foreign this is the Indie next podcast broadcasting live from the uni podcast studio in Sunny South Dallas my name is Hugh and I get to lead a movement for those who have been marginalized and excluded we have a clear mission to spread the light of inclusion our goal each episode is to highlight the work and the workers ending exclusion in their own space and place while providing you awareness and opportunities to join the movement we do our best to find the right people ask the right questions
so that we can all take the next right steps and make together history today is no exception Eric Vale director scriptwriter voice actor AKA trunks on Dragon Ball Z Eric it's great to have you and thank you for all the cool work that you do thanks for having me here appreciate it yeah well hey um a lot of our audience will know you because you are this famous boy voice actor on Dragon Ball Z but then there's a lot of our audience that maybe not doesn't know you so for all of us give us a little
bit of your maybe share a little bit of your personal history your professional history and what connects you to then fighting for in some ways fighting for people with disabilities well I uh I've been voice acting for about 22 years been an actor my whole life voice acting for about 22 years in some big franchises like Dragon Ball franchise one piece my hero Academia and um then my I have a daughter who's 15 she has autism spectrum disorder and so early on in my career because we learned about
Lily my daughter really young I started learning about what that was like I was raised with a cousino's Down syndrome so I've always understood special needs what it requires you know how people learn differently and behave differently and so being a father to a kid like that didn't seem to be to it didn't scare me too bad I mean of course it was scary but it didn't scare me too bad because I felt like I had some sort of base for that and then as I've been working in anime for so long especiall
y when you go to conventions and you meet a whole bunch of people there's the anime seems to draw in a bunch of special needs attention you know so I've met a lot of people on the autism spectrum and a lot of other different issues with mental health you know physical challenges and so on and so forth and I don't know exactly why I wish I could put a pen on what it is about anime that draws these people to it you know but I guess I mean that's kind of a mystery to me yeah but uh so you know bein
g a special needs father and and seeing all these people who have been such fans of my work so helped me along the way you know just want to do what I can to make life easier for these people and let them feel like they're valued yeah I love it I love it I know you've played several different roles uh although you know the maybe the most famous is trunks I don't I don't I don't know what you would say but um which character that you've played would you say is most similar to you in real life and
why that's that's an unfortunate answer so I play a character on a show called Hetalia the show Hetalia is a very short form anime the episodes are only like five minutes long but I play the character of America the whole story of the show is uh each it's like the history of the world told with each country as a character so my character America embodies America so I he's he's loud obnoxious in your face doesn't really pay attention to what you have to say and he's constantly steamrolling every
body else and it's real close to my actual personality and I don't I'd love to say that I was you know I'm like trunks I'm like a hero and I saved the day you know I'm just I'm just allowed the obnoxious actor and and are you suggesting maybe that America is allowed obnoxious country a little bit you know you know maybe I I I I remember when I uh well there I've had experiences I've been fortunate enough especially through work to be able to travel abroad and um every time every time I've been o
verseas there's multiple embarrassing moments of me introducing myself as an American yeah but you know I had I was in uh I was in Canada one time we were me and some buddies were at this patio bar having a beer and um two actors I was with and my buddy and I went to the bar to grab a second beer came back and um she Wendy's sitting there talking these four guys behind us who were from Toronto where we were and we're having a great conversation the second they're like where are you guys from and
we're like oh we're you know from America we actually live in Texas all four of them turned around and just stopped talking to us wow you know and that's not the only time stuff like that has happened so so I think I embodied the character pretty well of America yeah I think there's something to be said there oh that's good that's good so speaking of um beer uh something goes good with that is pizza and I've heard that you were once a pizza delivery guy yeah okay okay so did did your acting car
eer by chance intersect with your pizza career uh at any point and if so any stories around that oh yeah yeah it definitely did um because look actors generally speaking acting is not the best paying job in the world right you know yeah always you know and and you're just trying to work well when I got the first role I booked I was uh in this college town and I booked the role of trunks on Dragon Ball Z so I was working playing that character but I still had to make my bills and pay my bills to
make money so I was I kept my pizza delivery job and I loved it like to this day still one of the best jobs ever had wow you know I just got to listen to music or audio books or you know there weren't podcasts back then that's how long ago it was but so we uh one point I had like trunks was out and I had already been to my first convention which was crazy I'm still delivering pies and I go and I deliver this one pizza to this guy and he answers the door real quick and he's like he throws the doo
r open and he's clearly distracted by something behind him and the TV's on and he's like he's like all right man yeah let's do this exchange real fast I'm watching some some show and I hear my voice coming out of his television and I leaned around the corner and I saw they're watching Dragon Ball Z like all their buddies sitting on the couches super into Dragon Ball Z and and he's like all right thanks man bye took the pizza and ran and sat down oh my God and I remember standing on that porch th
inking I I should probably quit I think it's it's time it's time to move on so I did I think I quit that day yeah it's like I get you know I have this other job that at the time was I was working at it so much I was I remember being really exhausted because I was I was going to the studio all day and then I'd be back to hit my night shift that's where you make the money to live in Pizza you know and I'd work from like four in the afternoon to two three in the morning I was exhausted a lot so you
know let's hustle in there it was fun that's a great story that's unbelievable I mean no I don't know that anyone else in the world has that that's such a unique story I I mean I guess I don't know I don't walk in on yourself it was weird it was weird it's still weird like you know like I'll have my like my my mother called me the other day and was like can I get an autographed picture from you for um Miss Tony's grandson I'm like yeah sure of course still strange it was weird man huh that's co
ol then I love it whatever so uh speaking of trunks uh one of my favorite quotes from the hero of hope uh after one of his victories he says the Super Saiyan barrier yeah I've gone far beyond that all right now it's my understanding that when you reach Super Saiyan 3 level uh which I think trunks is saying he's got even beyond that but you are 400 times stronger than your normal self sure so let me here's the question what would you do in real life if you were 400 times stronger than your normal
Eric so well I don't know I mean because what they're talking about specifically is physical strength and fighting each other and I luckily have a big enough mouth that I've never had to get into a fight I can I can usually mouthy my way out of it um and um so to be 400 times stronger than this I mean I don't know strongman competitions maybe or you know do some good out there help people move heavy things yeah you know that's good I would of course I'm sure all my friends who are moving would
be like hey can you help me you just move this you would be the ultimate Force yeah yeah you know I probably just show off honestly and we're gonna lift this car exactly I don't know that I'd you'd be famous on YouTube [Laughter] so I'll I'll shift this into um maybe a little deeper conversation here so every industry in space could be better at inclusion at some degree um where do you think the anime industry currently is as it pertains to inclusivity maybe share a story example or multiples it
's you know I know that um that something that's really changed from my perspective from my side as an actor like I really can't speak to the other parts of production but as an actor I can tell you that what's changed is that like for example that show Hetalia where every character was played or every country's played by an actor we did our best to do authentic dialects uh for each country right uh that being and like that being said like the guy who plays Japan is a white guy but he has listen
ed to so much Japanese that he can really do a good mimic on that dialogue the woman who uh plays China is half Chinese and just apparently uses her mother's voice as that character um now we're still doing that show so we are settled in that casting but there was the talk about because there have been like seven seasons in between seven years in between seasons and during that time things changed where we really want actors who are like these characters so if we have a character that is suppose
d to be Japanese and specifically Japanese they would want somebody who is Japanese you know to to do it properly or you know if it's a gay character they'd prefer to have a gay actor or a trans character played by a trans person you know and they've definitely moved toward that casting uh as much as possible no and so I think that's really cool for them to do um I know on in other capacities traveling around going to conventions a lot of the conventions I I go to have uh special needs volunteer
s who help out and work the line and help me at my booth and stuff like that so I've seen that grow there as well that's good so I've seen some growth never as much as you probably want to you know we'd all like to see more but it was pretty good yeah it feels like it's going in the right direction yeah well say that I recently read Ryan O'Connell an actor with cerebral palsy was quoted in the New York Times he said why in this woke ass culture that we live in where so much attention is given to
the marginalized populations do people with disabilities still largely go ignored so as an actor part of the time acting you know voice anime Gaming Community I mean you're in multiple spaces what are practical steps that you believe could be like taking tangible steps to more inclusive in the authentic steps I think probably the answer to that is it starts at the writing level people need to be writing about these people you know and it you're not gonna um you're not gonna learn about people w
ith if you don't know people with cerebral palsy and you're not the kind of person who goes out and reads books on this kind of thing you probably don't know a whole lot about it you know but movies and TV especially now everything reaches into people's homes so I would think that if you're if you're writing characters that are like that and delivering stories that people care about and that's going to help people learn you know and I I've been working on a on a I don't even know what it is righ
t now I don't know if it's a short film a book a movie what but excuse me the concept that I have is it's like post-apocalyptic world and this one person this guy is traveling right and there's no people left right and he makes it to this town and in this town he finds this woman with cerebral palsy and she it has been alone for years and she wants a friend and she wants to travel she wants to go with him and he's on a mission and so she's like look I'm I need some help you know I'm I'm not goin
g to be able to last here for very long by myself I need you to help me you know come with you so we didn't start you know you know friendship is society all this kind of stuff so I was thinking that would be that would be an interesting thing to see like see how that Dynamic plays out um but I don't know where that story is going to go right we'll see that's interesting I love that I love that it's a great answer that's very insightful um so you're you are famous obviously for being trunks but
you're a husband a father we've talked about voice acting and other space scriptwriter director the list is very impressive as a parent of a child um with autism that's that's got to be one of your um really top priorities in my mind yeah the the top priority what's one of the biggest struggles or challenges that you face on a daily basis will um to be honest getting her to want to do things I mean you know she's I think people oftentimes forget about the fact that people who have special needs
are still people and they're still going through the same things as everybody else so while my daughter is on the autism spectrum she's also a 15 year old girl so I'm dealing with 15 year old girl stuff at home also dealing with autism having to sort of manage those things um and um so that's that that's a big challenge because you think oh my gosh I'm a parent of a cubic autism I'm have all these challenges that I know of the thing you realize oh gosh you can also also just be like 15. yeah and
just a pain you know and sometimes she's great okay I have a great story all right this happened last weekend and this is the kind of challenge fresh yeah it's super fresh so there was an anime convention in town and my daughter loves anime nothing that I'm in she couldn't care less about me but she loves all this other stuff that's good and she loves some of these voice actors that I'm friends with they're her favorite actors and um so she wanted to go to the anime convention great let's go so
Saturday I took her there now one of the challenges is that she seems to at a convention where there's a whole bunch of people in Cosplay she starts assuming that everyone is sort of cosplaying one way or another so me and uh two of these actors we take her upstairs to The Green Room to get a snack you know who is just my buddy and then me and my buddy and Lily get back on the elevator after our snack time to go back down to the convention and there's uh three other people on the elevator and w
e drop a couple of floors and we're just chit chatting Lily's in a great mood and then this older gentleman steps on and this guy is probably 65 yeah and he's wearing a t-shirt and shorts and he's going down to the gym he pushes that gym button and my daughter looks at him points at him in the face and says I hate this old man and have the whole all the air just sucked right out of that elevator and the guy was super cool he said something like uh oh I'm not too crazy about myself sometimes or s
omething like that wow see God what was happening and I was like oh my God Lily that's so rude don't don't do that you know don't say things like Samsung I'm sorry okay that's cool then he got off when he caught off everyone in the elevator it's like oh no no this is the worst it's the worst so that's another challenge to have to deal with is the unpredictable yeah you know the unpredictable and and we do homeschool so we have to you know I I've got to work at home I'm recording most of my stuff
at home and and then I've got a in-between jobs switch gears and go teach spelling for math which I'm terrible at or something else and there's just you know all the basics about life are challenging and then there's a few other ones that are curveballs like like that yeah she did the same thing at the hospital like a month ago there was this gentleman we were waiting for her dental appointment we go to a bank of elevators always happens at elevators something about them and this dude has he's
got a big beer belly and he's got a lanyard with a badge sitting on his chest and she looks at him and she points to that she goes what's that and he goes oh this is this is my ID this is how I get in he starts explaining it to it and she goes no that and pokes him in the belly and she goes you're pregnant oh no and I'm like Lily come on say I'm sorry I'm sorry and we get on the elevator and he was standing there a little stunned like okay so I don't know wow maybe she maybe she got him to make
some new choices in life I don't know wow that's hey those are great stories so um what are a few because you've got a lot that's that's good this you what are a few perspectives or approaches that have helped you and your wife over the years that maybe could encourage and help others facing similar situations around the world because a lot of people are listening you know um I would say that joining groups is has been great like finding groups of things that she likes like she's part of a tenni
s organization called acing autism that she goes and has a tennis every Saturday morning no she loves that you know I didn't think she would ever care about tennis it's one of her favorite things to do you know and so joining groups like that really helps expand their uh the friend pool you know making friends for people on the spectrum is really challenging because they're super cool with being completely alone and isolated most of the time like that's fine for them and you you want them to bre
ak out and make friends and socialize so again they can kind of meet in the middle you know with us sometimes um so that that's been you know that's been a good thing for us to do homeschooling also I feel has been really beneficial because it's taught me a whole lot about how her brain works and how she learns and that's helped me be a better parent because I'm having to I'm having to do the things that the teachers learn about the kids at schools but it's here at home and so those lessons we c
an apply to other areas of their life you know interesting that's good um so I actually remember the first time that we met you said something that stuck out to me you said when it comes to my daughter and autism I would say that I've learned to speak a different language that's a that's a very interesting statement unpack that for me a little bit in our audience and yeah well I mean I have I feel learned to speak a different language um and because Lily does have communication difficulties ther
e's a lot of input issues um you know you find that Lily doesn't look like she's paying attention to you and yet she hears and absorbs everything you know and she's got great hearing it's it's terrible I mean the other the other dad was in the kitchen I burned my hand and I dropped a cuss word under my breath under my breath that she's in the back of the house and she's like don't say that wow yes ma'am I'm sorry I just burned my hand but okay she's right uh so um yeah so it's it's she we all li
ve together right on this planet and she has a certain way of speaking she has a certain way of being and it's important for me as as a parent to learn what she means because she's trying to communicate she's just not always going to communicate the same way that everybody else does so I have to learn those signals like what she's indicating what does her body language mean here uh and sort of try to anticipate needs and and you know what's around the corner but it's as important for her that sh
e learns those things about everybody else you know the world is the way the world is and if we can learn toward her and then push her to learn toward us we can meet in the middle and uh have successful you know outings and successful schooling sessions and make friends you know you know because until if you know some of her friends are not the friends that she's made there may not be on the same uh level as as her with the autism you know higher lower however you want to look at it um and so it
's important to her to not to be able to reach them in whichever direction they are and that's how she's going to pull over those friends I think yeah that's good I love that Insight because whether it's uh you know an immigrant coming into our country or people with disabilities in our communities um the work of inclusion has to be this idea of meeting people in a middle space while that's Messier and harder yeah exactly that's why it's called work it's the work and I think um instead of trying
to and then I think this is this is something that people with disabilities would definitely say it's like you're you're really trying to get us to come all the way over to your side right and it's like oh man I don't feel included I just feel like you're forcing me to or you know expecting me to come all the way to your where you're at yeah and so anyways great lesson I I mean I get I I guess it is you know I think that that's what you're saying is really important you know I mean what's not m
essy you know I mean everything that's worth doing is usually a little messy oh yeah you know dinner was real good last night I still haven't cleaned the kitchen yeah you know welcome oh my gosh the struggle is real yeah you know that brings me to the um the ending X stat of the day uh which is brought to you by accountable Healthcare Staffing named one of America's best recruiting and temporary staffing firms by Forbes Magazine so in 2020 the CDC reported that approximately 1 in 54 children in
the United States is diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder and over the next decade an estimated 700 000 to 1.1 million teens will enter into adulthood and age out of school-based Autism Services so there's a lot of a lot of work to be done yeah yeah there is um you know and I mean my daughter's part of that you know and that's uh it's it's a daunting task right yeah but I think the world has come around like recently uh in in April which is historically Autism Awareness Month this last yea
r it seemed to change to autism were they saying autism acceptance I I actually forget what it was but but that's changed because it's become so prevalent right you know that's not great you know um I you know I know that there are a lot of people on the autism spectrum who don't feel like they should be changed or quote fixed you know or medicated or anything like that and for them I say that's great you know that's cool but you people like that aren't are not as deep into the Spectrum perhaps
you know as somebody like my daughter who does need an advocate with her you know and so yeah it's uh uh when my daughter was young and we found we heard those statistics of who was being diagnosed and how often it seems scary and it just seems to be more and more all the time I I don't know much about the statistics I do know that a lot of people along the way um who weren't ever considered on the autism spectrum discover that they are yeah you know so it could be so it could be part of the fac
t that we're learning more about it and so these things that like you know 30 years ago when I was growing up and we found somebody who's just quirky or or like well that guy is strange you know and you find out you know no they are on the Spectrum you know so I think maybe there is definitely more people with it all the time but I do think we're or understanding it more to be able to see where it is right you know yeah but that statistic always scares me a little bit Yeah Yeah on it to me it sp
eaks to the fact that we we can't we can't live in uh some type of blissful ignorance uh right in terms of you know because that is exclusion to me I think it's our responsibility to take care of our community and part of our community is I mean a large segment and that's that's a lot of teenagers yeah it is teens that are going to need Advocates are going to need like you said they're going to need people in their Community to come around them and not just have a community ignore them or kind o
f not want to get messy with them yeah yeah and I you know I'm not sure how things are you know I remember you know what life was like when I was a kid like when I was in high school when I was in high school there was a kid we were always next to each other in the yearbooks and he was a special needs guy his name was Jake Johnson and um he uh he was great you know and I went to school with Jake from sixth grade through graduation and everybody looked out for him I went to a school or I graduate
d with like almost 1300 people right now but everybody was looking out for Jake you know there were other special needs kids there too and everybody was took care of them and looked down to them I didn't see like the making fun of or the bullying stuff back then like I remember like I was bullied don't get me wrong you know I I had plenty of people who who bullied me but nobody seems to bully the special needs kids which I always thought was really great so I'm hoping that that lives on in the g
enerations that those kids have had because they're now parents and some of them grandparents yeah yeah and it's interesting that statistic about aging out because I could like a kid like Jake has a in a sense a support system built in every day at school yeah and he ages out and is that where does the support system go and how does that look and as a as a community we got to pay attention to Jake and no okay we're not just going to take care of Jake Tilly turns 17 right right we've got to you k
now so so there you go this has been a great conversation um we like to finish up the podcast with what we call the ending X blazing five hot takes from the hard work all right so here we go blazing five number one name one of the secrets to your success not quitting I I might you know my dad always told me he said you know the harder you work the luckier you get you know and so that's just like keep going man just just keep going yeah and then they fall a lot but just get up yeah yeah number tw
o what's a significant hurdle number two what's a significant hurdle you faced in your journey and how did you navigate [Music] um the particularly if you want to be an actor nobody believes you nobody believes you can do it and nobody believes that you can make a living at it right I'm 47 years old I've been a professional actor for over 20 years and I'm still asked if family gatherings am I going to get a job or is the acting going okay I'm like it's my career this is what I've been doing and
I've been dealing with that since you know since I was 12 and took my first acting class everyone's like you're not gonna make it you're not gonna make it yeah you know I ran into one of those guys as an adult and and he made fun of me for making it wow yeah I wish I thought was weird he goes so what so you know like you're super famous and people like fly all around the world to sign autographs and stuff I go yeah actually and he goes yeah that sounds weird wow yeah there's always going to be t
hose people man yep good old T Swift hater's gonna Hey Taylor Swift um so many of us love Taylor Swift who does 10 minutes on past relationships all right so uh number three for a Next Generation leader an aspiring uh that's aspiring to change the game in a tangible way in their Community whether it's through acting or um or other things what piece of advice would you offer to the Next Generation I would say listen to the kids you know listen to Children um they're going to tell you oftentimes t
he same things that adults are saying just without so much animosity you know yeah so you can get it's like going to a Pure Source for water yeah you know that's so good I love that yeah my two and a half year old is definitely giving me the pure whoa yeah it's rough right yes oh oh my gosh honestly all right number four if your life's work uh we're being summarized in a news story what would you want the headline to be um Eric didn't screw up that badly probably you know and it goes back to the
other question like so many so many times so many people were like you know you're gonna fail you're not gonna make it you know and it's you know and I know that nobody will ever see it as a huge success I do um if they could just recognize a little bit of it it would be nice just a little bit okay maybe the title is just a little bit just a little that's a good title just a little bit all right all right cool number five it's apparent that you're a brilliant creative so what else do you have c
oming down the pike that we should know about uh well I'm you know always working on some more voice over anime that I'm always under an NDA and can't talk about uh but I can tell you that I uh a lot of my creative work lately has been with my comedy Trooper holding chairs the folding chairs folding chairs which you can find folding chairs comedy on Facebook or search folding chairs comedy on YouTube uh during the pandemic we would use the sketch comedy trip we would usually do live shows and ju
st do sketch comedy but then the pandemic happened and we had to switch gears into video so I learned to do a whole lot of things in production that I never had to learn before being just an actor and um so we are shooting and releasing um you know cinematic quality sketch comedy um every couple weeks now well and that's you know I got to go home and edit three new ones today that we shot last weekend and um and I gotta finish writing another one and that's available on YouTube yeah YouTube yeah
and we have you know folding chairs comedy is on we're on every we're on Instagram which we ignore we're on Twitter and uh and Facebook and YouTube yeah so I call it insecurity Grant but oh boy that's so true I like that so maybe that'll make it into the next folding chairs [Music] please dude uh just a little bit it'll it'll make me feel better oh yeah you got it yeah um so if not just folding chairs but if we just want to keep up with you follow you support you stay up to date with what you'r
e doing what what's the best way you can uh go to uh my website and just go to ericmail.com ericbell.com or you can find me on Twitter at ericvale on Instagram Eric Bell Rocks where I post the pictures of things foreign and usually it's pretty gross and my mom comes back to me like my mom starts me on Instagram so whenever I post something she'll text me she's like that's disgusting then don't read it mom is that your mom's voice is that is that a mom voice that's a mom voice that's not my mom's
voice can you could you go in my mom's voice is uh well she's she's from here uh in Dallas I got rid of my dialect I grew up in Beaumont right so I naturally sound like I'm from the Bayou you know like and uh my mom uh sounds like she's from here everything she says kind of sounds like this it's just got a little bit of this you know South Dallas kind of twang through it like that wow she's very sweet and very soft spoken until she yells me Eric Eric stop it well uh man it's been a pleasure tha
nks a lot I'd say that's it and that's all for this episode of the Indie next podcast it was if this was helpful inspiring encouraging or just crazy and you loved it anyways please uh say it spread wheel it deal it and share it in your Social Circle the channels you can learn more about what we do and check out more episodes on indexpodcast.com and make sure to follow us on the gram at indianx podcast all right thanks again Grace peace and much love ready [Music] it's the uh is your hair normall
y longer shorter is that what you've gone with my hair has always been like yours okay right and this is Corona here pandemic happened yeah and then my hair grew long and then my wife was like that looks great so you should keep it long it reminds me of college I'm like all right so I did and then I got it trimmed and uh you know Style with her hair stylist and she she's maintaining it really well everywhere I go now I get more compliments on my hair than I get on anything anything everywhere ev
eryone's like your hair is great I'm like crap [Laughter] yeah now if I get rid of it you know people are gonna be [Music] yeah you know or then you do like the for the blazing five you do like like blazing five yeah you know and then throw a little Reverb or something on there and make it sound really like hey Have you listened to the sound effects I put in for the Holyfield oh yeah oh no you can hear the fire and it goes it's a fireball going because we didn't have yeah dude
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