Jason Tham, actor, choreographer, and voiceover artist, is making his podcast debut with the fourth season of the Hindi version of Marvel’s Wastelanders. The new series will launch on Audible on March 13. He will be giving voice to the character of Justin.
“There’s a production house called MnM Talkies, which does dubbing and all, and they approached me for this podcast. I have done normal dubbing for films, shows, and series, but nothing as compared to or on a bigger scale as this. It is my debut podcast with a very exciting project, and I’m fortunate that they selected me for this,” he said.
The series has a voiceover by Sharad Kelkar for the character of Wolverine, Mithila Palkar as Sofia, Neelam Kothari as Jean Grey, Aadil Khan as Captain America, and Vijay Vikram Singh as Professor X/Charles Xavier, to name a few. Jason’s character, Justin, is Sofia’s love interest.
Speaking about the preparation he did for his part, he said, “They gave me a reference as to what they’re looking at, and I came pretty close to it, I feel. In the first test that I gave, they really liked the quality of my voice and said that I had a knack for it because I was good at dubbing. I modulated my voice in such a way that it was something very similar to what they were looking for, and I also added my own spice, my own vibe, and my own touch, which they really liked, and I just had to send a tape to them. I think that pretty much did everything, and the very second or third day I got a call saying that you’re on board and we will be more than happy to have you on this project.”
“So I didn’t have to do a lot for this project because I do dubbing for my films, series, and ads. But this was very different because this is a podcast, it’s narrating a story and giving life to a character,” he added.
Praising Sharad, who is one of the most recognisable voices in Bollywood, Jason said, “We all work on different days of dubbing where we had a teacher, a voice teacher who would be giving us cues. I have not personally worked with Sharad Kelkar, although I know Sharad from our days of shooting for Agent Raghav on &TV back in 2016. So the moment I got to know that he was playing Wolverine, we had a small chat, and we both laughed that we were both part of a project, but we weren’t working together but actually working on the same project.“
Jason strongly believes that podcasts have a bright future in India. He said, “It really took the momentum during the pandemic when people didn’t have jobs or didn’t have work. I think this was one of the biggest sources of income for many people for podcasts, and I feel that momentum is still going on and many people are starting this.”
“You can get very personal during the sessions, and they have this new concept where they add videos where you can also see the people who are talking while doing their podcast session. I feel we are just scratching the surface, there’s a lot to do in the podcast, too. I believe it has opened doors for many dubbing artists and RJs, as well. It’s one of those mediums where people can look at a career opportunity,” he ended.
