“I’m so excited, you have no idea,” Linda Ballantyne says of her fast-approaching trip to Australia for Supanova Comic Con & Gaming.
“Every day Katie Griffin will write to me and say, ’21 more sleeps.’ Stuff like that.”
The Sailor Moon co-stars are close friends and the day previous had even attended an audition together. They’ll often attend the same audition, and a lot of the time they’re going for the same part.
“So then we drive home saying, ‘What did you do?’ ‘What did you?’ ‘Oh, really?!’ ‘Oh, you’re going to get it for sure.’ ‘No, you are!’”
Next year will mark the 20th anniversary of Ballantyne’s stint on the anime; a milestone which the prolific voice actor describes as “really weird”.
“It makes me feel old,” she laughs. “It doesn’t seem that long ago, and then sometimes it does seem that long ago. When I was doing Sailor Moon, my youngest child was a toddler, and she would sort of walk around behind me, and as I was warming up I’d sort of be trying to get my voice tuned in on the higher pitches and stuff, and she’d walk around and be like, ‘Ahhh-Ahhh-Ahhh,’ and I’d say, ‘Are you making fun of me?’ And she’d nod her head yes. Right.”
“So I look at her and I go, ‘Okay, you are 20 and that means that it was that long ago.’ Wow. She’s the face of Sailor Moon for me.”
Growing up, Ballantyne’s three daughters were definitely aware of Sailor Moon, but it appears they didn’t brag about it too much, if at all.
“They never said anything about it to their friends,” she tells. “I said to my daughter Madeline, ‘What are your friends dressing up for, for Halloween?’ And she said, ‘Well, you know, so-and-so is going as this and so-and-so’s going into this, and Kendra is going is Sailor Moon.’ And I was like, ‘Really, Sailor Moon? Really?!’ ‘Yeah.’ And I said, ‘Did you tell her?’ And she said, ‘Tell her what?’ I said, ‘That your mother was the voice of Sailor Moon?’ She goes, ‘Oh no, it didn’t come up.’ ‘She was dressing as Sailor Moon, and you can’t just mention it?’”
“Now that I’ve gone to more Comic Cons and stuff, they tend to be a little bit more vocal about it, and they realise that they can get something out of it.”
That realisation recently led to a “painful” experience at New York Comic-Con.
“Absolutely painful,” she laughs. “My middle daughter, Shay, said, ‘Oh my God, mum, Tom Holland is going to be at the Comic-Con. You have to get a picture taken with me, with him. So take my picture, and make sure to tell him that he should probably marry me.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, this is a lot of work for me. Oh my God.’”
Ballantyne is a regular at conventions across the globe and the OG Sailor Moon fandom hasn’t faltered for a second since the show first aired.
“I think a big part of it is that it was an episodic show, so the storyline just kept developing, and the kids just didn’t have anything like that at all,” she explains.
“Another part of it that was really important was how well defined each character was; they each had their own personality, they each had their own little quirks. None of them were perfect by any stretch of the imagination.”
“And I think that people could really identify with them, and they say, ‘I am so Sailor Mercury, but my best friend is totally Jupiter.’ And people say that to this day. You know, whenever they come and see me, they’ll, they’ll just say, ‘This is what brought my friend and I together. We are best friends, and we always have been. She will always be Sailor Jupiter and I will always be Mercury.’”
With a huge resume to-date – including so many roles that Ballantyne struggles to remember everything she’s worked on – there’s plenty of other things that pop up while she travels the world.
“So, one of the ones that has a tremendous amount of popularity is Thomas and the Magic Railroad,” she says. “And it was just a movie that I did, years and years ago and I was Percy, the littlest engine in it, and the following that I have for that is unbelievable.”
“It’s really strange. I had no idea. And again that was one of those ones you would have no idea until you went to a comic con. That’s a biggie for sure. And also, I think a Wicked from Cyber Chase. I do a show called Cyber Chase and I played this crazy witch in it and that one’s got a pretty good following as well. That’s probably my favourite character that I’ve ever played.”
“It’s crazy. You never know which ones are going to take, and which ones aren’t.”
You can catch Linda Ballantyne at Supanova Comic Con & Gaming Adelaide (November 2-3) and Brisbane (November 8-10).
