BATMAN: YEAR ONE Spotlight – Katee Sackhoff

Katie Sackhoff of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA fame is the voice of Detective Sarah Essen, partner to and love interest of Jim Gordon in the new BATMAN: YEAR ONE animated film. Katee admitted to being aware of Batman (“Who isn’t?”) but had to do a bit of research in order to get to know and play the less-familiar-to-her character of Sarah. She described the prep work for voice acting as being just as intensive as the research she normally does for live acting, but said she felt that voice work may be even harder due to having to perform solo in the booth. She has to rely heavily on her imagination during her performance, something that she was made very familiar with from her role on GALACTICA.

“I loved every minute of this [Batman] project, everyone involved is just phenomenal,” Katee said. “And Sarah is the closest character I’ve ever played to myself. I just played her as me, with a lot of strength, but I also tried to add a vulnerable, child-like quality that allows you to forgive her for the unsavory things she does.”

Doing yet another Comic-Con and appearing at two panels and attendant press events did not faze the highly-demonstrative actress, who gives every appearance her all. “Every time I do a con, I try desperately hard to give each person an individual experience because I know that I have the greatest fans in the world and they are so supportive…and I want to give them everything I have, but I am very drained by the end of it — I get pretty exhausted!”

In addition to her voiceover work for BATMAN: YEAR ONE, Katee also voices the Black Cat in the upcoming Spider-Man videogame SPIDERMAN: EDGE OF TIME, and voices first ever female Mandalorian in Season 4 of the Cartoon Network’s Star Wars animated series, THE CLONE WARS.