Roswell Trivia – Voice Magic
Edited by Tina
Watching foreign movies and tv shows but having the characters speaking e.g. German, French, or Spanish is a common thing and standard in Europe. The dubbed versions are well made and very true to the original.
Gerrit Schmidt-Foß is the voice behind the German speaking Max Evans, he is a film and tv show dubbing artist and voice actor for advertisements.
His pitch of voice is fresh and youthful and while ones eyes are stronger than the ear, and thanks to Gerrit Schmidt-Foß’s very multifaceted voice, it sometimes takes a while to recognize that it’s him behind the actor on screen.
So it happens that in the afternoon program around 2001, he was first heard giving his voice to “Dawson’s Creek” lead character Dawson Leery, before he slipped into the role of Extraterrestrial Max Evans on “Roswell”… and while I am a big fan of “Buffy The Vampire Slayer”, I have to admit that my ears failed in connecting his voice to Xander Harris at first.
Brilliant voice acting!
Gerrit Schmidt-Foß also lends his flexible voice to numerous Hollywood stars such as Leonardo DiCaprio and Giovanni Ribisi and is also known for dubbing actors Jim Parsons, Scott Caan and Wentworth Miller.
With Gerrit giving a German voice to Max Evans and to Titanic’s Jack Dawson, the following is a funny coincidence:
In the episode “Max in the City”, Max and Tess travel to New York City and in one scene they are on top of the Empire State Building. Max dryly says “I’m the King of the World,” while Tess confirms that he is “just… not of this one.”
Hence his happy jubilating scream “I’m the King of the World,” as Jack Dawson in “Titanic” brings an extra smile to any Roswell fan’s face.
Unfortunately, Gerrit Schmidt-Foß didn’t become Jason Behr’s regular dubbing artist. In roles before and after “Roswell” and Jason’s characters were spoken by several other voice actors. One of them is Gerrit’s brother Dennis, who gave Jason a German voice in the movies “Senseless” and “Tattooist”.
It would be great if the character Jason played on the re-imagining “Roswell New Mexico” in its second season, will be dubbed for German speaking areas by the amazing Gerrit Schmidt-Foß again. Everything else after that too please.
If you would like to learn more trivia and fun-facts like this, please drop a comment below.
What else are you interested in and are there any fun connections like this when it comes to the dubbing versions available in other countries?
Having said before that the dubbing versions are well made and true to the original, it still sometimes happens that it causes certain variations in the translation of the show. Jokes are sometimes adapted or there are name changes due to understanding or there are differences because of the uneven length of the languages.
Sometimes small errors have slipped in or there are other mistakes or differences between the original and a dubbed version also. Some of them have been collected for the Crashdown website already but they are not available to view yet. Please be sure to let us know whenever you stumble on an error or different translation in order to add some more interesting facts.
Sources: Photo by Alberto Contreras on Unsplash | Roswell season 1 promotional photo and clip from season 2, Max in the City (20TH CENTURY FOX HOME ENTERTAINMENT) | Clip from Titanic (20TH CENTURY STUDIOS DE)