Dream Deferred But Not Denied: Voice Actor Maurice Scott Overcomes Career Setbacks and COVID
by Christy DeBoe Hicks
Maurice Scott has the kind of voice that makes you want to buy something, learn something, do something, or follow his instructions wherever they lead. His Barry White-style low register and dulcet tones assure listeners that the products he promotes and the information he provides are trustworthy and good. Scott had such a natural gift that people he encountered through his job made unsolicited requests for him to be the voice behind their projects.
Scott considered the prospect of becoming a voice artist, and after learning a little more about the voiceover industry, decided this would be a good path for him to pursue. With his engaging voice, innate acting ability, and winning personality, he seemed poised to be an instant success. But life’s journey is rarely a straight path, and Scott has had to overcome two setbacks to his voiceover career. The first setback made him wiser, and the second made him more determined. Both strengthened his resolve to thrive in the voiceover business.
Scott, who lives and works in Washington, D.C., says he had been fascinated by voiceover since childhood, and he even had some informal voiceover experience working from 1986 to 1987 at WMUC, the University of Maryland’s radio station, during his senior year at High Point High School until shortly after he graduated. “I did the weather, traffic and I deejayed,” he said. “But they never really emphasized voiceover.”
Scott said his initial entrée into the world of voiceover was unplanned. He worked from 1994 to 1995 for the North American Network, a Washington, D.C.-based radio public relations service firm. “My job was to sell advertisements to radio stations around the country,” said Scott. “Sometimes, when I would speak to clients, they would ask me to voice their campaigns for them. I ended up getting a lot of voiceover jobs that way.” The brands and companies that hired him included many political and campaign organizations as well as Rubbermaid, which hired him to do a radio promo spot for a new product they were launching.
When a new career opportunity took Scott away from his job at North American Network, he lost many of his prospects for voiceover work. He had planned to step back briefly from voice acting while he was in transition, but there were unexpected twists and turns in his life that kept him from his pursuit of voice acting for more than a decade. However, he never lost his desire to get into the industry.
Though others often told Scott that he had an excellent voice for the business, his initial experience with voiceover and his subsequent research on the topic taught him that a terrific voice was not the only key to success. The voiceover industry requires commitment, hard work, study, practice, networking, and a little bit of luck. Scott committed to doing the hard work and learning everything he could about the industry and what he needed to succeed. His problem was that after a decade away, he didn’t know how to get started.
“I wasn’t sure where to go. I made inquiries to several people locally about what I should do, but it seemed like I was always getting the runaround or bad advice,” he recalls. “One day, a friend, Ken Smaltz, said that he knew someone I could talk to about getting into the industry. Ken introduced me to Joan Baker and Rudy Gaskins.” Scott hit the jackpot with that introduction. Baker, an award-winning voice actor, producer and top-selling author, and Gaskins, an Emmy Award-winning producer and director, are co-founders of the Society of Voice Arts and Sciences (SOVAS). “I had already been following them on Facebook,” he recalls. “We talked, and I got coaching from Joan for a couple of years.
Scott also trained with Gaskins, with whom he developed a strong rapport. Says Gaskins, “Working one-on-one is a very personal relationship, and working with a person’s voice means opening the door to a lifetime of emotion, highs, lows, traumas, all of it. Maurice’s willingness to explore his life as it relates to bringing authenticity to his acting is quite stunning.” Gaskins adds that even as he taught Scott, he also learned from him and believes they have both grown from their relationship. “Maurice drew out the best in me as his teacher and coach,” says Gaskins. “I give one hundred percent to every student, but Maurice inspires me to root for him and to dig deep to match the magic within him.”
Baker says Scott has what it takes to succeed in the voiceover business. “Maurice has extraordinary natural gifts: a vocal instrument that’s out of this world, amazing networking skills, dedication to whatever he puts his mind to, and a love for people that comes back to him in spades,” she says. “That’s a powerhouse combo in any business, but it is especially valuable to the voiceover entrepreneur because it bodes well for repeat business.”
Working with Baker and Gaskins, he gained his official entry into the industry in ways he could never have done on his own, says Scott. “I started meeting different people and learning about the business in ways I hadn’t learned years ago. I’ve trained with a few other people in various genres of voiceover. They’ve all been a big help. But without Joan and Rudy, I probably wouldn’t have gotten back into the industry, or not at this level,” he declares.
Scott studied his craft for two years and got back into the business three years ago. He became a voracious consumer of all things voiceover. Besides getting coaching, Scott has read many books on the subject, bookmarked voiceover websites, taken classes such as improv, and attended workshops around the country. He has made annual sojourns to That’s Voice Over! Career Expo and has also attended the Voice Arts Awards, and the VO Atlanta Voiceover Conference in Atlanta, Georgia (including the virtual events held during the COVID-19 pandemic where he participated online).
Scott says he read many books that have helped him as he was starting in the business. Some of his favorites are: Secrets of VoiceOver Success by Joan Baker, Voice for Hire by Randy Thomas, V-Oh! by Marc Cashman, and Voiceovers: A Super Business ∙ A Super Life by Joshua Alexander. Scott also recommends the website V.O. Buzz Weekly and “intro to voiceover” classes online at Real Voice LA, Atlanta Voiceover Studio, and Rolonda.com (Rolonda Watts).
The hard work, training and contacts have been paying off for Scott. He has done a significant amount of work for the U.S. government, including e-learning, training videos, public service announcements, and narration for various projects for different government agencies. Outside of the government, he also has done voiceover work for two medical companies, one where his work was used in the U.S., and the other where he did commercials and videos that aired in France, Africa and the Middle East.
Some of the projects he has worked on are particularly meaningful to him, such as doing the voiceover for a documentary for an anniversary celebration of the Masons of D.C. “It was one of my favorite projects,” he recalls. He also worked with a local breast cancer organization, where he did promotional work for the organization’s annual breast cancer walk. He recently worked on a radio and television campaign for B.B. King’s Blues Club in Montgomery, Alabama, and the Wind Creek Hotel and Casino, where the restaurant is located.
However, just as Scott was hitting his stride, he had his second setback.
Battling COVID and Saving his Voice
Scott’s plans to advance his career in voiceover were seriously sidelined for the past 14 months. His nightmare started as a dream — a monthlong vacation in Paris and London, two cities that he loved, to celebrate Christmas and bring in the new year of 2020. He returned home in early January 2020, prepared to undergo a scheduled surgery to remove a nidus (which is similar to a blood clot) from his arm. “They performed the surgery, but it pretty much just went south,” he said. “Toward the end of my surgery, my body shut down, and I went into respiratory distress syndrome,” he states.
A series of medical calamities followed, including kidney and heart failure. His doctors could not diagnose what was happening to Scott or why it was happening. Scott says that his team consulted with twenty other surgeons around the country, and initially concluded that the anesthesia was the culprit. “They thought the respiratory distress and organ failure were because I had an adverse reaction to either the anesthesia or one of the other medications. They weren’t sure.” The medical team eventually discovered that his reaction was caused by the COVID-19 virus. Scott would eventually suffer further crises. “I had a stroke, and while at the hospital, I got a staph infection,” he says.
In January 2020, Americans weren’t yet focused on the spread of COVID-19 in the United States, and it wasn’t standard practice to test for it before a patient had surgery. Also, people were looking toward China for virus spreaders and were not yet aware of how prevalent the virus was becoming in Europe. “Most likely, I went in infected,” he says. Doctors later told Scott that they believed that once they administered the anesthesia, it lowered his body’s defenses and allowed the virus to take over. They put Scott in a medically induced coma and on a ventilator for more than two weeks so he could heal.
“When I came out of the coma, I couldn’t move the right side of my body, and they couldn’t figure out why,” he said. They did an MRI and determined that he’d had a stroke caused by COVID.
Perhaps, among the most frightening effects of this voice actor’s COVID-19 experience was that he temporarily lost his voice. “I had no voice at the beginning,” he recalls. “My voice would come and go. It was sometimes a struggle to talk, and, sometimes, my speech would slur,” he says. “I temporarily withdrew from pursuing my voiceover goals because I wanted to work on getting my voice back to full capacity.”
He spoke and read out loud every day, but he believes two things helped tremendously. First, he purchased voice straws, which are differently-shaped straws used for vocal exercises. The other critical thing was that he listened to recordings of his sessions with Denise Woods, one of most sought-after voice coaches and the author of the recently released The Power of Voice: A Guide to Making Yourself Heard. Her advice about voice control helped in his recovery.
“She helped me with my effort to control my voice,” he says. “I would get frustrated a lot, especially if I couldn’t speak or if my voice would slur, and I would start panicking, which made everything worse … One of the things that Denise always emphasized to me was taking a deep breath and relaxing when I started to feel that frustration and panic. I started making sure that I was doing that, and it made a big difference.”
Because of the stroke, Scott wasn’t able to walk normally and had to use a walker for more than three months. Physical therapy helped, but even after a year, he still has a way to go. “My equilibrium still hasn’t come back fully, even though I can walk,” he says. “Once in a while, I’ll lose my balance. I think it’s just going to take time to heal.”
Scott has worked hard to come back from his stroke and COVID-19 experience, and he has been getting better and better over the past fourteen months. His kidneys are functioning, though not at full capacity, and while his doctors tell him to be patient, he is excited to be back behind the mic and back on track in his voiceover career. He has been through a lot, but the bottom line is, he says, “I was lucky, I got out of the hospital.”
Sadly, his father was not so lucky. Nearly a year after Scott faced his COVID-19 ordeal, his father was diagnosed with the disease in late December 2020. “I knew that this was going to be a terrible bout for him because he was 86 and had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease the year before, and he’d had a stroke as well,” says Scott. “Then, when he got COVID in December, he had a COVID-related stroke. He never really recovered.” His father died on February 18, 2021, at home with his family in Baltimore.
Voice Acting Meets Logistics: Working A Job While Pursuing A Dream
Scott has remained employed full-time while he has pursued his voiceover career. He has worked for thirteen years in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), where he has been a logistician for the assistant secretary for preparedness and response. His agency is currently responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, working with physicians and hospitals to provide medical assistance and treatment for coronavirus patients. Currently, they are supporting COVID-19 vaccine distribution and administration. Scott began his work with HHS during Hurricane Katrina as a consultant from Lockheed-Martin.
Before joining the federal government, Scott worked with quite a few different companies. “I’ve done everything from working for a courier company in their call center to bookkeeping for the courier company. I’ve also worked as a paralegal and legal assistant. I’ve done sales, marketing, and public relations,” he says. He has also worked in the wireless industry; at Advanced Telecom, which later became Cellular One, Scott worked his way up to district manager over four years, from 1995 to 1999.
“I don’t know if it’s a route, but it has been really interesting,” he says of his job history. “I’ve never applied for a job. Things just were offered to me, and I accepted them,” he adds. He believes he’s been able to succeed in so many industries because of his ability to adapt and learn quickly. “My ability to be flexible is something that’s needed, no matter what industry you work in or what you do,” he says. “Things are constantly changing. If you don’t adapt and have the ability to learn new things, you’ll get left behind … Working in multiple industries has also allowed me to learn more about myself, as well.” That agility and experience, he says, has made him a better voice actor.
Family: Passing on Generational Lessons and Talent
Scott’s flexibility and adaptability seem to be family traits passed down from his parents, Washington, D.C., native Blanton Scott and Nancy Holliday, who hailed from North Carolina. Scott’s life was, in many ways, shaped by his parents’ interests and talents. He learned from his parents’ independent spirits and their willingness to embrace change. Born in Washington, D.C., Maurice Scott has two sisters: older sister, Teresita (Terry), and younger sister, Jamilla. He was raised between the DMV (D.C., Maryland, Virginia) area and North Carolina.
Scott said his father never wanted to work for anyone, and he succeeded at the goal. The senior Scott had an eclectic collection of businesses, including an engraving and printing shop in Baltimore; the first black-owned book store in Annapolis, Maryland; and several beauty salons in Maryland. He was also an inventor who held patents on several products, including a multipurpose film strip and focusing screen that allowed manual 35mm cameras to focus without the user making adjustments to the camera. His father also created a Black Arts Festival in Annapolis in the early 1970s.
Scott’s father had also served in the Navy and traveled extensively as a young man. He lived in the United Kingdom and Spain, and, later in life, would spend time in Nigeria. Scott discovered that he, too, had that same travel bug. “I love to travel, and I’ve been to many places around the world,” he says. He has visited more than 20 countries, including South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Zambia, France, the U.K., Italy, Switzerland, Canada, Iceland, Japan, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Belize, Honduras, Mexico, St. Barts, Bermuda, Antigua, and The Bahamas.
Scott’s mother was also a business owner. She moved back to North Carolina with Scott, where they lived through most of Scott’s elementary and junior high school years. They returned to the DMV area and lived in Silver Spring, Maryland, where Scott attended high school. His mother went to work for the Visiting Nurses Association.
He also shared his parent’s musical talent. His mother played the French horn, and his father played the guitar. Scott also picked up the guitar; eventually, he learned to play a total of fourteen instruments. “I started taking piano and violin lessons at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina,” he says, naming a university that has one of the premier music schools in the Southeast and offers community music and arts programs for talented young musicians and performing artists.
He then learned the organ guitar, flute, trumpet, cello, tuba, French horn, baritone, clarinet, bassoon, harp, xylophone, and marimba throughout elementary, junior high, and high school. He also learned to play the bagpipes during summer band camp in Statesville, North Carolina.
Scott played the flute and trumpet in his ninth-grade marching band. In the tenth through twelfth grades, he played trumpet, French horn, baritone, and the tuba in marching bands. “I was always playing in a band,” he says. “If they needed someone to play a particular instrument because someone was out, I would pick up the instrument and start playing. I was constantly filling in for little things here and there. Playing in the marching band was always one of my favorite school activities.”
One of his most memorable childhood memories with his father was their encounter over a guitar. “One weekend, I picked up one of his guitars, and I sat down and started playing ‘Ode to Joy,’” he says. “My father comes in, picks up a twelve-string guitar, and starts playing,” he reminisces. “I started hearing a little bit of Spanish style, and all of a sudden, he was playing flamenco. I told him how I love the classical guitar and flamenco music, and he starts to tell me how he learned to play the flamenco in Spain and how it’s always been one of his passions.” He says his father told him, “it’s probably in your blood because you were born to play classical guitar flamenco music.”
Despite the critical role music played in his life as he grew up, Scott says he hasn’t played an instrument since he was twenty years old. “Life happens,” he says. “At the time, I wasn’t able to keep up with it.” He says that he plans to play again.
Scott says that, other than music, he was interested in drama and science. “While growing up, I wanted to be a scientist and a musician.” His interest in science was a little more problematic for his family than his interest in music and drama.
“I remember when I was in fourth grade, and I got a color television for Christmas, and I took the back off of it to see how it operated. That drove everybody crazy,” he says. “Then, in sixth grade, I was doing a project for the science fair, and I decided I would create simulations of lightning. I had these two jars. One was a positive charge, and one was a negative charge. I had two Popsicle sticks with the fishing line between and clouds made out of aluminum foil. As I drew the clouds closer together, the sparks started to generate to simulate lightning. My mom brought the wrong battery, I needed one of those big ones with four prongs on top. Instead, I went to my alarm clock, and pulled the prong halfway out of the outlet, took both of the wires, and stuck them to one of the prongs,” he continues. “Next thing I know, there was a big poof. My wall around the alarm clock and the electrical outlet was black, and all the electricity in the house went out. I ended up doing a volcano for the science fair.”
Photograph: A Hobby Turned Business
As an adult, Scott has another, less explosive hobby. When he’s not working on his voiceover career or at his job at HHS, he takes photographs.
“About seven years ago, I started taking photos as a hobby, and it morphed into a business, he says. “I was posting my photos online, people would see my images, and they would ask me to do headshots, or portraits, or photography at events,” he says. His photos have been published in magazines and several were published in the book UnPresidented, which portrayed people’s reactions to the inauguration of former President Donald J. Trump through a collection of photographs taken by a variety of photographers. He continues to do photography for himself and others, but his focus remains on voiceover.
Scott plans to grow his voiceover career in D.C. rather than seek greener pastures in New York, Los Angeles, or Atlanta. “I think there’s definitely a market here,” he says. “There’s a lot of industrial work and political campaigns. There is also a lot of work within the government as well.” He says at this point, he wants to focus on doing “less government work and more of the work that I want to do, which is commercials, promos, narration, and possibly, animation or video games.”
He says that technology has changed the voiceover game. “You can do national promo campaigns and even commercials from your home, as long as you have a professional studio.” He adds, “The work is there. It’s just a matter of putting yourself out there to find it.”
While Scott’s story of triumph over adversity inspires numerous people, he finds inspiration among many individuals in the voiceover industry who have “gained success through their persistence and accomplishments,” he says. Scott says his biggest inspiration has been Donovan Corneetz. Scott is also especially inspired by Rudy Gaskins, Joan Baker, Rodd Houston, Diriki Mack, Thembisa Mshaka, Toy Holmes, Debbe Hirata, Gabe Kunda, Tim Freedlander, Fabian Toro, Tre Mosley, John Francois Donaldson, Mara Juno, Rolanda Watts, Randy Thomas, Jason Linere White, and Rick Party. “I admire their journey, their growth from where they started,” he stated.
Scott has had a remarkable journey of his own, and he plans to keep moving forward.
Christy DeBoe Hicks is a communications consultant, writer, and editor with more than 30 years of experience working with policy, nonprofit, education, and community organizations, as well as in the music, theater, and publishing fields. After a hiatus, she has returned as a regular contributor to Global Communicator.
