About the "scary" business with the voice

When it's so nice and wintry outside, it's best to cozy up on the sofa with a good book. It's even more comfortable to let someone else read and sit back and listen with a cup of tea or a glass of red wine in your hand. This is particularly atmospheric when their voices come into play: Simon Jäger and David Nathan. However, they are not only among the most sought-after audiobook narrators in the country. They are also frequently heard as dubbing actors for stars such as Matt Damon and Josh Hartnett (Jäger) as well as Johnny Depp and Christian Bale (Nathan).

Jäger (l.) and Nathan at an event in Berlin.

There are currently several new titles on Amazon's streaming service Audible that have been read by the two of them, including Sebastian Fitzek's "Die Therapie" and "Die Einladung", in which Jäger is used. Nathan, on the other hand, has recently breathed acoustic life into Stephen King's work "Holly". The two of them spoke to ntv.de at an "Audible Crime Dinner" in Berlin about the joys of their job, but also about how they deal with less good books.

ntv.de: Your voices are not only familiar thanks to your work as dubbing actors, but also from numerous audio books and radio plays, which are mostly in the thriller genre. Is this also your personal preference - if you still read at all in your private life?

David Nathan: It's not a preference for me. It's completely different in my private life. I love T.C. Boyle, that's the kind of literature I prefer. A book is good if it captivates me, but I don't need the horror, the blood and breaking bones. I believe that the good authors, a few of whom I have already read, don't use that as the top layer of their story. Shock and horror are things they play with, but it's always about the people. If I realize that, then I can read it aloud with ease, immerse myself in the characters and breathe life into them. But of course our world is built to be pigeonholed. I've read countless Stephen King novels, so I must be a thriller reader.

Does an agency take care of getting other books in front of you? Or do you have to take what comes along?

Nathan: You have to deal with what comes along and make sure you say "yes" in the right places and "no" in the right places - which I haven't always managed to do. I have to accept what the publishers offer me. Thank goodness they offer things other than crime novels and thrillers. But even if that weren't the case, I could still be happy, because what actor can say that they earn a living every day? I'm one of them, in this segment, and I'm happy when people ask me to read something for them. I come from a family of actors and I was always told: "If someone offers you work, you do it."

Simon Jäger: It's a good source of income and has been with me for so long that I look forward to a new job every time. Whether I like the book now in my private life doesn't matter. It's my profession. I don't come from an acting family, it was all much more pragmatic for me. To this day, my mother doesn't really understand what I actually do. (laughs) A product establishes itself with certain publishers, and then it's children's books there, crime novels and thrillers there, literature elsewhere, fiction, fantasy ...

So it does happen that you have to struggle through a piece of material and are less motivated to go to work than with another book that you like more?

Jäger: Sure. Each of us has books where we ask ourselves: "Why?" But we both have an author bond because of our voices. And of course not all books by one author are good, so you have to go through that. But after the second or third bad book, I do say that I don't want it anymore.

Without fear that there will be fewer jobs as a result? Actors that you dub might not get any more engagements or authors might deliver less output ...

Jäger: I've always been a free spirit. If it's not enough, it's not enough, then I'll just have to wait tables in the pub again. I'm not so attached to it that I now define my life around it and suffer when I can no longer do the job. It's an incredibly enjoyable job that I really enjoy, but if I don't have anything more to do because I've stepped on someone's toes, then maybe I'm not good enough.

The market has also expanded considerably thanks to streaming - in terms of films and series as well as audiobooks and audio plays. Audible is already 20 years old ...

Nathan: Indeed, that's amazing. And we were there right from the start. And Detlef Bierstedt, a colleague who is now 80 years old. We were the first to read something for Audible. They gave each of us 20 novels back then and said: "Go for it!"

Jäger: We read everything we could get our hands on. (laughs)

Nathan: Because we also liked the fact that someone was there who had content and said: "Read as much as you want and whatever you want." That was a wonderful time.

Jäger: I'm really serious, it's a lot of fun. It's also often exhausting, but who can sit down in their job and immerse themselves in worlds and deal with it? And we still have a counterpart, there are at least sound engineers and directors.

How else has the business developed for you from CD to streaming? Has anything changed for the better or for the worse?

Nathan: Nothing has changed for us. We read the books we would read anyway.

Jäger: I would say something has changed. The market has expanded, so of course we have the advantage and the good fortune of being able to choose what we do. We can also say "no", there are five other titles and maybe one of them is better. The fear of selecting work is no longer so great. If only 500 titles are made a year anyway and there are 300 speakers, then the uncertainty is naturally greater than when 50,000 titles are made.

Jäger: But the high standard remains the same.

You also work as dialog writers and/or dialog directors. How difficult is it for you not to correct a book if you don't like something?

Jäger: I've gotten out of the habit.

Nathan: I rephrase. I've learned that a text is just a suggestion. When I play or read a character, I also have a responsibility.

Jäger: It's funny, I've gotten out of the habit of doing that because I think it's the editor's job. My job is to perform.

Nathan: With Haruki Murakami, for example, there's nothing to change, it's translated so well, every word is right.

Does it help to have an affinity for acting or even training for the job of an audiobook or radio play narrator?

Nathan: We are all actors. Some only act in theater, some only act in front of the camera, some read audiobooks, some read radio plays, others do things live. It doesn't matter, they're all actors. Only a few do everything, and you don't have to be able to do everything. But if you can't act and bring a character to life, then you can't do it in front of the camera, on stage or on the microphone. But there's a difference between sitting at the microphone and having cameras everywhere. It's a different concentration. But you can only interest people if you draw on yourself.

Jäger: It's the same process.

Nathan: I was at a reading last week with Jo Nesbø, who has now written his first horror novel. He was chatting, I read two chapters, he listened with interest. Then he said that he liked it so much because: "You can hear the fear in your voice." It's not about reading it out loud in a scary way, it's about feeling it because I'm scary myself.

You used to perform together on stage with the "Prima Vista" readings, where you interpreted texts of all kinds brought in by the audience. Does this event still exist?

Jäger: We had one last summer and are in the process of reviving it for the new year.