Saskia Maarleveld’s New Zealand accent opened the door to a most unexpected career.
Saskia Maarleveld Photo: Van Gorp Photography
She grew up in a book-reading family, and studied acting in New York, but had never thought narrating audio books could be a career.
Now, she has twice been named one of the best voices in the audio world by Audiofile Magazine, and has been nominated for Best Female Narrator 2018 in the Audies - the audiobook equivalent of the Oscars. Past winners include actress Meryl Streep and Mariska Hargitay known for her role in the US drama series Law & Order.
Maarleveld was born in Hong Kong to a Dutch-American father and a New Zealand mother. The family moved a lot; first to California when she was a baby, then to New Zealand, and on to Paris.
In 2005, she went to university in New York where she graduated from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, and has lived in the city ever since.
It was there Maarleveld saw an ad to audition for an audiobook narrator that called for a New Zealand accent.
“Audition [ads] are rare in voiceover business – usually you need to know someone. It’s a much more insular community.
“I guess they didn’t know any Kiwis.”
Since getting that first role she has narrated hundreds of audiobooks - including Journey to Star Wars: The Last Jedi Leia, Princess of Alderaan by Claudia Gray and My Brother’s Keeper, by New Zealand author Donna Malane – and voiced cartoon characters, such as Officer Jenny on Pokemon.
Most of the time Maarleveld works in professional studios, but she recorded the book that earned her the Audie nomination - The Alice Network by Kate Quinn – in her bedroom “under a blanket”.
Her home studio is a blanket draped over a corner of her bedroom, she says.
“New York apartments are really small so I didn’t want to put a big booth in my living room.”
“To have done that book by myself at home, under my blanket, and then to have been nominated for it also feels really good.”
She grew up in Wellington, the oldest of five girls and their parents read to them every night. “Dad reading The Hobbit with his Gollum voice and Mum reading The Golden Compass series by Philip Pullman – they read us a lot of wonderful books.
“We’d often take the drive from Wellington to Clive in Hawke’s Bay, where my grandparents lived, and the only way to get five girls to be quiet in the car was to put on an audio book.
“When I auditioned for this book I thought ‘why did I never think of this? I never listened and thought of this as a job, that there were narrators working on these books.”
But as soon as she got the first job she realised it was a career that could keep her working consistently - something that is rare in the arts.
In day to day conversation her accent is American but she can go back to the New Zealand accent very easily, she says.
She’s also voiced Scottish, Welsh, Irish and French accents. But it’s a balancing act between doing accents and making it understandable to a predominantly US audience.
“No one wants to listen to a really thick Russian accent for an entire 10-hour book, or a Crocodile Dundee Aussie accent.
“So many listeners on Audible are American, you have to find a middle ground. So I hope I’ve done justice to the Kiwi accent.”
