Emily McGonagle Left Law to Voice Netflix’s Spike — SkimNews
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- Emily McGonagle left legal work after having children, ending a commute from Colchester to Canary Wharf and often finishing at 03:00, before pivoting to flexible home-based voiceover in 2019.
- Emily McGonagle voices eight characters in children’s series Spike, which premiered on Netflix on 12 October and became the platform’s No. 1 children’s show in the UK.
- Bored Panda, a Lithuanian company founded in 2009, created Fire Spike!, a preschool YouTube cartoon about a dragon and his friends that later developed into Spike.
- Fire Spike! had fewer than 1,000 YouTube subscribers and minimal views when McGonagle joined the team, but now has 1.25 million subscribers.
- Spike was the seventh most-watched Netflix show globally in its first week.
- Emily McGonagle equipped a home studio with professional audio equipment and, after several months of auditions, got her first voiceover gig with Google before doing commercials, joining acting groups in Colchester and completing a six-week acting course in London.
- Jonas Dovydaitis, Bored Panda’s head of animation, said on social media that he could not ‘get over how cool’ it was that children worldwide could now watch Spike on Netflix.
Why it matters: Netflix’s children’s lineup gains a title that reached No. 1 in the UK and seventh globally in its first week. For Emily McGonagle, eight *Spike* voices extend a flexible home business begun in 2019, while Bored Panda’s YouTube-born property reaches a 1.25 million-subscriber audience.
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