Interview with Cissy Jones
Thursday / October 1, 2026
About Cissy Jones
Voice actor who left a Silicon Valley career for voiceover. Known for Katjaa in The Walking Dead, Delilah in Firewatch, which won her a BAFTA, and Lilith in The Owl House.
Source: BAFTA Guru on YouTube
These answers are taken from Cissy Jones on Voice Acting for The Walking Dead, Firewatch, Fallout 4 & More on BAFTA Guru's YouTube channel. You! Backstage did not conduct this interview.
When did you start doing voice over work?
I called that day and I started taking classes that week, and two years later I had an agent, and I quit my job and moved to Los Angeles, and here we are today.
My first job was as Katjaa in The Walking Dead, which was incredible. It was a round of auditions that came through my agent in San Francisco. I auditioned for Clementine, I auditioned for Lilly, I auditioned for Carley, but there was something about Katjaa that spoke to me. I booked it, and it was probably my second or third audition ever as an actor. That was my first job, and it changed everything.
What drew you to a career in voice over?
My path in voiceover was very nontraditional. I actually have a degree in business and a degree in Spanish, and I parlayed that into working in Silicon Valley in California for 10 years, in all manner of startups and venture capital, building companies from four people to hundreds, and really struggling to enjoy life.
Serendipitously, I was out with my husband and we were talking about dream jobs, and I said I'd always wanted to be a voice on The Simpsons. Two weeks later I was getting ready for work one of those fateful mornings, and Nancy Cartwright, who is the voice of Bart Simpson, was on the radio to promote the movie. She started talking about voiceover and how it was this incredible job, and we in the San Francisco Bay Area had a school right nearby that was incredible. I called that day.
What do you enjoy most about voice over?
The best thing about voiceover is I can be anything. I have been an 80-year-old woman. I have been a 12-year-old boy. I've been every manner of creature in between. It doesn't matter what I look like. It doesn't matter my age. It just matters if I can do it believably and interestingly. That's it. That's the secret sauce.
Voiceover in general is such a supportive community. There are just so many incredible people who really, legitimately want all of us to succeed.
What was a great moment for you as a voice actor?
Working with the team on The Walking Dead was amazing. It was so genuine, and they really just wanted us to care about this person. It was my job to make her live and breathe, and to give her reasons to love her hot-headed husband.
Because of that job I met some of my closest friends to this day. Melissa Hutchison, who's Clementine, is one of my best friends. Owen Thomas, who is Omid, and Gavin Hammon, who's Kenny. We all met after we'd recorded this game and said, "Oh my god, you're Clementine. I'm Katjaa. Can you believe they did this to us?" It was such a bonding experience. Normally in games you could share a hundred credits with someone and be like, "Oh yeah, that was cool," and it doesn't really matter. But this one was just lightning in a bottle.
How did your voice over career unfold?
Firewatch all came from The Walking Dead. I met Sean Vanaman and Jake Rodkin working on The Walking Dead, and Sean reached out to me shortly after season one had wrapped. He said, "I've left Telltale. I'm writing a new game with a female protagonist. Are you in?" As an actor, that is the greatest call to get, and of course I said yes.
But it was a good two years until we actually got down to the nitty-gritty of recording. And of course I went through the whole range of emotion at that point: oh god, have I been replaced? Have they found someone else? Am I still in the running? All the self-doubt that we go through as actors. They had me record a sample track back when her name was Alice, a test run so they could hear how I would be as her. And that game just changed everything.
What advice do you have for new voice actors?
Being able to pick and choose projects is a double-edged sword. If you're young and you're hungry and you're just looking to build a resume, it's harder to say you want to pick and choose. However, I think there are certain things we have a social obligation to shy away from. People need to be cast racially appropriately, if you can help it. If you have a moral obligation to a company and you don't want to do a commercial for them, don't do the commercial for them, or do the commercial and take the proceeds and give it to charity. I think it depends on each person's station. In games in particular, I think there's enough work for everybody.
I met my agent before I was anything, and he pulled me aside and said, "You've got it, so work on it, and find me when it's ready for public consumption." That confidence boost was exactly what I needed at the moment.
Has your voice over career progressed the way you expected?
The worst thing, if there is a worst thing, about voiceover is that it's a gig economy. I could have a great year one year and a terrible year the next. I'm always hustling for that next paycheck, so it's trying to figure out where that's going to come from, how to keep it sustainable, how do I keep doing it while I get older. Oh god, just going down that path. But I'm happy doing what I'm doing, and I will be bagging groceries at the grocery store before I go back to corporate.
How do you take direction and keep communication clear in a remote session?
On Firewatch, what they did, which was so wonderful as an actor, was they let me be in my home studio, and Rich Sommer was in his home studio, and Sean would Skype us in together, and we would have actual conversations, actual dialogue. As video game voice actors we typically record alone, and we might have a director who knows what they're talking about, we might not, but we never get to interact with the other actors, the other characters in the scene. So to have this game that really hinges upon believable dialogue be a dialogue was game changing, pun intended.
The difference between AAA and indie is that in indie I have more of a say in my character. Not that AAA isn't open to it, but usually it's gone through such a process to get where it's at that it's pretty written in stone. Indies are a little more on the fly. There's room for discussion and input.
Of all the voices and characters you have recorded, which is your favorite?
My favorite thing about Delilah is that the player has to decide how they feel about her without knowing what she looks like. They don't know if she's buxom, they don't know if she's beautiful. They just have to decide what conversations they want to have with her, based on how funny they think she is or how interesting they think she is. And that's so rare. It's so rare that we're unclouded by physical appearance, in real life and in games.
Who is your favorite voice actor, and why?
My inspirations, there are a lot of them. In video games, I have been so graced with Melissa Hutchison from The Walking Dead, and Jennifer Hale, and Courtenay Taylor, and Ashly Burch, and all of these generous, loving people who are willing to help their friends, and that's been invaluable.
Commercially, I met Marilyn Wissner early on, and she gave me the confidence boost that I needed. She really believed in me, and that meant more than anything.
Describe your voice and your style.
What I look for in a character is something I can really hold on to. I love three-dimensional, well-written, well-thought-out characters. It's really easy to write a flat character, a damsel in distress or whatever. What I really gravitate toward, which I think shows in my resume, are the characters that are deeply flawed somehow, but they're never going to tell you how. There's Joyce in Life Is Strange, and what happened to her to get her to the point she's at with this man in her life. And Delilah, what did she go through to get to where she's at. And Katjaa, even. I like finding the meat and really digging into that. Which is not to say that I won't do other characters, because we've all got bills to pay. But I really like finding well-rounded, juicy characters.
Tell me about a read or a character that was hard to get right. What was the job and why was it challenging?
Katjaa required a Belgian accent. So I went out and I researched Belgian as much as I could, and I had a Belgian friend, and I followed him around with a tape recorder for two days. I'm sure he thought I was a psychopath. And I turned in my audition for Katjaa, and I booked it.
What are some of your professional goals for the future?
I want all the roles. I would love to do a female Bond. I would love to do Wonder Woman. I want all the things. All of them.
I am hopeful for the future of roles for women in voiceover and in video games, and I think it's evolving. You're seeing more female leads and options for female leads, and even LGBTQ leads and nontraditional leads, non-white leads. We're getting to a place where making games is becoming more accessible for smaller teams, and they're able to tell different stories with different voices. I think that's just going to proliferate more and more, and I'm here for it. I am here for it.
Cissy Jones's Full Biography
Cissy Jones is an award-winning actress, whose voiceover career spans the gamut from animation to video games and everything in between. Aside from winning a BAFTA for her performance in the 2017 Indie videogame Firewatch, Cissy has also cemented her role as a new animation actress to watch for her part as a recurring character in Disney's Owl House series. When she's not creating characters that kids of all ages adore, she's lending her voice to more serious projects such as the Academy-Award nominated documentary Winter on Fire, as well as many national commercials, feature film trailers and network promos.