Narrators

In June 2025, Vikas Adam was inducted as a Golden Voice, AudioFile's lifetime achievement honor for audiobook narrators.

Where do you find inspiration for accents or other aspects of your performance?

Short answer: All around me. Long answer: In undergrad, all my professors would hammer into us that “experience is one of the best teachers to be an actor.” However, our yet-to-be-developed pre-frontal cortexes just couldn’t comprehend that. So as I lived life, and experienced its ups, downs, diagonals, loop de loops—I started to understand what my wise teachers were trying so hard to knock into my head. So an even shorter answer—life. But another place I find inspiration is in the text itself. Studying character exploration and creation has been one of my ongoing loves of study as an actor. So I still pull from the many years as a working actor and how to craft as different of a character for the sonic experience. I develop acting exercises and activities I try on myself and my students to see if it can unlock some new discovery with a character. One of the best compliments I can receive is when someone shares that they initially thought there were multiple actors doing the book and were shocked that I was voicing everyone. I recently had a friend and colleague tell me they were annoyed while listening to a book I narrated and “the actress started speaking duet style” but then had to double-check that it was just me narrating. That kind of feedback lifts my spirits.

Tell us about a memorable character you’ve given voice to.

Oh boy, I don’t know how I can answer this since there have been so many incredible characters, but immediately off the top of my head there’s Sami Kierce in Harlan Coben’s NOBODY’S FOOL. He’s so deliciously flawed, but his self-deprecating sense of humor and moral compass and relationship with his wife, Molly, connected me to him. But then there’s Andy Mills from the incredible series starting with LAVENDER HOUSE by Lev AC Rosen, who’s a gay ex-cop now turned detective in 1950s San Francisco. He’s uber-masculine, a “man’s man” and a product of his environment, and to explore his walls beginning to come down and find a sense of acceptance amongst the queer community he initially policed and terrorized.

What has surprised you the most about your work in audiobooks?

What’s really surprised me is how audiobooks have given me the opportunity to play characters I never would’ve gotten an opportunity to play otherwise. Especially with camera work it can be so specific and contingent on looks over what the talent is behind the actor, and so to be able to play all the characters—wowza. I had a challenging time being called in for South Asian characters on camera because I didn’t fit whatever mold the industry perceived as “South Asian.” I wasn’t brown enough to be South Asian and I wasn’t white enough to be other characters. So when audiobooks came along and I was able to actually authentically play South Asian and pronounce our names and words authentically (as opposed to my camera counterparts who looked the part but were providing anglicized colonial pronunciations), I finally felt— and I recognize the irony in my word choice here—seen. What’s incredible about our industry is how there is an effort on presenting books as authentically as possible, and that means casting the right people who can bring that lived experience if required. Recording audiobooks has allowed me to live as the type of actor I envisioned— someone who’s not relegated to one specific type of role, but to be able to play as many different characters and genres and writing styles as possible.

See also:

5 Questions with Narrator Vikas Adam | Interview with CANDACE LEVY | | FEBRUARY 24, 2021

The Golden House