Redd Pepper: the voiceover artist who found fame on the tube
While there’s no shortage of people who hate hearing the sound of their own voice, it’s an easy way to make a living, provided one’s tones are distinctive or sonorous enough. Redd Pepper didn’t set out to become an instantly recognisable voiceover artist with an extensive catalogue of movie and TV credits, but it happened anyway under the unlikeliest of circumstances.
Born in Barbados before moving to London with his family when he was a child with his parents and nine siblings, the Lewisham native accidentally stumbled upon his big break when he was hired to work on the tube. Thanks to his deep and syrupy voice, he inadvertently turned the daily announcements into works of art, with passengers regularly shocked to hear such gravelly tones rattling off the destinations.
To keep himself occupied, Pepper would have a little fun at everyone’s expense by adopting a more cinematic cadence to relay the announcements, which came in particularly handy when a television executive was making their morning commute. After hearing such phenomenal intonation, he rushed to the front of the train, handed over his business card, and a change of career was imminent.
Since the mid-1990s, Pepper has provided voiceovers for hundreds of movie trailers, television advertisements, video game roles, and generally anything that requires the most dulcet verbiage imaginable. In a way, he’s become the United Kingdom’s very own Don LaFontaine, the legendary voice artist and recording booth icon who turned ominous voiceovers into a lasting legacy.
In fact, Pepper and LaFontaine’s equally powerful line deliveries were so similar that they were regularly mistaken for each other on voice alone, and it’s been the gift that kept on giving. Anyone with a booming voice can generally find steady work as a voiceover artist, but being compared to the greatest and most famous to ever do it was hugely beneficial in keeping Pepper in demand for so long.
When asked by the British magazine Deadline if he ever missed his old haunt of the London Underground, Pepper offered an answer that was every bit as obvious as it was explanatory. “Listen, I make £3,000 to £4,000 per movie trailer,” he said. “What do you think?”
Considering that spiritual predecessor LaFontaine was known to record hundreds of voice gigs on a weekly basis and became an incredibly wealthy man as a result, it’s a no-contest. There are plenty of ways to make money in the entertainment industry, and one of the easiest is to sound like nobody else. It’s been a goldmine for not only LaFontaine but also on-camera talents like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sean Connery, and having an accent that can’t be replicated by anyone other than a million different impressionists is one of the most overlooked yet bulletproof ways to carve out a unique niche.
