by story by Mike Travis
Sports of all sorts
Not every sport is x’s and o’s, specialized shoes, and hours of tape review before or after rigorous practices. Sometimes “sport” can just be something we do for enjoyment with others in the spirit of fun and competition, for instance, a fictional game in a kid’s television series made real with toys based on that TV show.
And it is in that spirit that I caught up with my friend and fellow voice actor, Beau Bridgland, to play some Beyblade and talk about his journey from England to the role of Bashara Suiro on the Disney XD series Beyblade Burst QuadDrive.
I know most of Beau’s story, but it’s always fun to revisit it since it is very inspirational for actors (and athletes) of all ages to know that the pursuit of one’s dreams is possible. After growing up in England and getting a degree in mathematics, Beau knew that he wanted to be a voice actor, the pull was just too strong, and so rather than pursuing a career in numbers or statistics or something arguably “safer”, Beau went to a voice over convention in Anaheim, California – the first time he had ever been to America or even been on a plane – where he met Rob Paulsen and Maurice LaMarche (Pinky and the Brain, respectively, from Animaniacs), as well as Wally Wingert (the Riddler from the Batman Arkham video games) and Bill Farmer (Disney’s Goofy) to name a few.
The trip was his first big step to go from being a fan to being a voice actor. So Beau made more trips to Los Angeles, and during those visits, he worked to expand his network and further his education in the industry – enhancing his skill set with highly regarded coaches in the industry.
After those trips he began pursuing the career back home in England and though finding success, he knew that to have the career he was looking for, it meant moving to America and doing voice-over there. In June of 2018, Beau was able to make this dream come true, settling in Burbank, California, where he was able to fully pursue his goals in his voice acting career!
Within 3 months, Beau was being booked in commercial voice acting gigs – and within his first year, he booked a role as the English voice of Tatsu in an episode of the popular animated series Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir.
From there, Beau continued to expand his resume with the English voice roles of Heath and Sylphid in “Trials of Mana” (an HD remake of a Super Nintendo game) before he was cast as the English voice of Anglade in the animé movie Children of the Sea. After this, however, the Coronavirus pandemic slowed or completely stalled most production across the country in all areas of acting, not just voice acting.
As the pandemic extended into weeks, and then months, studios began scrambling to get projects completed in new and innovative ways, sound engineers were helping voice actors to set their home equipment to the standards of the studios in which they would normally be recording, and eventually, voice actors were back to work (like so many other industries) from home!
It was during that time that Beau managed to book the part of Chongyun in “Genshin Impact”, a console and PC video game that, as a spectacularly average gamer myself (and someone who has put a little time into the game), feels to me somewhat like “Skyrim” in animé form.
The game has become a runaway success with “Genshin Impact” having more than fifty million downloads on Google Play and earned over $2 billion in its first year according to some reports. With those kinds of numbers, it’s an understatement to say the game is immensely popular – and Beau has grown a bit of a fanbase, gaining tens of thousands of Twitter followers (currently over thirty thousand) to the point that he’s even signing autographs for fans!
But the journey doesn’t end with adoring fans and autograph signings. As a fan of animé himself, Beau was finding his stride going from video games, to film, to bigger games, and finally found himself in the role of Bashara Suiro on Beyblade Burst QuadDrive which airs on Disney XD – solidifying that main cast member role for which all voice actors hope.
“It is such a dream role, I love the character and a number of my friends have been in the show, so to follow after them was fantastic. It’s a real joy. Though recording a show that can get as intense as Beyblade does was a terrifying prospect to record at home.
One moment you’re whispering quietly to your sister in a spooky house, and the next you’re yelling passionately in the heat of a big Beyblade battle – and the technicalities of actually recording that and getting all of your settings correct on your home setup’s equipment so that it all sounds good was a bit scary at first. But even with that initial worry, Beyblade is so much fun to record and I absolutely love it.” Beau says.
For those unfamiliar with the show – Beyblade, as an animé, has been going, on and off, for over 20 years; and the most recent Beyblade Burst series has been going for over six years! The first episode of the QuadDrive series, in which Bashara sneaks into the eerie Phantom’s gate, a rumored “graveyard for Beys”, is also available on YouTube, where it has nearly 350,000 views.
Speaking of Beys, beyond the actor’s booth and the studio, there is the merchandising and toys that accompany Beyblade! These spinning tops – known as “Beys” – and the rip cords that power them, based on the old, hand-crafted wooden tops and the strings used to spin and battle them against one another in more ancient contests of sport and skill, have become so popular in animé/gaming culture that QTCinderella, a content creator and streamer on Twitch, recently hosted a Beyblade tournament on the Twitch streaming service that brought popular Twitch streamers like Will Neff, Pokimane, Hasanabi, and Spaceboy (among nearly a dozen others) to a boxing ring in Los Angeles to battle it out for top honors in a bracket challenge – winner take all!
Two contestants enter the ring, kneel down before the Beyblade stadium – a small, sloped, plastic basin with notched sides or divots where Beys can spin off into – and wind up their Beys, then turn them loose! The winner is the person whose Bey defeats the other by destroying it (when they clash in the arena, it is possible to dislodge the component pieces of the opposing Bey and “burst” it), knocking the opponent’s Bey out of the arena or into one of the corner holes, or be the last Bey spinning.
And it doesn’t stop there! Official Beyblade competitions are being held throughout this year in America, Canada, France and Spain, with tournaments featuring at the recent Animé Expo in Los Angeles, which also had a special screening of the earlier mentioned first episode of the QuadDrive series.
During our time together on the afternoon of this interview, Beau and I tried our hand at battling some Beys as well! I brought some Beys I had purchased and assembled ahead of time to share with Beau, and wouldn’t you know it, Beau not only wore the T-shirt of his character, Bashara Suiro, but he brought HIS OWN Bey to challenge me! I was wildly impressed and excited that Beau actually had the Bey that his character uses on the show! This was more than I had expected or hoped as an interviewer!
Without a stadium though, we basically figured out how to assemble our Beys and how to get them to spin, with no actual “battling” taking place. Instead, we had a good time trying to figure out what many would consider a child’s game that we could still enjoy as adults despite being slightly confounded by how to hold it all together – but in the spirit of sport, we still had a good laugh and a good time reconnecting over this game.
Despite our lack of luck at having a true Beyblade battle, and on my drive back to my side of the city, I reflected on my opportunity to battle Bashara Suiro at all, and on my friend Beau’s journey to this latest role that encompasses sport and passion and animé and a dream.
All of this for a young man who altered his course and changed his destiny by following a dream. And from here, Beau hopes to land character roles with the likes of Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network. It’s plenty early in his career, and as someone who is in the industry himself now, I have no doubt that Beau Bridgland will become a household name in the years to come. If you don’t know him… your kids will… or maybe already do!
