I Just Learned Which Doctor Who Actor Nearly Became The Voice Of Siri, And I'm In Shock
We’ve written before at HuffPost UK about how Hugo from Succession voiced the Beckham documentary.
Then, we found out that Kim Cattrall voiced a Rugrats character (yes, really).
But all that hadn’t prepared us for a fact Richard Osman dropped on the behind-the-scenes podcast he co-hosts with Marina Hyde, The Rest Is Entertainment.
In their May 27th episode, the Thursday Murder Club author shared that his wife, Ingrid Oliver, “got down to the last three to be the voice of Siri.”
Sorry, what?
Yup! Ingrid, who played Miss Stamp in Angus, Thongs, And Perfect Snogging, policewoman Crowley in Last Christmas, and Petronella Osgood in Doctor Who, apparently got very, very close to landing the role.
“It was a huge, huge, thing ― they audition, like, everyone, and she was out in L.A., and she got down to the final three, and they were gonna go to Poland,” Richard said.
He suggests she “would have had to say words for kind of the next four months... She was so nearly the voice of Siri.”
However, the former Pointless co-host seems a little relieved his wife didn’t quite land the role, saying it would have been “so weird at home.”
“I think on reflection she’s happy she didn’t do it,” he added.
The job is no joke
Susan Bennett, the original American voice of Siri, revealed in a Vox interview that “I recorded four hours a day, five days a week for the month of July,” adding the job necessitated “being able to read 65 seconds’ worth of copy in 60 seconds.”
One example she gave of the kind of things she’d have to say was: “oil your mills jewel weed today.”
Jon Briggs, who does the voiceover for The Weakest Link, was the first UK voice for Siri.
After his voiceover was replaced by another man’s, he told The Guardian he only uses “the female voice rather than my male replacement, as I find the new one a little insipid if I’m honest.”
