Naomi Payton: A Voice Actor Longing for Stardom, Makes Her Dreams Come True [Part 1 of 2]

Naomi Payton

Born: July 1, 2003
Height: 158 centimeters
Notable skills and favorite pastime: Cheerleading (won 2nd place in a national competition), singing, and watching anime
Beginning in 2021, Payton voiced the role of Sumire Heanna, a member of the school idol called Liella! in the “LoveLive! Superstar!!” TV anime series. Payton made her debut as a solo singer with the release of her single “Mahou” on March 1, 2023. Her second single, “Nemesis,” released on November 3, 2023.

“I was serious about becoming a PreCure member”

Naomi Payton, aged 20, has been gaining popularity for her spirited voice, which cheers anyone up who listens to it, as well as her gracious looks. Born to an American father and a Japanese mother in Saitama Prefecture north of Tokyo, Payton is a cheerful girl who had a sound upbringing.

“As my father is from Oklahoma, I have visited the U.S. many times since I was a child,” she said. “My English is basic level which just enables me to carry out daily conversation, so it’s nothing to brag about. But my appearance has always raised hurdles for me (laughs). The reality is, I was born and raised in Saitama. So I speak an English-Japanese hybrid language with my father at home. Because I want to use English as much as I can to take advantage of my background, I ask my father to try to speak English with me whenever he can and use English in emails and messages.”

Payton first became interested in show business when she was a first grade student in elementary school. In fact, her childhood dream was to become a member of an idol group. Today, Payton actually plays the role of an idol singer as Sumire Heanna, a member of the school idol Liella!.

“I saw AKB48 on TV all the time. Not a single day passed without watching them,” she said. “The cute idol girls in cute dresses singing cute songs captivated me. They sparkled. I had always loved cute decorative things like frills and ribbons, so it was natural for me to begin wishing to become a pop-music idol.”

Even before she was attracted to real idols, she had always been preoccupied with another glittering world. That is, the world of anime.

“Before I came to know pop idols when I was in elementary school, I had long been enamored with the PreCure anime series [short for “Pretty Cure,” a young girls’ heroine series]. I was serious about becoming a PreCure member,” she said, chuckling. “My favorite of the series was ‘Smile PreCure!” and it aired on TV when I was in the third grade. And I was a huge fan of Cure Beauty, a girl character in her theme color of blue. She was an older girl, strong but sweet, who confronted the baddies with dignity. I still want to be Cure Beauty if I could!” (laughs).

Payton said that as she recorded every weekly episode of the anime and watched them again and again, she found a way to become a PreCure heroine herself. She explained how.

“I found that when I turned on the subtitles, I could read what the PreCure characters were saying in text,” she said. “So I turned the audio off and began saying the words out loud in sync with the characters’ moves on screen. I would do this ‘pretend PreCure!’ forever (laughs). It was not unlike what I do today in the studio as a voice actor.

“While doing this make-believe PreCure, I gradually came to understand that the voices of the characters were played by voice actors. So I began to dream of becoming a voice actor, which I equated with becoming a PreCure member. Looking back, I really think I was fortunate to be interested in that sort of thing.”

“A Wonderful world that allows me to try roles I want to do, regardless of what I look like”

Becoming a pop-music idol and a voice actor that would take her into the world of anime were just two of the many things Payton dreamed of doing. It was only after entering junior high school that she took an actual step leading to her future career. And it was her mother who encouraged her to pursue her dreams.

“When I was a child, I had too many things I wanted to do and I wasn’t sure what I really wanted to do,” Payton said. “So I wondered if I belonged to a talent agency, then I may be able to make up my mind on my career. That was when I was in elementary school. So I asked my mother what she thought I should do, and her advice was I should try to take as many talent agency auditions as possible after I become a junior high student, as we lived not far away from Tokyo. She has always been supportive of what I wanted to do, and she was as excited as I was!” (laughs).

Payton’s mother, in fact, has since become well known among her fans.

“I have a talk show live-streamed regularly on (video streaming service) Niconico Channel Plus, called ‘Naomi Payton’s Create Club,’ and the episode at the end of June (2023) was the last to be streamed in my teens,” Payton said. “So we decided to invite my mother to appear on the show over the phone to mark my 20th birthday.

“I wasn’t sure if she would accept the invite because she may have felt shy to talk on the show. So I was feeling quite timid when I asked her, ‘Hey mom, do you want to appear on my live show on Niconico over the phone?’ But she was really quick to say, ‘Absolutely!’ (laughs) My mother is from Kyoto (in the Kansai region of Japan), and is a communication monster perhaps because her Kansai mentality is at work. She was totally in the groove while she was on air. My mother is so cheerful and she always helps me” (laughs).

After becoming a junior high student, and wishing to fulfill her dream, she began looking for auditions suitable for her on audition information magazines and websites. It was the summer of her first year in junior high that she discovered her life changing audition.

“It was an audition for a singer by Sony Music Artists (SMA), my present management company,” she said. “At that point, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do, but I did want to do singing as I had a longing to become a pop-music idol, so I said, ‘why not!’ and applied for the audition, and I was fortunate to pass it. From there, I entered a training period that lasted about five years. I officially became an SMA artist when I received an offer for a major voice actor role in my third year of high school.”

For two years starting in 2017, while she was still in her training period, Payton, after passing her audition to be a singer, was a member of the “Idol-ING!!!” group formed under a project by the staff for Fuji Television Network’s “Idoling!!!” show. The show trains girls to be pop idols.

“I joined Idol-ING!!! when I was perhaps in the second year of junior high school,” Payton said. “We were a four-girl idol group. I hadn’t made it clear yet to my company that I wanted to do voice acting. So, I took many auditions as a budding singer and entertainer when I passed the audition for the group. At that time, I took auditions for TV commercials, auditions for singers and fashion models, but things didn’t go the way I hoped. I failed in an audition for a model because I wasn’t tall enough, for example.”

A turning point came in the year after her activity as an Idol-ING!!! member came to an end, when she was in the third grade of junior high school. She finally passed an audition to be a voice actor, the other major dream she had. She thus made a debut as a voice actor with the role of Kyoko Takahashi in the “BATON=RELAY” game, which was created by a group of developers under the title of “The Next-generation Voice Actor Heroine Project.” The project centered on this game app.

“The BATON=RELAY audition was my very first audition for a voice actor and I passed it, so I was ecstatic,” Payton said. “I had also applied for normal actor auditions in those days, and when I applied for roles of Japanese characters, I was turned down after only submitting documents. And this happened several times. When I auditioned for foreign national roles, however, I did pass a document screening but was still turned down because in interviews I couldn’t speak English on the native speaker level. This situation remained for some time, which made me realize I was facing a tough reality.”

“But the voice-actor audition was different,” she continued, “because I was allowed to try the roles I liked or wanted to do, regardless of my appearance. I thought to myself, ‘What a wonderful industry this is!’ And that’s when I began to have a stronger longing to become a voice actor and started to seriously take a lot of auditions for voice acting roles.”

“I’m growing as a voice actor”

Taking lessons in voice acting, in addition to physical acting, helped her focus more on her career path as a voice actor.

“Acting lessons are strict so I’m often faced with difficulties, but I’m faced with higher hurdles far more often in voice-acting lessons,” Payton said. ”Actually, just yesterday, I was faced with a very high hurdle during a voice-acting lesson, which left me in tears. But in fact it’s beneficial for me that way. That’s because I know I’d get worried if I’m praised too often — worried that I may feel excessively confident.”

The attitude of seriously confronting difficulties and working diligently to overcome them is a hallmark of Payton’s character. But what was the hurdle so high it left her in tears during a lesson?

“This has always been true for me, but the biggest difficulty is in finding a way to break through my limits,” she said. “I may sometimes think I understand my limits, but I actually don’t. Whether I'm acting crying, getting angry, or laughing, I feel like I unconsciously set a limit on what I can do at the moment.

“But my teacher tells me, ‘Come on, you can express it better!’ And when I feel like I’m reaching my limit, the teacher says, ‘Again, that was not good!’ But the fact I’m told these things means, I think, there’s something that makes the teacher think that I can do better. I’ve been extremely frustrated with myself for not being able to overcome this hurdle.”

Voice actors, who have only their voices to play their characters – characters who live through intense drama – are especially required to possess the ability to express rich emotions. Furthermore, in order to handle the wide range of acting they are required to do, voice actors not only have to be required to perform a greater range of acting than in physical acting, they also need to be equipped with techniques unique to voice-only acting.

“I'm the type of actor who actually sheds tears when acting out crying, and one of the things I learned in my voice lessons was that it's not at all a bad thing to cry in tears [when acting],” Payton said. “But it doesn’t work in voice acting unless the tears are expressed in sound. Just yesterday, I recorded my crying acting and I played it back to listen to it. And I realized my lines didn’t convey what they were intended to. No one would understand them unless subtitles were provided. So I’m working hard to give a breathing sound like when I’m actually crying, even if I’m not. I also have to do a similar thing when I’m acting out anger or laughter, not just crying.”

In addition to lessons, Payton has other opportunities where she learns what voice acting is all about. She said recording sessions in a studio are also an important opportunity for learning as they allow her to work with other voice actors.

“I’ve been told I should seek advice from older, more experienced actors whenever I faced difficulty in acting, but they have worked for years or even decades to acquire their skills,” she said. “I don't think it would be right for me, someone less experienced and younger than them, to casually ask for advice as they have made so much effort. That's why I try to learn as much as possible by watching them in the studio.

“I'm very curious how the other people are acting, whether they're younger or more experienced than me. So during recordings, I find myself staring intently at them, maybe from behind the microphone or from the side of the line. Like a leopard stalking its prey! (laughs). I want to maintain concentration even during breaks, so I don't bring my smartphone or other unnecessary belongings into the studio.”

Moments when I felt growth

When did she specifically feel growth?

“I have been in charge of Sumire Heanna in ‘LoveLive! Superstar!!’. In the TV anime, Sumire-chan has grown from a first-year high school student to a third-year student, and I am gradually changing as well.

Sumire-chan is a girl who can say, ‘Look at me!’, but I myself am the type of person who can't say or do anything about it because it's just a wish in my heart that someone will find me. So in the beginning, I wondered how I could become Sumire-chan. And I wanted to stand out in front of everyone!

Just as Sumire-chan has grown up and become more mature and more capable of seeing not only herself but also those around her, I have grown up with her. I am very happy about that.”

(To be continued to Part 2)

Text by Mika Abe
Photos by Osamu Hoshikawa
Translated by Atsushi Kodera