Meet Nero Negrón Castrodad | Voice Actor & Content Creator

We had the good fortune of connecting with Nero Negrón Castrodad and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Nero, what do you want your legacy to be?
I want to be known as someone who inspires and lifts up others. I firmly believe in the power of entertainment to help people feel better about themselves and strive to be their best version. I want to do that through the characters I play, or the streams I do. At the end of the day, I want to help make people smile. If I can make even just one person smile every day, then I think I will have lived a good life. I would love to inspire others to do the same.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I’ve known I wanted to work in entertainment, specifically video games since my early teens. For a time I wanted to help make them as an animator. Then the economy tanked in 2008 and that didn’t work out how I’d hoped. More and more game studios started closing and my education unfortunately didn’t exactly prepare me well enough for the field. I stumbled for years trying to figure out what to do next and eventually fell into graphic design and UX. Though that fulfilled me practically and professionally, I still yearned for more creative artistic pursuits.

Growing up and throughout high school, I always had a secret passion for acting. I wasn’t the most confident kid. During middle school, getting picked on and bullied made me feel like I was never enough for myself or others, so the thought of pretending to be someone else, anyone else, was alluring. I found my theater class to be that solace. Though I did it for what I Iater realized were all the wrong reasons, I couldn’t help but feel that this lit a fire in me. When I found myself stumbling to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, I remembered that feeling. That, coupled with the nostalgia of doing character voices and impressions with my friends pushed me to get serious about pursuing voice acting and, much later, streaming on Twitch with the intent of playing through and voicing older games that didn’t have any voice acting. I wanted to use this to practice my craft while entertaining and maybe inspiring and teaching what I’ve learned to other aspiring actors.

More than anything, I think what people looking into or even curious about voice acting is that, as the name implies, it is that: acting. Impressions are fun, but just because you can make a good impression, that doesn’t mean you’re perfect for the field. You need to lead to embody characters, make bold decisions based on what you know about them, be malleable, and realize that there are many different styles of acting within the industry and that you need to be able to adapt. You need to be comfortable with your own voice and know what you can do with it without hurting yourself. It’s a field where you’re constantly learning and evolving, and I love that about it.

Though I’ve done voice work for commercial and creative projects, more recently my voice can be heard as the titular character in the video game Ruffy and the Riverside. It marks my first credit in a video game, which is what I’ve always wanted to do, and the team at Zockrates Labs has done an incredible job at creating such a unique and fun-looking indie game. The game is expected to be out in winter 2023 and can be wishlisted on Steam now.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Having recently moved out of Miami, what I miss the most was taking a walk around Wynwood, hitting up The Salty Donut (which recently expanded to Charlotte where I’m currently based and I’m SO happy about!), and topping off the night at Gramps for some dancing and drinks. Definitely take a day to have lunch at Mofongos in Calle Ocho, have some ice cream at Azúcar, and burn it off at Ball and Chain with some salsa (I realize now I miss dancing so much ha!). Hit up North Beach for a chill full day at the beach. Oh man, we’d definitely have to go down to Kendall and hit up Dos Croquetas and Vicky Bakery at some point, and Arcade Odyssey to play some classic and rare arcade games. And of course, I’d link up with some friends to show us around and take me to some spots I’ve yet to go to, which since I’m a bit of a homebody, is definitely quite a few haha.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
To Yuri Lowenthal & Tara Platt for their book Voice-Over Voice Actor: What It’s Like Behind the Mic, which set me on the path to rediscovering and loving my own voice and, to an extent, myself. And to Shaun Cruz and Ferdi Rodriguez for constantly encouraging, cheering me on, and learning together as voice actors.

Website: www.twitch.tv/neronegrongames

Instagram: www.instagram.com/neronegron

Twitter: www.twitter.com/neronegron

Youtube: www.youtube.com/@NeroNegron