The Art of Sounding Like a Human Being: Hugh P Klitzke on Conversational Voiceover, Why Authenticity Can’t Be Faked, and What Ian McKellen Taught Him in Two Sentences

The Former Buchwald Studio Manager Turned Leading Conversational VO Coach on How a 1984 Political Ad Changed Everything, the Psychology of Interpretation, and Why the Kids Are All Right

If you want to understand what conversational voiceover really means — not the buzzword, not the casting note shorthand, but the actual craft behind making scripted words sound like they belong to a living, breathing human being — there’s probably no one better to ask than Hugh P Klitzke.

Over 18 years of coaching and directing, and nearly 15 years as voiceover studio manager at Buchwald, one of Manhattan’s premier talent agencies, Klitzke has directed more than 125,000 sessions. (Before you do the maths on that, he clarifies: they weren’t all an hour long. But it’s still a staggering number of times to sit on the other side of the glass and listen to how people use their voices.)

Today, Klitzke runs ConversationalVO.com, a coaching practice with a laser-sharp focus: helping working voice actors master the conversational read — the style that’s come to dominate modern advertising, yet remains one of the hardest things in voiceover to do well.

In a thought-provoking conversation on Voice Acting Unplugged with hosts Margaret Ashley and Anthony Rudd, Klitzke traced the history of conversational voiceover back to a 1984 Ronald Reagan campaign, explained why Ian McKellen said everything he ever wanted to say in two sentences, and made the case that authenticity isn’t a sound — it’s a practice. Here’s what he had to say.

From Radio Shack to Buchwald: An Accidental Career in Voice

Klitzke’s path into the voiceover industry is one of those stories that could only happen in New York.

He was a musician and composer, scoring films on the side while selling mobile phones at Radio Shack on commission to pay the bills. His father had just come out of hospital after a long stay and was learning to walk again. All of Klitzke’s freelance work had dried up. It was, by any measure, a low point.

Then came the barter that changed everything.

“I was scoring somebody’s film and he didn’t have a budget to pay me,” Klitzke recalled. “I said to the guy, people do me favours. We barter. I need a better day job than the one I have because my day job sucks.”

The filmmaker looked at him and said, “What about my old job?”

It turned out he was Klitzke’s predecessor at Buchwald — the talent agency in Manhattan. An interview was arranged. Klitzke walked in at nine on a Friday morning, knew nothing about the voiceover industry, had never been a voice actor himself, and by three that afternoon had been offered the job.

“I said, ‘That’s amazing. Thank you so much. What am I going to do now?’ Because I knew nothing about the work.”

What he discovered was that his existing skills — from music, from working with performers, from understanding emotional dynamics — were transferable in ways he hadn’t anticipated. Most of his predecessors lasted 12 to 18 months in the role. Klitzke stayed for nearly 15 years, during which time he saw 60, 70, sometimes as many as 89 voice actors in a single day.

Those 125,000-plus sessions weren’t just a number. They were an education — an immersion in what works, what doesn’t, and what separates a competent read from one that stops you in your tracks.

The Leap: Going Solo at Exactly the Right (and Wrong) Time

Eventually, an itch developed. Klitzke’s father — whose advice had shaped many of his decisions — suggested that he might find “a different kind of satisfaction working with people for a deeper, richer, longer period of time than the few minutes you have at a moment, seeing 60, 70 people in a day.”

He was right. Klitzke began thinking seriously about going solo, coaching and directing on his own terms. It was a mid-career pivot — the kind he later learned has its own pattern.

“After I left, I learned that there’s a small trend among people at the age I was then, where you have enough time to change if you apply yourself in a specific way,” he said. “You basically have a choice to either double down where you are, or follow that little voice that says, ‘What if I pivoted into something else?'”

He followed the voice. And then COVID hit.

“I’d just gone out on my own and COVID happened. That had me rethinking all of my life choices. I live in New York City — we were at the epicentre. It was a dark time.”

But on the other side of that darkness came connection. The voiceover community — “known for being generous of spirit and kind” — embraced him. People invited him into niches he hadn’t considered. Others told him they thought he had something to offer. The transition from the small but deep world of agency work into the broader landscape of coaching and directing became not just viable, but fulfilling.

“I’m very grateful to all of the folks that chose to accept me and encourage me, and still do so.”

The Origin of Conversational Voiceover: It Started in 1984

When did conversational voiceover first become a thing? Klitzke has traced it further back than most people expect — all the way to a political campaign.

Morning in America: The Riney Read

In 1984, during the re-election campaign for President Ronald Reagan, an advertising executive named Hal Riney wrote and voiced a campaign called “Morning in America.” The read was unlike anything the political advertising world had heard before.

“It was a very, very much what we would put words on now like emotional, subdued,” Klitzke explained. “Supporting the image. Commenting, but not too much. A very, very different approach, especially in the political space, because traditionally it was very big, very bombastic, very attention-getting.”

The impact was so significant that the industry gave it a name: the Riney Read. It became shorthand — a recognisable archetype that entered the professional consciousness and signalled a fundamentally different way of thinking about voice performance.

Riney followed it with another spot for Reagan — “Bear in the Woods” — a Cold War metaphor delivered with the same subtlety but a different emotional undercurrent. Where “Morning in America” was uplifting and concluded with a challenging question (“Now that we’ve come this far, why would we want to go back?”), “Bear in the Woods” left the listener hanging with a sense of underlying threat. Same performer, same approach — but the interpretation shifted the emotional landscape entirely.

Both are available on YouTube, and Klitzke recommends watching them as historical artefacts of a seismic shift in how voice was used in advertising.

MasterCard Priceless: The Next Evolution

The next major milestone, in Klitzke’s view, came in the early 2000s with the MasterCard “Priceless” campaign, voiced by actor Billy Crudup.

“They were taking that particular voice actor and really moving that identity through a whole series of different kinds of reads,” Klitzke said. “All kinds of interpretations, but still around that same identity of MasterCard Priceless.”

The campaign ran for years, became a cultural touchstone (and was widely satirised), and demonstrated that a conversational approach could sustain a major brand over an extended period. For voice actors watching from the margins, it opened a door.

Klitzke recalled the first podcast interview he ever attended, where he watched another voice actor record an episode beforehand. That actor said something that crystallised the shift: “I think guys like Crudup doing MasterCard opened up the space for me to come in and allowed me to use my skills as an actor first, applying those to voiceover.”

That distinction — actor first, voiceover second — is at the heart of everything Klitzke teaches.

Presentation vs. Interpretation: The Core Distinction

If Klitzke’s philosophy can be reduced to a single idea, it’s this: announcer reads are reads of presentation. Conversational reads are reads of interpretation.

The difference isn’t about volume, energy, or even warmth. It’s about the fundamental relationship between the performer and the script.

A presenter delivers information. An interpreter makes meaning from it.

“My focus came out of me asking a very simple question when people wanted to coach with me,” Klitzke said. “‘What are you looking for in a coach?’ And I was very surprised at the number of people who directly said, ‘I’ve never quite been able to land the conversational.'”

Many of these were established professionals — voice actors making excellent livings in audiobooks, promos, medical narration, e-learning — all genres where they were “delivering the whole audio.” The conversational commercial, by contrast, asked them to be “a portion of the product, which then was put into a greater whole.” It required a different set of muscles entirely.

The demand was clear. Klitzke built ConversationalVO.com around it.

Ian McKellen in Two Sentences: The Philosophy of the Work

In describing his approach, Klitzke kept returning to a video he found online — a 1979 workshop recording of Sir Ian McKellen, transferred from VHS, in which the actor dismantles a Shakespeare monologue from a textual standpoint.

But it was McKellen’s opening statement that stopped Klitzke cold:

“I hope, if anything, this workshop has scotched the idea that Shakespeare’s verse is music, and once you find the melody, everything will be all right. Rather, I believe that once you find the sense of the words, their sounds will look after themselves.”

“I stopped the video,” Klitzke said. “That’s it. That’s everything I want to say. He does it in two sentences.”

The principle applies directly to voiceover: don’t chase a sound. Don’t try to find the “melody” of a conversational read. Find the meaning of the words — understand what’s actually being said and why — and the sound will follow naturally.

McKellen went on to describe how he lets direction, staging, costuming, lighting, and conflict inform his performance. Klitzke’s immediate thought: “Ian, that’s awesome. Congratulations. We don’t have that in voiceover.”

Voice actors, especially in auditions, have almost none of those contextual cues. There’s no set, no costume, no scene partner, no lighting. The craft of conversational voiceover, then, becomes about creating those things in the theatre of the mind — making choices about who you’re talking to, why, and what the emotional landscape looks like — and trusting that those internal choices will shape the performance in ways the listener can feel, even if they can’t articulate why.

It’s Not a Sound. It’s a Practice.

One of the most important distinctions Klitzke makes is that conversational voiceover is not a fixed vocal style — it’s an evolving practice.

“Even going back to that 1984 read, that wouldn’t really fly now,” he acknowledged. “It’s not really about marrying a very specific sound to the work.”

This means that learning conversational delivery isn’t a one-time skill acquisition. It’s an ongoing discipline of interpretation that evolves as language, culture, and audience expectations change. What felt authentic in 1984 sounds dated today. What sounds fresh in 2025 will eventually feel predictable too.

The constant is the practice itself: looking at a script, understanding what’s going on beneath the words, and making interpretive choices that create genuine emotional connection.

Tone vs. Direction

Klitzke offered an interesting linguistic observation about how the UK and US industries describe what they want from voice actors.

“You guys in Britain hit it right on the head when you describe it as tone — the tone that’s requested — as opposed to in the States, where we call it direction,” he said. “I think that’s a misnomer.”

His reasoning is psychological. Asking for a specific “direction” implies a predetermined result, which contradicts the psychology of interpretation. An actor trained to interpret — to find meaning and let the performance emerge from that understanding — will struggle when told to simply produce a sound on command.

“Actors traditionally are not taught to present with a tone,” Klitzke said. “They’re taught to interpret.”

The term “tone” sits more comfortably alongside an interpretive approach because it describes the destination rather than dictating the route. It’s a subtle distinction, but one that reveals a deeper truth about how conversational voiceover works.

Conversation vs. Conversational: The Critical Difference

Anthony Rudd asked a deceptively simple question that cuts to the heart of the craft: what’s the difference between a conversation and a conversational read?

Klitzke’s answer was precise: “In a conversation, you have something to react to. In a conversational read, you have to sound like you’re reacting to something, even if there’s no other person in dialogue with you.”

This is one of the fundamental challenges of commercial voiceover. You’re reading scripted words, alone in a booth, with no scene partner, no context, and no one to respond to — yet you need to sound as though you’re in the middle of a real exchange with another human being.

The Power of Pre-Life

One tool that helps bridge this gap is what the industry variously calls “pre-life,” a “lead-in,” or what Klitzke sometimes refers to as a “cognitive frame” — those improvised moments before the scripted text begins.

“Pre-life, done well, can actually turn a script into your side of a conversation,” Klitzke explained.

The key is specificity. Klitzke pushes his students beyond generic instructions like “talk to a friend” toward something far more concrete.

“It’s not about talking to a friend. It’s about talking to Kim,” he said. “That specific friend.”

He illustrated the point with his own life. He has two best friends — one a man, one a woman. One is happily married (second time around). The other has never been married. They have completely different perspectives on life.

“Do you think I talk to them about the same things?” he asked.

The answer is obviously no — and that’s exactly the point. The more specific the mental image of who you’re talking to, the more authentic the emotional texture of the performance becomes. Generic friends produce generic reads. Specific people produce specific, authentic ones.

“You get the subtlety, the authenticity, from being as specific as you possibly can.”

The Kids Are All Right: Language Evolution and the Modern Read

When Margaret Ashley raised the topic of younger voices and TikTok-style delivery — noting that she’d recently seen a video about “how you need to talk to go down with the kids” and couldn’t understand a word — Klitzke pushed back gently against treating generational language shifts as a problem.

“We talk about being ‘down with the kids’ as if it’s a pejorative,” he said. “I don’t believe that. I believe that people want to be spoken to in a way that they’re understood.”

He cited marketing guru Seth Godin’s principle: “People like us do things like this.”

The implication for voiceover is profound. Different audiences want to be addressed by voices that reflect their world. A 60-year-old doesn’t want a 22-year-old explaining their retirement planning. And a 25-year-old browsing TikTok doesn’t want to be addressed in the cadence of a 1990s radio commercial.

“They want to be spoken to in a way that makes sense to them,” Klitzke said. “Hence that different read, hence that need to interpret.”

The Writing Hasn’t Changed — The Delivery Has

Klitzke made a fascinating observation about influencer-style commercial content on TikTok. If you transcribe those seemingly casual, off-the-cuff sales presentations word for word, the underlying script structure is remarkably similar to traditional 15- and 30-second advertising.

“The writing itself is almost exactly the same as it’s been since the 1980s,” he said. “Because those ideas have to be heard once and understood immediately with no take-backs. But it’s the way those ideas are expressed and talked about that is different.”

The structure endures because it works. What changes is the performance — the emotional packaging, the rhythms, the points of emphasis, the degree of formality. And that evolution will continue.

Language Evolves — Always Has, Always Will

Klitzke dove into the mechanics of how language changes, using contemporary slang as examples.

“Fit” — a contraction of “outfit” that simultaneously evokes “it fits you well” — carries a double meaning that creates emotional resonance the original word doesn’t. “Riz” — a contraction of “charisma” — feels entirely different in the mouth and carries a different emotional weight than its parent word.

“I think the kids are all right,” Klitzke said. “Language evolves and expression evolves organically. We’re not used to hearing it because there’s a point where we become programmed to say, ‘This is the way I’m used to being talked to.’ It takes a cognitive, emotional leap to understand it — not to mimic it, not to ape it, but to understand and then appreciate it.”

Even Shakespeare, he noted, was doing the same thing — inventing words, contracting language, playing with double meanings — four centuries ago.

AI and the Authenticity Backlash

Without being directly asked about AI, Klitzke wove the topic naturally into the conversation — and his observations were striking.

He’s been watching the comment sections of influencer videos and Reddit threads, and what he sees is a growing and vocal rejection of AI-generated content.

“When I read those comments, it’s amazing to me how many of them decry the use of AI,” he said. “‘Another AI voice — I tuned out immediately.’ Or they’re talking about AI writing on Reddit: ‘Oh great, another AI comment leading this thread. More AI bullshit. I’m out.'”

The novelty, he believes, is wearing thin — and fast.

“The business models aren’t supporting it,” he said.

This connects directly to the broader theme of authenticity that runs through all of Klitzke’s work. In a world where audiences are becoming increasingly sensitised to inauthenticity — whether from AI voices, scripted influencer content, or performances that feel hollow — the ability to sound genuinely, specifically, unmistakably human is not just a nice-to-have. It’s the competitive advantage.

“It’s worse when they feel they’ve been duped,” Anthony Rudd added. “Where it’s taken them five minutes to work out it’s not a human.”

Klitzke agreed. The resentment that comes from discovering you’ve been fooled is far more damaging to a brand than simply using a mediocre human voice would have been.

Margaret Ashley summed it up: “We’re looking for authenticity. That’s the big word in the profession at the moment. People want the authentic, real voice.”

“That’s another adjective I throw around in my coaching,” Klitzke responded. “The authentic conversational read.”

Um, Uh, and the Future of Imperfection

When Rudd asked whether commercial reads might one day include verbal fillers like “um” and “uh,” Klitzke’s answer was characteristically nuanced: it’s already happening, and there’s nothing wrong with it.

“I think it can present the idea that the speaker is taking that moment to gather their thoughts,” he said. “If they’re gathering their thoughts, they’re leaning towards clarity. That ‘um’ and that ‘uh,’ in small doses, can lead to a certain kind of genuine rapport towards the listener — to say, ‘I want to say this the right way. Let me think about it.'”

It’s a small example of a larger truth: conversational voiceover isn’t about perfection. It’s about creating the impression of real thought happening in real time. And real thought sometimes includes a pause, a breath, a moment of apparent searching for the right word.

The key, as always, is intentionality. A strategic “um” that reveals a character thinking is very different from a nervous “um” that reveals an unprepared performer. The difference is craft.

Who Klitzke Works With (and Who He Doesn’t)

Klitzke is refreshingly clear about the boundaries of his coaching practice. He is not the coach for absolute beginners.

“I’m not the guy to take you from zero to hero,” he said. “I don’t have a curriculum around working with someone who says, ‘I’ve never done voiceover before.’ I’ll send them to my good friends who focus on that.”

His sweet spot is working voice actors — people who are two or three years into their careers, or established professionals who have thrived in other genres but have struggled specifically with the conversational read.

“Some people have even said, ‘You’re the guy that talks to somebody two and three years into their career,'” he acknowledged. “And I do agree with that.”

His process starts with direct reading. Students receive scripts in advance, read for him, and he assesses their prosody — the rhythm, stress, and intonation patterns of their delivery. From there, the work goes deeper.

“I ask them, ‘How do you get to where you are with your work? What do you think about when you look at a script for the first time?'” Klitzke explained. “Then I begin to say, ‘If you consider a script in these other ways, what effect does that have on your performance?'”

It’s coaching that operates on the level of thought and perception, not just technique. Change how a voice actor thinks about a script, and the performance changes as a consequence — often in ways that feel more natural and sustainable than surface-level adjustments to tone or pace.

Shakespeare, Beer, and the Eternal Logic of Selling

In one of the conversation’s most delightful tangents, Klitzke drew a line from Shakespeare’s theatrical practices directly to modern voiceover.

He pointed out that the opening scenes of many Shakespeare plays — those long passages of recap and exposition — weren’t just dramatic choices. They were practical ones. The audience was settling down after buying beer, and Shakespeare knew he needed to give them a few minutes of recap before advancing the narrative.

“He knew the only way to keep his company alive was to sell seats and also to sell merch,” Klitzke said. “And that merch was often just beer, straight up.”

The connection to voiceover? Every era, every medium, every audience has its own version of the same challenge: get attention, establish trust, deliver a message, and make people feel something — all while navigating the commercial realities of the business.

“Everything old is new again,” Klitzke concluded. “We’re going back several centuries there.”

Summing Up the Conversational Read

When Margaret Ashley attempted a textbook definition — “a conversational read is you speaking to one specific person genuinely, authentically, and believably” — Klitzke agreed, then added a crucial layer.

“It’s where you’re looking at a script and interpreting what’s going on with it so fluently that people are unaware of the inauthenticity of the words,” he said. “The language is intensely inauthentic.”

This is the paradox at the centre of all commercial voiceover, and conversational voiceover in particular. The words are not yours. The thoughts are not spontaneous. The “conversation” is scripted, timed, and designed to sell something. The voice actor’s job is to make all of that disappear — to create such a convincing illusion of genuine human connection that the listener forgets they’re being spoken to by a stranger reading from a page.

It’s an extraordinary skill. And as Klitzke has spent 18 years demonstrating, it’s one that requires not just talent, but deep, ongoing, intentional practice.

Finding Hugh P Klitzke

Klitzke offers two free entry points for voice actors curious about his work:

Free consultations — 20-minute private sessions where you receive scripts in advance, read for Klitzke, and discuss your work and goals. Bookable directly through his website.

Conversational Open Studio — a free group session (launched in autumn 2024 and already consistently selling out at 100 seats) where participants watch a live, in-depth private coaching session in real time. It’s a chance to observe the depth and specificity of Klitzke’s approach before committing to individual coaching.

“I think it’s a great advantage to watch one person be coached very deeply,” Klitzke said, “as opposed to having a bit of input here, a bit of input there. It’s a very different kind of experience.”

Not everyone is brave enough to be coached live in front of an audience — Klitzke notes with amusement that some people with very big personalities have told him they’d “rather drink a bottle of Drano” — but for those willing to be vulnerable, it’s a powerful learning experience. And for those watching, it’s a masterclass in what interpretive coaching looks like when applied with precision and care.

Hugh P Klitzke is a voice director and conversational voiceover coach based in New York City. For free consultations, the Conversational Open Studio series, and information about coaching, visit conversationalvo.com. Sign up for his newsletter for updates on upcoming sessions and resources.

This blog post is based on an episode of Voice Acting Unplugged, hosted by Margaret Ashley and Anthony Rudd.

Join Margaret & Anthony next time on Voice Acting Unplugged.