ATMOSPHERE - You may not know her, but you probably know her voice. That's because you've almost certainly asked her some of your most perplexing questions — and she's answered them. She's also guided you to many of your destinations. And she's might have even given you some serious shade on more than one occasion. Who is she? We're talking about Siri.
Much to the dismay of any tech conspiracy theorists who believe she's nothing more than a virtual assistant living inside all Apple devices, Siri is the vocal product of the very real, very human, Susan Bennett. The professional voiceover artist fell into the role of the original American Siri (Apple also released British and Australian versions, too) somewhat by chance, but she's been in front of a microphone for most of her career.
"It was pretty much accidental but it was also sort of in the cards because it was very related to music," Bennett says. "I've been playing piano since I was 4 and I took lessons for many years. I ultimately became a professional musician, a singer and keyboard player."
Like most ambitious creatives, Bennett took on a variety of side hustles, singing advertising jingles and providing backup vocals for musicians. During one particular session, a voice actor booked for a gig didn't show up. "The owner of the studio said, 'Susan, you don't have an accent. Come over here and read the copy.' And I thought 'oh I can do this,'" she says. "I read the copy and did well and thought, 'this could be something to add to my freelance things to make a living.'"
Born in Burlington, Virginia, Bennett now lives in Atlanta with her musician husband (she has one son, a photographer in Los Angeles, with her first husband, a professional hockey player). While she's no longer the voice of Siri (Bennett says Apple started tweaking the tone with iPhone 5s in 2013 and gave it a full overhaul with OS11 in 2017), she's definitely busy, doing speaking events around the world and performing with two bands — Boomers Gone Wild and Canyon Ladies. She also found time to squeeze in this Q&A with us.
How'd you get the Siri gig?
Because I was a freelancer, I did a lot of commercial work, narrations for film and documentaries, and I ended up doing a lot of messaging work...the kind of stuff you hear on phones. One day the script was very weird and it was a new thing. Ultimately I found out it was called IVR, interactive voice response or TTS, text to speech, which is the language of virtual assistants. None of us really knew that this stuff would end up being Siri and Alexa and Cortana. So when I found out I was Siri on Oct. 4, 2011, when she appeared, it was a huge surprise. A friend emailed me — a fellow voice actor — and said, 'hey we're playing around with this new iPhone app, isn't this you?' And I listened to it and I just said "whaaaat? Who is this person?!"
You didn't know before that?
I had not [recorded] directly for Apple but for a company called Nuance — they're the biggest IVR company in the world. Apple bought our voices from Nuance without our knowing it. That is problematic from a voiceover actor's point of view. When you're doing messaging work or GPS work, people are just looking for info, they're not going to notice your voice unless you're a celebrity or you talk funny. But suddenly your anonymous voice becomes a character like Siri. And people, whether they realize it or not, know your voice, so it really affects other work you are capable of doing.
It took me almost two whole years to reveal myself as [Siri] because I knew I'd be stereotyped and typecast. And then finally when I did, what I suspected to happen did come to pass, but there were other really amazing opportunities that came along with it.
Did people start to recognize your voice?
Some people did and some people didn't. Even some voice actors who typically have a good ear didn't know [it was me] because the original voice — this is my regular speaking voice — of Siri [goes into Siri voice] kind of talked down here like that. Of all the years that my voice was on the phone, only two people recognized it.[HSW]