Entertainment

Column: Meet the voice coach who's become a 'spiritual guru' to Hollywood's biggest stars

Published

1 year ago

November 18, 2024

Column: Meet the voice coach who's become a 'spiritual guru' to Hollywood's biggest stars

A secret center of the musical theater universe lies almost 3,000 miles from Broadway in a modestly grand house in Toluca Lake. On a late summer day, the home’s most striking feature was the figure of a white standard French poodle. Visible through one of the windows flanking the front door, she sat so still that she might have been mistaken for a statue, like the lion-dogs that guard the entrance to a Shinto shrine.

If musical theater had a canine sentinel, it might well be a standard French poodle. But no. When the door opened, the dog, Belle, sniffed politely before trotting deeper into the house, neon-green-painted nails flashing, to pause briefly beside her owner: Eric Vetro, perhaps the leading vocal teacher and trainer of bold-faced names on stage and screen, including several of the leads in the upcoming film adaptation of “Wicked.”

Ariana Grande, who plays Galinda, has spoken often and at length about how long and how rigorously she worked on raising her pitch and honing her voice before auditioning for her dream role — and Vetro is the man who coached her.

Just as he coached Jonathan Bailey for his role as Fieyro. Just as he worked with Jeremy Allen White for his performance as Bruce Springsteen in the upcoming “Deliver Me From Nowhere” and Timothée Chalamet for “Willy Wonka” and the upcoming Bob Dylan biopic, “A Complete Unknown.” And Renée Zellweger for her Oscar-winning performance as Judy Garland in “Judy.” And Lea Michele for “Funny Girl,” Austin Butler for “Elvis,” Josh Gad for “The Book of Mormon” and “Frozen,” Emily Blunt for “Into the Woods” and “Mary Poppins Returns,” Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling for “La La Land” and Halle Bailey and Melissa McCarthy for “The Little Mermaid.”

The list goes on and on and on. It also includes plenty of equally well-known recording artists, such as John Legend, Shawn Mendes, Katy Perry and Pink. Indeed, if a famous actor or singer refers to the work they’ve done with a vocal coach, there’s a very good chance they are talking about Vetro. Invariably in very glowing terms.

“Even though my range has always been high soprano,” Grande says via email, “Galinda requires a very different technique, and has a very different sound than the one I use to sing my pop music. Her voice is classical and operatic, and I had the honor of working on that every day together with Eric in preparation. [He] would paint Belle’s nails pink and green and put little pink ribbons in her hair to send me off before each audition or callback,” she adds. “Not only is he the best at what he does but he is truly the most thoughtful and kindest man in the world.”

Dressed, on this day, in black Prada jacket and shoes, which match his meticulously groomed short beard and hair, Vetro, 68, is an arresting figure, with a ready and dazzlingly white smile and the slender, expressive hands of a piano player. That’s how he got into music, initially — he’s played piano since he was 5. A voice major at New York University, he worked in cabaret for many years, learning, he says, the valuable lesson of listening, both to what a person’s voice can do, and also to what it should do.

Voice coach Eric Vetro gives a lesson at his home this summer.

(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

“So many young girls can belt it out and they get known for having a big voice. But that cheats them. You have to listen carefully and adjust, get them to understand that some voices are more beautiful when they’re not bigger.”

His work as a musician, teacher and adviser led him to L.A., where, he says, “I kept meeting people and getting coaching jobs. If you throw yourself into it 100 percent, you’re going to get noticed.”

In the beginning, most of his clients were outside the entertainment industry: nurses, waiters, people who just wanted to sing better. Then he got hired by Craig Zaden and Neil Marin to work on the 1999 remake of “Annie,” which led to “Chicago,” “Hairspray” and “Hairspray Live.” He began working with Bette Midler during her Vegas residency, Hugh Jackman on “Boy From Oz” and Grande, who began working with Vetro when she was 23. “Once you get going,” Vetro says, “it just snowballs. Now I don’t work with ‘regular’ people at all.”

Now he works on movies, theatrical shows, musical tours, brought in by directors, producers and musical directors to work with performers with a variety of experience levels and demands — singers, like Grande, moving into musical acting roles; actors, like Blunt, in their first singing roles; artists on tour, and performers who are looking to grow their voice or achieve a specific sound.

For actors like Butler, White, Zellweger and Chalamet, who need to channel a well-known voice the first step is being aware of the voice they have.

“We start with voice lessons so they understand their own voice,” Vetro says. “Then we start with the realm of another voice. It might be pronunciation, or where they take their breaths or the accent. We start vocalizing in character — I asked Renee, ‘What would Judy think of this exercise?’”

The goal is to capture the essence of the person, he says. “You don’t want it to be an impersonation.”

Vetro says he has only turned one client away — a well-known model who had been offered a role on Broadway. “He was very good-looking, charming. And then he opened his mouth. I said, ‘If this were a movie, maybe, but for you to sing on Broadway is never going to happen.’ His girlfriend called me later to thank me.”

Thanks to a recently released BBC Maestro series, however, “regular people” can get the Vetro treatment. He is filming it on this particular summer day, on which his home is filled not just with two pianos and multiple keyboards, but also lights, cameras and sound equipment.

For about 30 minutes, he works with longtime students, singer-songwriter Heidi Webster and singer-actor David Burnham. Burnham, who played “Wicked’s” Fiyero on Broadway, started working with Vetro after he was cast in a Universal Studios theme park show. “Eric realigned my voice,” he says. “I have recordings of him doing lessons that I use before every Broadway show.”

Voice coach Eric Vetro gives a lesson to Heidi Webster, center, and David Burnham, right.

“Lessons” include singing scales with one’s hands in the air, dropping on the high note, or bending forward and being pulled up by the ascension of notes.

“We’re like athletes,” Burnham says. “Runners don’t race without warming up.”

There’s also a lot of breathing exercises — the famous “hee hee heeee,” jaw-dropping, face-wagging, arm-waving and humming through a straw, sometimes into a cup of water.

“It’s amazing what you can do with a straw,” says Jonathan Bailey via email. “I thought we elevated it two levels when instead of using a cup of water we used champagne flutes, which I just thought was the height of sophistication. He always had a naughty twinkle in his eye and we laughed and laughed and laughed.”

In preparation for “Wicked,” Bailey began working with Vetro, often over Zoom, while still filming “Fellow Travelers.”

“A real challenge for me was that I was filming in Canada and London and going back and forth. With ‘Fellow Travelers,’ I’d do 21-hour days where I’d either have to shout or sometimes I’d have to smoke,” he says. “[Eric] sees you at all different moments of the day and in all different levels of excitability. It’s amazing, you start in your sort of home setting with him and build such a kinship and make such a friendship that he becomes sort of a spiritual guru.”

Vetro’s love of his clients and craft is palpable. The walls of his studio are papered with photographs of his students (and their various awards), and the fondness with which he speaks of them appears to be boundless and utterly sincere; he radiates positive energy. He needs to — being the entertainment industry’s go-to vocal coach is not a 9-to-5 gig. Vetro works pretty much round the clock, often consulting in several time zones. After filming the BBC piece and doing this interview, he will work with one student in Australia at 5 and another, in London, at 11.

Friends tell him he needs to take a vacation once in a while, he says, but he has no interest. There’s always, as they say, another opening, another show.

“I just love it so much,” he says. “It does not feel like work. I’d rather do this than anything.”

Entertainment

Meet the Mexican American talent behind ‘KPop Demon Hunters’

Published

1 hour ago

March 4, 2026

Press Room

Meet the Mexican American talent behind ‘KPop Demon Hunters’

The House of Pies, a Los Feliz institution, is bustling on a chilly January morning.

It wouldn’t be shocking if some of the patrons here for breakfast were casually chit-chatting about the cultural behemoth that “KPop Demon Hunters” has become. After all, the 2025 animated saga about three music stars fighting otherworldly foes is now the most-watched movie ever on Netflix; “Golden,” its showstopping track, has since become the first Korean pop song to ever win a Grammy.

But for Danya Jimenez, 29, who sits across from me sipping coffee, the reception to the movie she began writing on back in 2020 isn’t entirely surprising, but certainly delayed.

“When we first started working on it, I was like, ‘People are going to be obsessed with this. It’s going to be the best thing ever,’” she recalls. But as several years passed, and she and her writing partner and best friend Hannah McMechan, 30, moved on to other projects. They weren’t sure if “KPop” would ever see the light of day. Production for animation takes time.

It wasn’t until she learned that her Mexican parents were organically aware of the movie that Jimenez considered it could actually live up to the potential she initially had hoped for.

“Without me saying anything, my parents were like, ‘People are talking about this’ — like my dad’s co-workers or my aunt’s friends — that’s when I started to realize, ‘This might be something big,’” she says.

“But never in my life did I think it would be at this scale.”

“KPop Demon Hunters” is now nominated for two Academy Awards: animated feature and original song. And that’s on top of how ubiquitous the characters — Rumi, Mira and Zoey — already are.

“Everyone sends me photos of knockoff ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ dolls from across the border,” Jimenez says laughing. “My friend got me a shirt from Mexicali with the three girls, but they do not look anything like themselves. She even got my name on it, which was awesome.”

After graduating from Loyola Marymount University in 2018, Jimenez and McMechan quickly found their footing in the industry, as well as representation. But it was their still unproduced screenplay, “Luna Likes,” about a Mexican American teenage girl obsessed with the late chef and author Anthony Bourdain, that tangentially put them on the “KPop” path.

“Luna Likes” earned the pair a spot at the prestigious Sundance Screenwriters Lab, where Nicole Perlman, who co-wrote “Guardians of the Galaxy,” served as one of their advisors. Perlman, credited as a production consultant on “KPop,” thought they would be a good fit.

Jimenez didn’t see the connection between her R-rated comedy about a moody Mexican American teen and a PG animated feature set in the world of K-pop music, but the duo still pitched. Their idea more closely resembled an indie dramedy than an epic action flick.

“If [our version of ‘KPop’] were live-action, it would’ve been a million-dollar budget. It was the smallest movie ever. Our big finale was a pool party,” Jimenez says. “We had all of the girls and the boys with instruments, which obviously is not a thing in K-pop, and everyone was making out.”

Even though their original pitch wouldn’t work for the film, Maggie Kang, the co-director and also a co-writer, believed their voices as two young women who were best friends, roommates and creative collaborators could help the movie’s heroines feel more authentic.

“Maggie had already interviewed all of the more established writers, especially older men,” Jimenez says. “She knows the culture. She knew K-pop, she’s an animator. She just needed the girls’ voices to come through, so I think that’s why we got hired.”

Kang confirms this via email: “It’s always great to collaborate with writers who are the actual age of your characters! Hannah and Danya were exactly that,” she says. “They were very helpful in bringing a fresh, young voice to HUNTR/X.”

Neither Jimenez nor McMechan were K-pop fans at the time. As part of their research, they both started watching K-pop videos, but it was McMechan who got “sucked into the K-hole” first. Still, it didn’t take long until the video for BTS’ “Life Goes On” entranced Jimenez.

“K-pop is a river that you fall into, and it just takes you,” Jimenez says. BTS and Got7 are her favorite groups. For McMechan, the ensemble that captivates her most is Stray Kids.

In writing the trio of demon hunters, the co-writers modeled them after themselves. The characters’ propensity for ugly faces, silliness and a bit of grossness too, stems from the portrayals of girlhood and young womanhood that appeal to them. Jimenez, who says she was an angsty teen, most closely identifies with the rebellious Mira.

“I have a monotone vibe,” says Jimenez. “People always think that I’m a bitch just because I have a resting bitch face,” she says. “But as you can see in the movie, Mira cares so much about having everyone be really close. I feel like that’s how I’m with all my friends.”

Characters with strong personalities that are not simplistically likable feel the truest to Jimenez. In “Luna Likes,” the prickly protagonist is directly inspired by her experiences growing up, as well as the bond she shared with her dad over Bourdain’s “Parts Unknown” show.

“There’s a pressure to show that Mexicans are nice people and we’re hard workers. I was like, ‘Let’s make her kind of bitchy and very flawed,’” Jimenez says about Luna. “She’s a teenager in America and she should be given all the same opportunities — and also the forgiveness for being an ass— and [as] selfish at that age as anybody else.”

Hannah McMechan, left, and Danya Jimenez, co-writers of "KPop Demon Hunters," in Los Angeles

Though their upbringings were markedly different, it was their shared comedic sensibilities that connected Jimenez and McMechan when they met in college. The two were close long before deciding to pen stories together. “Having a writing partner is the best. I feel bad for people who don’t have a writing partner, no offense to them,” says Jimenez.

McMechan explains that their writing partnership works because it’s grounded on true friendship. And she believes they would not have gotten this far without each other. While McMechan’s strong suit is looking at the bigger picture, Jimenez finds humor in the details.

“Danya is definitely funnier than me,” says McMechan. “It’s really hard to write comedy in dialogue versus comedy in a situation because if you’re putting the comedy in the dialogue, it can sound so forced and cringey. But she’s really good at making it sound natural but still really funny.”

Though she had been writing stories for herself as a teen, Jimenez didn’t consider it a career path until as a high schooler she watched the romantic comedy “No Strings Attached,” in which Ashton Kutcher plays a production assistant for a TV series.

“He is having a horrible time. But I was so obsessed with movies and TV, and I was like, ‘That looks incredible. I want to be doing what he’s doing,’” she recalls. “And my dad was like, ‘That’s a job.’”

Danya Jimenez, one of the co-writers of "KPop Demon Hunters," stands near the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles.

As an infant, Jimenez spent some time living in Tijuana, where her parents are from, until the family settled back in San Diego, where she was born. And when she was around 5 years old, Jimenez, an only child, and her parents relocated to Orange County. Until then, Jimenez mostly spoke Spanish, which made for a tricky transition when starting school.

“I knew English, but it just wasn’t a habit,” she recalls. “I would raise my hand and accidentally speak Spanish in class. My teachers would be like, ‘We’re worried about her vocabulary.’ That was always an issue, so it’s really funny that I turned out to be a writer.”

As she points out in her professional bio, it was movies and TV that helped with her English vocabulary, especially the Disney sitcom “Lizzie McGuire.”

Jimenez describes growing up in Orange County with few Latinos around outside of her family as an alienating experience. She admits to feeling great shame for some of her behaviors as a teenager afraid of being treated differently and desperate to fit in.

“I would speak Spanish to my mom like in a corner because I didn’t want everyone else to hear me speak Spanish,” Jimenez confesses. “If my mom pulled up to school to drop me off playing Spanish hits from the ‘80s or banda, I was like, ‘Can you turn it down please?’”

Like a lot of young Latinos, she’s now taking steps to connect with her heritage, and, in a way, atone for those moments where she let what others might think rob her of her pride.

“During the pandemic I cornered my grandma to make all of her recipes again so I could write them down,” she recalls. “Now I have them all written down on a website. Or if my mom corrects me for something that I’m saying in Spanish, I now listen.”

At the risk of angering her, Jimenez describes her mother as a “cool mom,” and compares her to Amy Poehler’s character in “Mean Girls.” Raised in a household without financial struggles, Jimenez doesn’t often relate to stories about Latinos in the U.S. that make it to film and TV. Her hope is to expand Latino storytelling beyond the tropes.

“That’s very important to me, to just tell Latino stories or Mexican stories in a way that’s just authentic to me and hopefully someone else is like, ‘Yes, that’s me,’” she says. “A lot of people have certain expectations for Latino stories that I’m not willing to compromise on.”

Though they still would like to make “Luna Likes” if given the chance, for now, Jimenez and McMechan will continue their rapid ascent.

They’re “goin’ up, up, up” because it is their “moment.” They recently wrapped the Apple TV show “Brothers” starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson that filmed in Texas. They are also writing the feature “Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman” for Tim Burton to direct, with Margot Robbie in talks to star.

“I feel like I’ve just been operating in a state of shock for the past, I don’t know how many months since June,” says Jimenez in her signature deadpan affect. “But if I think about it too much, I’d be a nervous wreck.”

Movie Reviews

Jeremy Schuetze’s ‘ANACORETA’ (2022) – Movie Review – PopHorror

Published

11 hours ago

March 4, 2026

Press Room

Jeremy Schuetze’s ‘ANACORETA’ (2022) – Movie Review – PopHorror

PopHorror had the chance to check out Anacoreta (2022) ahead of its streaming release! Does this meta-horror flick provide interesting story telling or is it a confusing mess.

Let’s have a look…

Synopsis

A group of friends heads to a secluded woodland cabin for a weekend getaway, planning to film an experimental horror movie. As the shoot progresses, the project begins to fall apart—until a real and terrifying presence emerges from the darkness.

Anacoreta is directed by Jeremy Schuetze. It was written by Jeremy Schuetze and Matt Visser. The film stars Antonia Thomas (Bagman 2024), Jesse Stanley (Raf 2019), Jeremy Schuetze (Jennifer’s Body 2009), and Matt Visser (A Lot Like Christmas 2021)

My Thoughts

Antonia Thomas delivered an outstanding performance as the female lead in Anacoreta. It was remarkable to watch her convey such a wide range of emotions with authenticity and depth. I was continually impressed by her ability to switch seamlessly between different dialects. I absolutely loved her delivery of the dialogue of telling The Scorpion and the Frog fable.

Anacoreta employs a distinctive, meta-horror style of storytelling. The narrative follows a group of friends creating a “scripted reality” horror film, and as the plot unfolds, the boundary between their staged production and their actual lives becomes increasingly blurred. This was interesting, but at the same time frustrating as a viewer.

Check out Anacoreta on Prime Video and let us know your thoughts!

Entertainment

Todd Meadows, ‘Deadliest Catch’ deckhand, dies at 25

Published

13 hours ago

March 3, 2026

Press Room

Todd Meadows, ‘Deadliest Catch’ deckhand, dies at 25

Todd Meadows, a crewmember on one of the fishing vessels featured on the long-running reality series “Deadliest Catch,” has died. He was 25.

Rick Shelford, the captain of the Aleutian Lady, announced in a Monday post on Facebook and Instagram that Meadows died Feb. 25. He called it “the most tragic day in the history of the Aleutian Lady on the Bering Sea.”

“We lost our brother,” Shelford wrote in his lengthy tribute. “Todd was the newest member of our crew, he quickly became family. His love for fishing and his strong work ethic earned everyone’s respect right away. His smile was contagious, and the sound of his laughter coming up the wheelhouse stairs or over the deck hailer is something we will carry with us always.

“He worked hard, loved deeply, and brought joy to those around him,” he added. “Todd will forever be part of this boat, this crew, and this brotherhood. Though we lost him far too soon, his legacy will live on through his children and in every memory we carry of him.”

A fundraiser set up in Meadows’ name described the deckhand from Montesano, Wash., as a father to “three amazing little boys” who died “while doing what he loved — crabbing out on Alaskan waters.”

According to the Associated Press, Meadows died after he was reported to have fallen overboard around 170 miles north of Dutch Harbor, Alaska.

“He was recovered unresponsive by the crew approximately ten minutes later,” Chief Petty Officer Travis Magee, a spokesperson with the Coast Guard’s Arctic District, told the AP. The Coast Guard is investigating the incident.

Meadows was a first-year cast member of “Deadliest Catch,” the Discovery Channel reality series that follows crab fishermen navigating the perilous winds and waves of the Bering Sea during the Alaskan king crab and snow crab fishing seasons. The show debuted in 2005. No episodes from Meadows’ season has aired.

Deadline reported that the show was in production on its 22nd season when the incident occurred, with the Shelford-led Aleutian Lady being the last of the vessels still out at sea at the time. Production has subsequently concluded, per the outlet.

“We are deeply saddened by the tragic passing of Todd Meadows,” a Discovery Channel spokesperson said in a statement that has been widely circulated. “This is a devastating loss, and our hearts are with his loved ones, his crewmates, and the entire fishing community during this incredibly difficult time.”

Meadows is the latest among “Deadliest Catch” cast members who have died. Previous deaths include Phil Harris, a captain of one of the ships featured on the show, who died after suffering a stroke while filming the show’s sixth season in 2010. Todd Kochutin, a crew member of the Patricia Lee, died in 2021 from injuries he sustained while aboard the fishing vessel, according to an obituary. Other cast members have died from substance abuse or natural causes.