Mallorie Rodak Interview

Peace and Blessings! I had the privilege to interview the voice actor Mallorie Rodak! She is known for her roles as Frieren in Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, Yukino in Fairy Tail, and Raphael/Great Sage in That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime. She was also nominated for Best Voice Artist Performance in the Crunchyroll Anime Awards in 2025. You can find her @mmmallorie on Instagram, @mall0rie on X, and @mallorierodak on TikTok. Now let’s head into the interview!

Sound recording:

Transcript:

Tobi: All right, thanks for being here and coming to Milwaukee. Is this your 1st time here?

Mallorie Rodak: It is! It’s my first time in Milwaukee! I haven’t even left the building. I have not even left it because the hotel is connected to the convention center. So I have just been in the building, but hopefully I can get out, get some cheese curds, you know, drink a good beer, spot a cow or something. So, yeah, I’m looking forward to exploring a bit.

Tobi: And how are you enjoying the con? 


Mallorie Rodak: It’s been great. I’ve heard such good things about AMKE throughout the years, about how it’s run. A lot of people come back to me, and they say, “Oh, I’ve been coming here for 5 years or, you know, however long”, which I think is always a testament for how well run the con is. 


Tobi: I agree to that. So, I like to ask all our guests, because since we are ReligiouslyNerdy, what are you currently nerding out on?

Mallorie Rodak: Ooh, what am I currently nerding out on? Okay, so I am playing Xenoblade. Has anyone played Xenoblade?

Tobi: I haven’t. 


Mallorie Rodak: Okay. There are some people that I found, but I haven’t found a ton of people playing. So it’s Xenoblade X Chronicles. Is that what it is?

Tobi: I’ve heard of it, but never played it.

Mallorie Rodak: It just came to Switch, I think, last year. And I was just looking for a new game to play, and I really like open-world games where I can go explore. I’m kind of like Frieren in the sense, like, I’m gonna go to every corner of the map, on all the side quests, open all the chests, you know, get all of the trinkets and the loot. I’m a loot goblin for sure. 
I’ve been playing Xenoblade, and that one’s been really fun. I’m also very excited for the new dinosaur documentary on Netflix.

Tobi: You’re a dinosaur fan? 


Mallorie Rodak: I love dinosaurs. Frieren herself as somewhat of a dinosaur. It only, you know, goes along with that. But Morgan Freeman is narrating it and it looks really good.

Tobi: Okay, so I could check that out. So you’ve done so many roles. If you could say what your favorite one is, what would it be?

Mallorie Rodak: My favorite role is probably Frieren.

Tobi: Probably. 


Mallorie Rodak: It’s probably Frieren from Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End. I just think even if I wasn’t in Frieren, I think it would still be one of my favorite animes of all time. It’s just exactly my style of anime. Like, I love, like, a Studio Ghibli sort of beautiful, philosophical, makes you think about your life. Every, you know, scene could be a painting on the wall type of a thing, and Frieren for me, although that’s a high bar to compare it to. I feel like it’s just a really beautifully done anime, and Frieren is a very special, complex character that I really enjoy. 


Tobi: Yeah, I agree totally. So, do you relate to Frieren the most, or do you relate to other characters in anime?

Mallorie Rodak: I do relate to Frieren. I do. I don’t have her amazing power or mana suppression control or any of that. But I am sleepy. I am a sleepy girl, so, like, every time that Fern is, like, having to wake up Frieren, she has one line where she’s like, “Mistress Frieren woke up early. We must be sure to praise her!” and that’s me. Like, I woke up early, somebody give me praise, please. So every time she’s sleepy, it makes me smile. So you know, her collecting different grimoires and trinkets. I have a collection that I started recently of pressed pennies. Do y’all remember those? They’re like the machines, you know, and you crank them.

Tobi: So I’ve seen, yeah.

Mallorie Rodak: I’ve been traveling around a lot and I was like, what could I get as a memento to remember, you know, all the cities that I get to travel to for different conventions? And I was like, what if we try and find press penny machines? And they’re getting far and fewer between now that they have discontinued the penny. So yeah, I love a good press penny, working on expanding my collection. It feels like a very Frieren thing to collect too, I don’t know.

Tobi: Yeah, exactly. And how did you prepare for the role of Frieren?

Mallorie Rodak: Ooh. Well, for me, preparation was, you know, one of the things I do is that the episode comes out in Japanese, I will often look at some of the key scenes that people are really gravitating towards, which can work in my favor, but also not work in my favor because sometimes there’s a scene that comes around where I’m like, I’m nervous about doing that. Like, I was really nervous about the tantrum scene in season two. I was like, how are we gonna do that? There’s like 5 Frierens in one frame, one’s on top of the wardrobe, one’s pulling her hair in the middle, one’s like under the covers in the bed. I was intimidated, but our director, our writer, our engineer, we all came together to really make that scene work. So that was super cool. So I’ll watch, and I will read bits and pieces of the manga on occasion. I think also just preparing my voice. I like actually recording Frieren in the morning, which is counterintuitive. I’m not a morning person, but there’s something about her more subdued attitude that I think works really nicely in the morning. So those are some of the things that help me, um, kind of get in the headspace. And then listening to Evan Call’s soundtrack. Like, it’s so good. It just instantly, I feel like I’m on a magical journey. So that can help me get in the right headspace too. 


Tobi: Great. And how did it feel to be nominated for best voice actor performance?

Mallorie Rodak: Oh, my gosh, thank you. It was amazing. I woke up to the news, and it was just like, such an incredible validation of my performance. And just to be nominated among all those amazing actors, it was, you know, it was really a dream come true. It means a lot to me that people have responded so well to my performance. She’s a very special character, and I always just want to do her justice. So for me to get a nomination like that, it was really special. It meant a lot.

Tobi: And I believe the show should have won anime of the year.

Mallorie Rodak: You know? But… People tell me that all the time. I love Solo Leveling. I’m also the reporter who records the gate news in solo leveling. We love it, but Frieren is so special. I might be biased, though.

Tobi: But it’s so won best drama, I believe.

Mallorie Rodak: Yeah.

Tobi: It should have won. So, how is it like voicing for this show that’s so different from the other animes you’ve been voicing, since it’s more slow-paced. Like, what are the differences you see?

Mallorie Rodak: Yeah, there’s so much in the subtlety of the performance. Like, oftentimes, you’ll have other anime that have, you know, your typical anime tropes that allow you to have a sort of a bigger performance. But now it’s the details, you know? It’s the soft moments. It’s the quiet interactions between characters. It really forces you to hone in and make sure that you’re interpreting the character, right, and their wants and needs in that moment, and providing the right level of emotion that this scene dictates. And so, yeah, I think a lot about the details, more and more, um, you know, as we continue on through season two.

Tobi: Great. And lastly, do you get along with your colleagues?

Mallorie Rodak: What? What if I said absolutely not? No, no, I love my colleagues. I feel so fortunate that we have such a great cast. I mean, our director, Jad Saxton, already just a powerhouse of a voice actress, amazing director. There are other directors who have told me, “I want to reach out to Jade and like figure out what her process was” because I feel like she just casted so well. Everyone seems to really fit their characters so nicely. So Jordan has been a friend of mine for a long time who voices Stark. Jill Harris is absolutely masterful as Fern. Clifford Chapin has been, you know, somewhat of a mentor and a guide for me in the industry. So I really appreciate his performance as Himmel. Christopher Wehkamp as Sein, he’s been a long-time friend of mine. So I love seeing him in the show. And Christopher Guerrero, who was here at the con as well, he is so good as Eisen. You can’t help but smile when you hear him on screen. So we have an incredible cast and I feel really fortunate that I get to be acting amongst them.

Tobi: Great. Well, thanks for speaking with me, and I look forward to any future works. Do you have anything else coming up?

Mallorie Rodak: Ooh, yes, it is a great year for anime fans. Of course, Frieren season 2 is airing right now on Crunchyroll. We have Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation, that is coming back in July, I believe. We also have Slime movie coming to theaters on May 1st. So That time I got Reincarnated as a Slime, and we also have a 60-episode new season of Slime that’s coming out too. So there are a lot of amazing shows that are returning. Black Clover is coming back too! So I’ve voiced Nebra Silva, the absolutely terrible sister to Noelle, who was voiced by Jill Harris, who’s Fern in Freiren. So this year’s gonna be an amazing year for anime fans. We can’t wait for some of these amazing shows to come back.

Tobi: I’m so excited.

Mallorie Rodak: Me too.

Tobi: Well, thank you!

 Mallorie Rodak: Thank you! Nice to meet you.