crew people I’d just worked [with] on The Dropout (2022) a few months prior. So the production had a family vibe going on. Everyone’s really cool and down-to-earth. It was just a brilliant time and a brilliant show.
What would you like to see in the future of audiobook narration for yourself and for the community?
As much as needing a job got me into audio, audio got me into audiobooks. A great reason for me to stay — in addition to just falling in love with the medium itself — is that in the audiobook world, there’s a tangible effort, a palpable feeling of commitment to authenticity with authors and with narrators. Really finding the right voices for these stories is genuinely important. And it's aligned not just in terms of representation and diversity, but also in our battle against AI, non-human things replacing us in art. The most human thing about us is our stories.
Something my friend and mentor, JP Karliak, who leads Queer Vox, says is: “We need to ask ourselves: Is this our story to tell?” And so often for queer people, our stories have been told or co-opted. One thing I love about literature is that there isn't the expectation that every single book needs to appeal to everyone, there's more grace and room for niche stories and niche projects to be what they are, and be celebrated on their own merits. Not every book needs to be a bestseller, you know what I mean? But when you spend $40 million, $100 million, $200 million on a movie, it's gotta appeal to make that money back.
As an artist, could you give me the TL;DR of where you've been, where you are now, and where you're going.
Oh, that's deep. That's a deep question, Jennie.
I know.
[Pause] I think from where I stand today, I'm going to tell a story of healing. In the past, as an artist, I was working so hard to tell the world who I was, and to justify my right to be in it. And then I was given those opportunities and was able to establish and find my own voice. And now I think that it's time to turn it around, look outside of myself, and see how I can help and collaborate with other artists and creatives to help them tell their stories. I’ve been thinking about getting into coaching — working with other artists and helping them find and develop their voice the way that I did.
What advice would you give to someone who is newly out as bi or queer, and/or what advice do you wish you could have given yourself before you came out?
I think what I would tell someone who is just coming out as bi or as queer is to trust yourself. That whatever the voice is inside of you, whatever they're saying — it might not even have a language yet. It might not even have terminology or words vocabulary that feel 100% like home yet. And that's okay. Just trust your gut about who you are, and connect with a community. The pandemic showed me how much I took community for granted prior once I couldn’t meet people face-to-face. But then [it also taught me] other ways to connect.
It's amazing how you can crowdsource inspiration and imagination and vision — especially with other queer people. Alok the poet, one of my favorite people, said something brilliant about queer people always being the vanguard of the culture. That we are creators — whether or not we identify as artists — that our very existence and our will to be, is in itself a beautiful work of art.
** This interview has been edited for clarity and length.