Prime Videoâs English dub of The Ghost in the Shell features some familiar voices like Suzie Yeung and Bill Butts in the leading roles as Kusanagi and Batou. It also features a notable new talent in Tony Weaver, Jr., who plays Section 9 sniper Saito. 

Before this, dub watchers may have heard him in Snowball Earth from earlier this year as Nishimura. These roles mark the beginning of Weaverâs voice acting career, which heâs recently decided to jump into alongside his other jobs: running his charity Weird Enough, writing middle grade graphic novelsâhis 2024 debut, Weirdo, was drawn by Jes and Cin Wibowo and won Harvey and Eisner Awardsâand making videos on YouTube.

“I donât know what balance is, and I sure havenât found it,” laughed Weaver. When he recently spoke with io9, he described himself as “pretty competitive” and always setting high expectations across his various skill sets. What helps him manage it all is his team and Weird Enough itself being self-sufficient enough for him to compartmentalize and determine what’ll dominate his focus on a daily basis. He may decide to focus on his charity one day, and the next, heâll be in full writer mode for a book or script. And when itâs time to shift to voice acting? Thatâs what evenings are for.Â

Typically, content creators will build themselves up before transitioning to new, usually more creative ventures. For Weaver, pivoting to voice work isnât a surprise so much as it is overdue: he graduated from college with a BFA in acting and always planned to enter this space. But at age 19, he had to choose between this or his then-rising charity and opted for the latter. With Weird Enough as his focus, itâs gotten big enough to include full-time staff and impact “over 500K kids a year” through outreach programs and providing books to kids in underfunded schools.

It was only recently that he realized voice acting didnât need to be an unfulfilled dream. So, he decided to “make my voice heard, even if itâs only by a handful of people”; since 2022, heâs made nearly 800 YouTube shorts covering a number of topics, like the kids literary crisis or toxicity in online spaces. Some videos require him to play multiple characters, and the scripts for those help prepare him for entering the competitive voice acting space.Â

“You have to sit with an audition knowing the greats are sharpening their blades,” Weaver noted. âIf you want to be in an anime, youâre competing with thousands of equally qualified people.â Even with that competition, he happily talked up voice actors he’s befriended and who showed him the ropesâduring our interview, he shouted out Dan Da Danâs AJ Beckles and Anairis Quiñones, Zeno Robinson (My Hero Academia), and other Black voice actors who helped him understand the industry once they understood he truly wanted to do the work. 

Without them, Weaver probably wouldnât have landed Snowball Earth or The Ghost in the Shell. Online or in real life, itâs important for everyone to have a community or two in their lives. He knows heâs got his own thanks to his work, and loves reaching out to them in a way thatâs “communicative, but not extractive.” Even so, he freely admitted the size of it has taken him by surpriseâfor instance, he was surprised to learn Power Rangers actor Karan Ashley and an unnamed executive “really high up” at a major company both follow him online and love his work. 

Understandably, learning the scope of his reach puts some pressure on Weaver, while also inspiring him across his various pursuits. When it comes to voice work, he made clear his work in this space is thanks to a team effort that goes beyond him. “I believe that every obstacle I’m able to surmount is a path that I’m leaving for other [Black] voice actors to walk in,” he explained. “Zeno left footsteps for me, the same way Cree Summer and Phil LaMarr left steps for all of us.”

His contribution to that path comes in providing VO advice and making videos encouraging other performers take on the second role. While any actor can join in, he makes them in part to help address continued disparity for what Black actors can be in voiceover roles, since theyâre often âhungry for the opportunity to show theyâre capable and doing something.” Like those actors, Weaver’s hungry, both to continue his voice acting dreams and to deliver a performance that lets him stand alongside his mentors and friends. Whether he books a leading role or keeps getting supporting parts, he hopes to be in this for the long haul. Or to put it another way…

“No matter what the opportunity was, Iâd love to step into the world of another character,” he declared. “Iâm in this for the love of the game.”

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