Posted in: Disney+, Marvel, TV | Tagged: Kate Herron, loki, Marvel Studios, miss minutes, tara strong, tom hiddleston

Loki: Tara Strong on Voicing Miss Minutes, Jurassic Park Inspiration

Voice actress Tara Strong provided one of the most standout performances over her long career as the voice of Miss Minutes, the mascot of the Time Variance Authority on the Disney+ series Loki. The character is used primarily for exposition purposes to bring Loki (Tom Hiddleston) up to speed about what the TVA is and his current predicament. The actress spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about the role, working with showrunner Kate Herron, and her prolific career that spans nearly 600 projects.

"I had to audition!" Strong revealed. "It's actually quite surprising for many people to learn that most voice actors — even ones who've been in the business for 30 or 40 years — often audition for parts they've already had. You have to constantly keep proving yourself in auditioning for new studio people and new showrunners even though they may have hours and hours of tape on you for a character you've already done. But this character, since it was new, needed an entire audition process because I think they were in search of what felt best for this character. So I'm happy to audition, and thankfully, it worked out. (Laughs.)"

Tara Strong on Bringing TVA Mascot Miss Minutes to Life on Loki

The actress recalled what little she had to work with before formulating the voice for Miss Minutes. "Normally, for an audition, they'll give you a drawing of the character, a character description, sides, and some backstory into their world, but we really got very little information," Strong recalled. "I called my agent after I received the packet, and I was like, 'Um, can you tell me anything else about this character? Is she sentient? Is she A.I.?' And my agent was like, 'I don't really know.' So nobody knew what it was because it was so top secret. In fact, I didn't know what it was until I booked it, which, of course, was very exciting. So based on the information that I had, I laid down three different versions in my home studio. I always do the preliminary audition in my home studio. Sometimes, it'll take me 5 minutes, and sometimes, it'll take me 3 hours to get it exactly right, knowing that there are hundreds or thousands of people vying for one role. So I'll think about what's going to separate me from the other people and how I'm going to give them something special that they'll glom onto. For this one, there were three different versions: one of them included an accent, one was a little bit more A.I and one had a little more emotion attached to it. Obviously, once I saw what it was, it made sense that they were keeping it on the DL."

It didn't even occur to Strong initially that Miss Minutes was based on Mr. DNA from Jurassic Park. "It is a fun comparison because they both have this juxtaposition of very high-end, modern technology with very basic, classic '60 and '70s animation," she said. "So it's this beautiful mix of things that just somehow seem to go together to create this visually stunning and exciting world, as well as the voiceover behind it. It just all seems to go together to create this enigma. Who is she? Where is she from? What's her origin story? Why does she look like she's from the '70s but she knows everything from the future. It's really cool." For more on Strong talking about the fanfare behind Miss Minutes, bridging the voiceover and live-action worlds, and competing against and working with A-list celebrities for voiceover work, you can check out on THR. New episodes of Loki streams Wednesdays on Disney+.

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