Voice acting runs in musical family of Kaia Oz

At only 10 years old, Kaia Ozdemir has already played a pony, a construction crane, a mer-pup (cross between a mermaid and a puppy) and a joke-telling aquarium fish. If you have children who watch My Little Pony, Paw Patrol, Thomas & Friends or Lucas the Spider, chances are her voice has rung out through your television screen at some point in the past few months.

Now, the effervescent and energetic pre-teen, known professionally as Kaia Oz, can be seen playing herself in Giselle’s Mashup Adventures, an animated upper preschool series on CBC Gem where each 3-minute episode takes inspiration from the creative ideas of children.

Kaia is already a four-year veteran of voice acting, having followed her father, Evren into the field. Evren is a musician, producer, composer and rapper, who has released music under his own name as well as under the name Strangers on a Plane, a duo he created with his wife and Kaia’s mom, singer Courteney Brookes.

The close-knit family of four, including Kaia’s older, soccer-playing brother Zeren, moved to Niagara-on-the-Lake in 2020, renting a home off of Lakeshore Road, where they immediately fell in love with the rural lifestyle, raising chickens in their backyard.

A lifelong musician, Evren had been composing music for commercials for many years, recording and producing that music in his home studio in Toronto. When a voice actor missed a scheduled deadline to submit a file for one of his jobs, Evren volunteered to do a read and he’s been voicing ad spots ever since.

“Within a year I had gotten all of these gigs, and I became a full ACTRA (Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists) member,” he tells The Local.

Evren was represented by Fountainhead Talent at the time. When his young daughter expressed some interest in doing some voice acting of her own, he contacted his agent, who passed the information on to Roberta Romano, who took over Fountainhead and rebranded it as Element Artist Management.

“The feedback we got was that they loved her voice,” he said about her first few auditions. “It was clear to everyone that there was something going on there, and she just started landing all these roles.”

Kaia was only six when she first started, and by then she had become a voracious reader.

“That was the remarkable thing, that she was really good at reading,” says her father. “And she’s really comfortable around a mic. Both kids grew up around it.”

She didn’t get everything she auditioned for, though, and Kaia has a great attitude about that.

“She’s done many auditions that she hasn’t gotten,” says Evren. “She doesn’t obsess about it.”

When asked if it bothers her, Kaia emphatically replies, “No, because I know I’ll get more in the future. There will be more opportunities that will come. It’s fine by me.”

“I’m not like,” she adds, putting her palm on her forehead and dramatically tilting her head back, “Oh no, I’m not going to get it, oh nooooooo! I’ve done so many auditions for the same show for so many different characters.”

And she’s said no to scripts in the past as well.

“Sometimes it’s for a character that she doesn’t really feel for, that she doesn’t feel comfortable doing it,” says Courteney. “So we give her that space to choose not to do it.”

In conversation about her career with her family, Kaia, who is home-schooled, tosses off lines from her auditions and seamlessly slips into the voices of some of her characters. In reality, her normal speaking voice is not all that different from that of her animated doppelgangers.

And she sings, too, which is often required for many of her roles.

Romano, a Brock University and Niagara College graduate, says it’s common for her to turn to her adult clients to see if they have children who may be interested in doing voice work.

“For parents who work in the arts, it’s kind of a nice way to introduce them,” she says. “Evren and I talked, and I asked him if he wanted to audition Kaia, and it just kind of took off from there.”

Romano adds that Kaia is pretty special, for a number of reasons.

“She is a super smart kid, so her reading ability is off the charts,” enthuses the agent. “She grew up in the studio, so she had a really good understanding right from the start about what the business was. And her enthusiasm and ability to take direction, she just naturally got it. She’s got this cute voice that people love, and she has the energy.”

Romano is not at all surprised that Kaia gets callback after callback for her auditions. And the agent’s original nervousness about the youngster being overworked has been allayed.

“I asked her Dad if he thought she should slow down,” Romano laughs, “but he assured me that she loves it. I think the fact that she’s home-schooled, there’s a little less pressure on her as far as having a schedule to adhere to. And Dad is all set up at home. It’s a perfect set-up for a kid like her to blossom.”

As Kaia’s career continues to blossom, she isn’t resting on her laurels. She’s begun taking musical theatre classes through Virgil’s Yellow Door Theatre, working on other aspects of performance. She hopes to win a role in one of the non-profit theatre company’s upcoming on-stage productions.

Late last year she auditioned for a new animated preschool series called Millie Magnificent, to be produced by Corus Entertainment’s Nelvana, based on Canadian author and illustrator Ashley Spires’ book The Most Magnificent Thing. The 52-episode series has been green-lit and will launch next year with Kaia playing the titular character.

And Dad has been busy building a set in the family’s barn on their rented property for an original children’s show he hopes to write and produce that will see him and Kaia on screen together. And he’s planning to involve the entire family in the recording of a children’s album in the very near future.

In the meantime, there’s another magnificent Millie that needs tending to at home, in the form of the new family puppy, Millie Whitepaw, currently assimilating to life in the Ozdemir/Brookes home. And like the Magnificent Millie whose voice is to be provided by Kaia for 52 episodes, she is very, very animated, albeit in a very different way.