With more than seven million followers across TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, Shelby Young has probably already landed on your feed. Maybe you’ve heard her pitch-perfect Siri impression or watched one of her viral Disney voice-morphing videos. Beyond the scrolling, she’s brought her voice to some of the biggest franchises out there, from Star Wars to Fortnite and beyond.
We sat down to talk about the incredible career that began at age three, how she accidentally became the internet’s Siri, and the many ways she’s turned play into a profession.
You have so much fun with your videos. Is that always the guiding principle?
Thank you! Yeah, that’s my number 1 rule for myself – as long as I’m having fun, I’ll keep posting. If it ever stops being fun, I’m done.
You’ve been performing since you were a little kid. What are your earliest memories of performing, and when did it click that this was your career?
When I was three, my grandma saw a pageant notice in Boca Raton, Florida. My mom thought it would be a fun weekend, we borrowed a dress, and I won! We quickly realised pageants weren’t for us, but one of the last had judges who were agents. They signed me for commercials and modelling, and by four or five I was working professionally.
As I got older, I told my mom I wanted to do more than smile at the camera, so we moved toward film, TV, and musical theatre and our agents suggested New York. I started booking indie films and TV, and soon they pushed us to Los Angeles. We moved when I was 12. My mom loved California as much as I did. I kept working on screen and eventually booked Dead Rising 3, my first video game. Wearing the mocap [motion capture] suit was a revelation – that’s when I discovered my love for voiceover.
Who made those moves with you – New York, then LA?
It was my mom. She was very supportive, and my grandparents in Florida helped whenever we needed a base. I switched to homeschooling after booking the LazyTown pilot, which filmed in Iceland for a month. Most of my friends were other actor kids, so I never felt isolated.
How did moving between Florida, New York, and Los Angeles shape you as a performer?
Moving to New York, I barely remember the transition. Making friends was easy – you’d walk up and say, “You’re wearing a blue shirt, I like blue, we’re friends.”
When we moved to LA, some of my New York friends moved too, so I already had a circle. It was still a big adjustment, but I loved it right away. My mom did too.
You had a lot of success early on with live action TV – American Horror Story, Days of Our Lives. At what point did voice acting start to feel like your lane rather than just a side part of the work?
I did my first game in 2012, but it took a few years to sign with a voice agency. Things really took off during the pandemic. In 2019 I wrote in my journal that I wished for one VO job a month. By 2020 I was doing two a week, and now I have recording sessions almost daily. Some are demanding – screaming, crying, creature sounds – but I love it.
So, you said Dead Rising 3 was the moment you realised you loved voice-over and mocap. What about that experience really grabbed you?
Mocap combines everything I love – the long takes of theatre, the cameras of film, and the vocal focus of VO. On Horizon Call of the Mountain, they built a plywood boat for a river scene, with crew members rocking it on poles while I delivered lines. Low-tech in a high-tech setting, which really invokes your sense of play as an actor.
With Dead Rising 3, I did mocap for the cutscenes, then recorded thousands of lines in the booth. It was my first narrative VO role, playing a troubled teen who runs away, fights zombies, and falls in love. Experiencing a full arc through voice alone was electrifying. That’s when I knew this was what I wanted to do.
You mentioned mocap has the long takes of theatre. What does that mean? Why are they so long – is it about getting the scene in one go?
You can do multiple takes, but a lot of the cutscenes I’ve worked on are designed to run all the way through, from beginning to end, like a single shot in film. On God of War: Ragnarök, the Norns scene was meant to feel almost like a dance – very fluid – so the team wanted it captured as a “oner.” If someone flubbed, we’d stop and start again, but the goal was always to get a full clean take.
Voice acting demands just as much emotional truth as on-camera work. When it’s just you and the microphone, how did you adapt your process to bring that across – and how does it differ when you’re on a mocap stage?
Mocap felt closer to on-camera, so that wasn’t a huge adjustment. But voice-over in the booth was different. I went back into acting classes, because you need to learn how to emote into a microphone when there’s nothing there.
As an on-camera actor you still use imagination – auditions might be opposite your partner or a casting director – but in VO you’re often completely alone. I trained with Charlie Adler, who’s phenomenal, and with Donna Grillo, plus workshops at Voice Actors Network. They helped me understand how to act behind a mic.
A lot of people freeze at first because the microphone feels intimidating, but I’m fully physical in the booth. I can’t clap or stomp because of noise, but I move, gesture, and let the emotion flow. If I’m crying in a scene, I’m crying in the booth – even though no one sees the tears, you hear them in the voice.
You’ve described voice acting as freeing because you can play anything from babies to aliens. Do you gravitate toward certain types of characters, or is it the variety you love most?
I love the variety. A lot of the roles I’ve booked are strong, fighter-type characters, probably because I have a slightly deeper register and can drop even lower. I enjoy that, but I also love playing tiny, shy characters, kids, aliens, or creatures. That range is unique to voice-over – it’s not something you get on camera.
Sometimes a silly impression on TikTok turns into a new voice. I might be messing around with Vanellope and then an audition comes in for a character with a similar vibe. I won’t copy it exactly, but if I make the voice a little deeper or add a quirk, suddenly I’ve created something new. Bad impressions can spark original voices.
On TikTok you do a series where you take one Disney character’s voice, adjust it slightly, and show how it morphs into another. One of those early videos went viral – where did that idea come from?
A friend posted a video showing how to transition between celebrity voices. I thought it would be fun to try with cartoons. I’m a huge Disney nerd outside of VO so I started with Disney characters.
The idea was to take five or six voices, keep them around a minute, and explain how each one shifts into the next. People really connected with it. They’d say, “Oh, I never realised you close off your nose for that voice,” or they’d try it themselves. It became part performance, part lesson, and that mix really resonated.
Your first animation role was Princess Leia in Star Wars: Forces of Destiny. That’s quite a debut.
Yes, I couldn’t believe I booked it. I freaked out, cried, called my mom, screamed on the phone. To play Leia at any point in your career would be insane, but to start there felt surreal.
It was such a fun experience. I met one of my best friends on that job – A.J. LoCascio, who voiced Han Solo. We recorded together in 2016, and the show aired in 2017.
We were directed by Dave Filoni, who’s now one of the head creative geniuses behind a lot of the live-action Star Wars projects on top of animation. To have him direct me on my first animated series was incredible. I’d done games and commercials before, but this was my first animated show, and it was a dream start.
When you booked Leia, was part of your prep trying to sound like a younger Carrie Fisher?
Absolutely. I did my homework. There are lines I still use to drop into her voice, like “Why you stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf herder,” or “Governor Tarkin, I should have expected to find you holding Vader’s leash.” They help me feel where that sound lives.
And you’ve voiced Leia across multiple Star Wars projects – Forces of Destiny, the LEGO specials, even games. How do you keep it fresh?
Forces of Destiny was more canon-based storytelling, while LEGO Star Wars leans into more silly humour. For The Skywalker Saga video game, we recreated the films in LEGO, so for those cutscenes I’d hear Carrie’s original line in my headset and then match it as closely as possible. For new gameplay dialogue, I created my own, but anything from the films had to be one-to-one.
I’ve now voiced her in specials like LEGO Star Wars Summer Vacation, Terrifying Tales, Vader’s Vacation, and most recently Rebuild the Galaxy, with another on the way. That one was especially fun because it shakes up the entire universe – Vader’s good and dressed in white, Luke’s a hippie who loves sand, and Leia ends up with Greedo. There’s a brilliant gag where Han sees it happen and shrugs, “What can I say? Greedo shot his shot first.”
You’ve also voiced new Star Wars characters like Captain Bragg in The Bad Batch and Toda-Joh in Young Jedi Adventures. How does creating a new character differ from stepping into someone else’s shoes?
It’s very different because with an existing character – like Leia, or any voice match – there’s already lore and rules around who they are. With a new character, you’re creating that with the team.
For Captain Bragg we decided on an English accent, while with Toda-Joh they wanted an Anzellan. I thought of Babu Frik, but because he’s a villain I added more gravel. It’s collaborative – you play, experiment, and the directors guide you.
Wolfenstein: Youngblood was a big one for you. You weren’t just voicing Soph Blazkowicz, you were doing full performance capture. Was it a physical role?
Definitely. Wolfenstein started as that classic blocky PC game, but the franchise grew into something huge. By Youngblood, BJ Blazkowicz’s story jumps forward – his twin daughters are teenagers, and when he goes missing it’s up to them to find him and keep fighting Nazis. My twin, Jess, was played by Valerie Lohman, who became a close friend.
We filmed in Sweden at Goodbye Kansas, working with MachineGames. The story had us running around 1980s Paris in mech suits, so yes, it was physical. We had stunt doubles for the heavy fights, but all the other action and performance capture was ours.
The cast was small – me, Valerie, Jasmine Savoy as Abby, plus the returning actors for BJ, our mother, and the villains. I loved it – I’ve now worked on two games in Sweden, including Horizon Call of the Mountain. I’d happily keep travelling for projects like that.
Soph and Jess were the first female protagonists in the Wolfenstein series. Did that feel significant in terms of representation?
It was empowering. They were written as strong, fleshed-out characters – not “female characters,” just great characters who happened to be girls. The focus was more on their age, that these teenagers were suddenly stepping into this huge fight.
For Valerie and me, it felt amazing to carry that story – the daughters of BJ Blazkowicz taking down Nazis.
Have you ever had a character modelled to look like you – especially with someone like Soph that didn’t already exist?
We didn’t do facial scans on Wolfenstein: Youngblood, so Soph already had a design before I came in. But even then, you see yourself in the performance. The face may not look like you, but the movements do, and friends have told me they can see me in her cutscenes. The same with Skuld in God of War: Ragnarök – she doesn’t resemble me, but I recognise myself in her.
With Horizon Call of the Mountain, though, the character Hami literally looks like me. They scanned my face in a setup nicknamed “the Death Star” – a rig covered in cameras. I sat in it for hours making every expression imaginable so they could capture every muscle.
What’s been your most challenging vocal session – in terms of stamina, intensity, or technical demand?
Voicing zombies on The Walking Dead: World Beyond was the toughest technically. Finding that specific zombie sound without blowing out my voice was tricky. The show had its own system for what the walkers should sound like, so I had to match that exactly.
The placement was deep in the throat – if you went too far one way it sounded like a dog, too far the other and you lost the grit. One funny trick: usually voice actors avoid dairy before a session, but for this we ate a little chocolate to get extra phlegm. It actually helped create the right gross texture. And eating chocolate at work was a bonus!
You’ve also voice-matched actors like Gal Gadot, Evangeline Lilly, and Zendaya. What’s your process for nailing someone else’s voice?
It’s a lot of listening and repeating. The closer someone’s natural voice is to mine, the harder it is, because I start hearing myself. But if there’s an accent or a distinct trait – a nasal tone, a lisp, a way of hitting certain consonants – I can lock in on that.
An impression leans into exaggeration, while a voice match needs to be subtle and still act believably. For example, Evangeline Lilly has a slight Saskatchewan lilt, so some vowels lean almost Irish. Gal Gadot has a heavier accent – I listen to how she hits her t’s, like in the line, “I cannot stand by while innocent lives are lost.”
You’ve built millions of followers on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. Was there a particular post when you realised things were taking off?
Not really – every time something blows up, it’s a surprise. My very first TikTok did well, which was wild going from zero to a few hundred thousand views. Then everything went back to a few hundred views, and I was fine with that because it was just fun.
At first I posted comedy skits, similar to what I’d tried on Vine, but one night I thought, “Why not post impressions?” It felt silly, but people liked it. Then I posted a Siri video during a trend and it exploded – millions of views. Suddenly I had hundreds of thousands of followers, and that’s when I thought, okay, now I have an audience.
From there I leaned into VO content, like tutorials showing how one voice can morph into another. That went viral too, and suddenly news outlets were calling. I even did Good Morning America. Not long after, I hit a million followers.
I think the timing mattered. It was lockdown, the world felt bleak, and people were looking for something light. I’d get messages thanking me for bringing a little levity, and that’s when I realised how important entertainment is.
One of your tricks that always amazes people is putting your finger over the microphone to get that vintage sound. How did you discover that?
By accident. I was filming, the sound came out muffled, and I realised it was the way I was holding my phone. Then I thought, wait, this works perfectly for vintage impressions. It became a signature trick. People sometimes accuse me of editing my audio, but it’s literally just my finger.
The Siri and Alexa impressions became a big part of your online presence. Was that something you planned, or did it just blow up unexpectedly?
It happened by accident. I was working on the Netflix show Trinkets in a loop group session, and they needed a smart assistant voice. All the women in the room tried it, and I’d never done one before. I gave it a shot, sounded like Siri, and got the line. It was fun, so I started asking people on TikTok to suggest phrases for me to say as Siri.
For a while it was just silly content for my followers, until one video blew up and reached millions. Suddenly I was known online as “Internet Siri.”
One of the coolest moments was reaching out to Susan Bennett, the original Siri voice. She agreed to do a video with me, and I just geeked out!
Has your social media work ever led directly to VO or on-camera jobs?
Yes. A common misconception is that I became a voice actor because of social media, which isn’t true – I was already working in VO. But social media has definitely led to jobs.
One was recording the whispered intro to Jimin’s Like Crazy. His team saw my content and reached out specifically for me. I’ve also booked projects where casting directors saw a video and realised I could do something they wouldn’t have thought of – like an elderly woman’s voice. Posting content has unintentionally become a demo reel.
You’ve worked across on-camera, VO, mocap, and looping. What changes or trends in the industry excite you most right now?
I love that in VO there’s a push for more naturalistic performances. Shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, or Arcane still have heightened moments, but the acting feels human and grounded.
Voice acting is taken more seriously now. Mainstream audiences are embracing it thanks to projects like K-Pop: Demon Hunters or big Pixar films.
My kids are OBSESSED with K-Pop: Demon Hunters. They watched it at a friend’s house and have been blasting the soundtrack ever since. Should I watch it with them?
You HAVE TO watch it with them – it’s so good. I watched it on a bus and immediately made my boyfriend see it, and now he’s obsessed too. I think for a long time animation was dismissed as “for kids,” but people are realising it’s for everyone.
Since this interview I have watched it with my kids, and it really is fantastic.
Are there any voices or accents you’re currently working on mastering?
Right now, I’m focused on Scottish, Irish, and Australian. Each has so many variations – Scottish and Irish alone have multiple dialects, and with Australian you can hear the difference between someone from Brisbane or Perth.
What’s a sound or voice you can drop into instantly that always gets a reaction?
The Siri voice – saying ridiculous things in that tone always makes people laugh. My other go-to, which people either hate or find hilarious, is a very realistic baby cry. My boyfriend can’t stand it, so I don’t do it often, but it’s very effective.
And that’s the magic, isn’t it? A single sound from you can make people laugh, squirm, or believe in a character completely.
And that’s why we’ll always want to hear what voice you come up with next.
You can still catch Shelby as Princess Leia across a galaxy of Star Wars adventures, as Kor in Fortnite, as Batgirl in DC: Dark Legion and in so many other places where you might not even know it’s her! She also made her Pixar debut in Elio, still in theatres and coming soon to Disney+.
For more behind-the-mic fun, follow her on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, or head to her website at shelbyyoung.com.
Portrait photos by Corey C. Waters
Words by Nick Barr
