Yellowjackets and The Night Agent star finds challenge in voicing new audiobook title (2024)

Vancouver actor Sarah Desjardins has played a lot of different characters during her career.

But she has never played 10 of them at once. That is, until now.
The co-star of the series Yellowjackets, The Night Agent, Riverdale and the upcoming big-budget film Tron: Ares is the voice for the new Canadian Audible Original audiobook The Worst of You by Vancouver crime writer Sarah Richards.

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“Challenging,” said Desjardin with a laugh, when asked about voicing multiple and wide-ranging characters (including an adult male from England) and the narrator for the thriller about a newlywed couple embroiled in murder.

“As it slowly settled on to me that I would be voicing everything and everyone it felt very daunting. But I love a challenge. And I’m also one of those people, as I have sat with myself as I have got older, I’ve realized, especially when it comes to work, if there is any part of me that’s feels afraid, that means I should do it.”

Desjardin explained that “you do it all at once” when recording an audiobook.

“We’re just reading as you go. I’m jumping between the characters and the narrator as it’s happening,” said Desjardins, whose first TV role was when she was age 16 and played J.K. Rowling’s 12-year-old younger sister in the 2011 Lifetime movie Magic Beyond Words: The J.K. Rowling Story.

To help Desjardins with her first venture into the world of audiobooks was director and seasoned veteran audio performer Erin Moon.

“She sat with me, and we talked about what really makes the difference is going through each character and getting specific about their personalities. What traits they have and how that can even be shown through their voice,” said Desjardins. “If you know in your bones who each person is, it’s going to come through.”

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The audiobook opportunity was also a chance for Desjardins to dig deeper and expand her actor’s tool kit.

“My favourite thing about this, while it was challenging, is also just learning so much about all the different aspects of our voice, and how we can use that to tell a story,” said Desjardins. “It’s such an interesting experience. All the other tools I have to express myself are taken away in this medium.”

Career and craft aside, Desjardins discovered the intense world of audio acting delivered a respite from life with a very active mind.

“It was an interesting exercise and experience for my brain,” said Desjardins, who says she is a recovering perfectionist. “I’m working on it, but I’m a high-anxiety human and so I already always have a million thoughts going on in my brain. Then it was, ‘OK you’re going to sit down and you’re going to be thinking about performance. Think about the differences between all the characters.’

“What was good was there was not a lot of room for me to have other anxious thoughts.”

Desjardins says audio offerings like books and podcasts are very much a part of her day-to-day life. Her current diet of audiobooks includes The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You, by Elaine N. Aron PhD.

“That gives you a glimpse into my personality,” said Desjardins, adding that she also leans in to a lot of biographies and autobiographies, especially the ones voiced by the subject.

The last title on her Audible list is Talking as Fast as I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls (and Everything in Between), by Gilmore Girls star Lauren Graham.

“I’m just the biggest Gilmore Girls fan you are ever going to meet in your life,” said Desjardins.

With The Worst of You out in the world, the next thing on Desjardins’ mind is the return to the Vancouver set of Yellowjackets for Season 3.

A buzzed-about series out of the box, Yellowjackets is a Showtime (Crave in Canada) series about a soccer team of teenage girls that survives a plane crash in the Canadian wilderness.

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“I love how there are so many complex female characters,” said Desjardins about the hit show that goes to camera soon. “I guess we can call it genre-bending. There is really something for everyone in Yellowjackets.”

In Yellowjackets, Desjardins plays the snarky and quick-to-respond 17-year-old Callie, whose issues with her mother made for a popular story arc in Season 2.

“I’m almost 30, and I still play 17, which is fun. What a gift,” said Desjardins.

As for Callie’s future, Desjardins says she has seen the first script for Season 3 and met with the showrunners. However, she’s not about to offer up any big spoilers.

“I would just say this season with Callie is going to pick up on the journey we left her off on, where she is really trying to discover and understand her mom,” said Desjardins. “I think she is trying to understand her mother better because she wants to understand herself.”

But whatever awaits her character once shooting begins, the Vancouver actor says she’s excited to get back to work and is once again very happy to be filming a bold-type project here in her own backyard. The Night Agent, Riverdale and Tron: Ares were also shot in the Vancouver area.

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“I love it here so much,” said Desjardins. “Getting to be in my own home and come home to my own bed at the end of the day — how lucky am I?”

Dgee@postmedia.com

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