Jan Johns is an actress who voiced various female characters in Fallout 3 and its add-ons Operation: Anchorage, Broken Steel and Mothership Zeta; Fallout 4 and its add-ons Far Harbor and Nuka-World; as well as Fallout 76 and its update Wastelanders.
Career
Work on the Fallout series
Fallout 3
Jan is a close friend of Wes Johnson, who is also a frequent Fallout voice actor. After Jan was cast for Fallout 3 (2008), Wes helped Jan prepare and coached her on what to expect when recording. She went into the recording session for Fallout 3 completely cold, having been given no prior information on characters or story. Jan ended up recording lines for many of the young women characters in the game. In a retrospective interview, she said that she wished she could have given some stronger performances, since it was one of her first experiences doing voiceover for a video game and the recording went by quickly. However, she did also say she was proud of Sierra Petrovita in particular, as the performance came to her organically, with Sierra being close to Jan's own personality.[1]
Other characters that Jan voiced include Lucy West and the companion Clover, as well as many other characters with the voice type FemaleAdult04, such as Angela Staley and Bittercup. For Fallout 3's add-ons (2009), Jan voiced Specialist Olin in Operation: Anchorage, a holotape in Broken Steel and Sally in Mothership Zeta.[2]
Fallout 4
Jan returned in Fallout 4 (2015); she initially did not know what she was auditioning for, as the project was under a codename, but soon figured it out after reading a line that mentioned caps. Jan said that she had "loosened up" somewhat by the time of Fallout 4 compared to her prior performances in Fallout 3. Additionally, she was cast for specific characters rather than a block of several voices all at once.[1] In Fallout 4, Jan voiced Scribe Haylen, Ellie Perkins, Colette Cooke and a Vault-Tec doctor.
In particular, Colette was one of the hardest roles for Jan to portray, because she felt that Colette was a much deeper character than most people realized. Because Colette is looking for her father, recording those lines brought Jan back to the time that her father went missing for a two-day period. She had a similar experience when recording lines of Ellie Perkins reflecting on Nick Valentine after he goes missing. She worked hard in toeing the fine line between portraying the character and self-indulgence for an actor.[3]
She reprised the role of Ellie for the Far Harbor add-on (2016), in addition to providing a system voice for DiMA's memory. In the Nuka-World add-on, she voiced Katelyn Alden and a park announcer, in addition to reprising the role of Sierra Petrovita from Fallout 3. The voice director heading the session was initially unaware that Sierra was a character from a previous game, and Jan was ecstatic when Sierra's return was casually revealed to her.[1]
Fallout 76
Jan was cast for several voices in Fallout 76 (2018), all of which were holotape-only characters in the game's original storytelling format. She voiced Enola Walker, Olivia Rivers and a chem addict, as well as additional voices such as Deidre, Sofie Yates, Thea and an irritable survivor. With the Wastelanders update (2020), as living humans returned to Appalachia, Jan voiced Heather Ellis, Juliette and Molly.
Credits
Fallout series
Other work
| Year | Title | Credited as/for |
|---|---|---|
| 2013 | Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes | Additional Voices |
| 2013 | House of Cards | Associate |
| 2014 | Hearthstone | Thud Lockspring / Conjured Mirage / Cursed Lieutenant |
| 2014 | Murdered: Soul Suspect | Additional Voices |
| 2016 | Mighty No. 9 | Mighty No. 3 |
| 2017-20 | The Loud House | Corinne / Narrator / Additional Voices |
| 2019 | Rage 2 | Ghost Biker / Ghost Assault |
| 2020 | Predator: Hunting Grounds | Female Predator |
| 2020 | Demon's Souls (2020) | Additional Voices |
| 2020 | World of Warcraft: Shadowlands | Additional Voices |
| 2021 | Seal Team | Mayday / Geraldo's Watch / Seal / Shark / Octopus |
| 2021-present | Mickey Mouse Funhouse | Windy / Farfus / Goldie / Sunny / Chip / Various |
| 2022 | Star Wars: The Old Republic - Legacy of the Sith | Colonel Gallo |
| 2022 | The Casagrandes | Glen / Lois / Prickly Pete |
| 2022 | Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed | Ghost |
| 2023 | Diablo IV | Creatures |
| 2023 | Starfield | Lieutenant Jillian Toft |
| 2025 | The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered | Breton Female |
External links
- Fallout Off The Record Podcast - Episode 57: Jan Johns (Fallout Off the Record - September 30, 2016)
- The Voices of Fallout 4: Jan Johns (Trainwreck'd Society - March 31, 2017)
- Fallout 4 Cast Reunion ~ Wes Johnson, Stephen Russell, Paul Eiding, Peter Jessop, and more (CHAD: A Fallout 76 Podcast - June 23, 2022)
