Last of Us clicker actor Misty Lee reveals how the monsters click

Misty Lee is an improv comedian who graduated from Second City in Los Angeles. She is a sorceress in Hollywood’s Magic Castle who is also trained in dentistry and she is the voice of Princess Leia Star Wars Battlefront. But she’s also the voice of one of TV’s and games’ scariest monsters – The last of us‘ clickers.

Lee is credited with creating the clicker click, a hybrid of screeching and echolocation, alongside clicker voice actor and PlayStation Studios sound designers Phil Kovats and Derrick Espino. She and Kovats – sometimes mixed in with their clicking – provided the eerie sound for The last of us when it was released in 2013; Kovats returned The Last of Us Part 2, but Lee was not involved. HBO’s The last of us gave her the opportunity to reprise the voice she helped create and bring her raspy echolocation sounds to the small screen. In an interview with Polygon, Lee spoke with the original clicker voice direction about how things were changing for the show and even gave us a lesson in clicking ourselves.

[Ed. note: This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.]

Polygon: Your work is important to The last of us and the game.

Misty Lee: Yes, I helped them create the sound. But the sound director for The Last of Us Part 2 was a different team. They wanted to go in a different direction. One thing I’ve learned in this industry is that you don’t own anything – I taught Phil [Kovats] how to make that sound. And they taught other people how to make that sound. Anyone can make the sound. I will teach you how to make the sound.

I would love it. I actually tried it prior to this call and it didn’t sound right at all.

You can’t print it out, but I’ll teach you. [Ed. note: Sorry folks, industry secrets!]

How did you get into the first game?

I was working with one of the guys on a project. Phil and Derrick [Espino] are two of the guys who worked on the sound design. Phil Kovats, the male clicker, and Derrick Espino, a sound designer. They are brilliant men whose hearts are in this game. I was working on something else with Derrick, and I made a creature. And Derrick said, “Hmm, I’ll draw your attention to something else I do.”

When I started I went into the booth and they said: We’re looking for noise. These are some of the creatures we are working on in this game. We don’t know exactly what they sound like. This is what they will look like, and this is what they will look like.

As a voice actor, your job is to keep everything on the ground. We started experimenting and I started making stuff for them. When we encountered the clicking sound, they went, Wait a minute. Stop doing that. Can you change it? Can you do it over and over again? We just found this sound.

So you were making creature sounds before too?

Yes, there were very few women then. There are quite a few making creatures in LA now. But little did I know at the time that it was a burgeoning market. I made a creature with Derrick and he said: A lady… That’s interesting. And those are good sounds too. She does things that are not typical. I don’t mind getting ugly. I think it’s fun. You have snot and water running down your face. Don’t wear makeup because you’re gross. You’re all over the mic and I love getting gross. It is fun. At the time there really weren’t any other people doing it. It just wasn’t a thing. Because I don’t mind being gross and my background was in improvisation, it just became a thing.

I credit Phil and Derrick and the success of the original game and their sound design for getting me on stage. I credit them with changing much of the direction of my career. I mean, it’s always said that we take on the opportunities we’re ready for. But these guys gave me a chance. I had no idea what the game was. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was just having fun with some really nice people who were fun to work with.

How did you come up with this sound? Remember what you turned down before you got there?

It started with acting. One of the things they told me early on was to imagine I was in a backpack on top of my own body. You can see what’s going on, but you can’t control it. Your own hands are tearing into the people you love. How does that sound to you? And that was it. That’s where we started. You answer this question. By answering this question, you make it real. You start to feel this and it starts to become real, then you see someone you love very much.

You imagine the pain and agony. It started with crying and screaming and trying to keep my own hands from doing something they shouldn’t and also something that breaks my heart. And it just started to transform and we just went with it. And I was in there, I think, three or four hours on the mic that day. And they just hit record and let go.

They took notes when things were interesting to them and worked together and jumped in and That’s super cool. can you do it three times

When you cry and moan and scream and cry and you’re also a monster—you’re a monster in there—you take on tendencies that aren’t entirely human that alter your voiceprint. And what I mean by that is, for example, if you’re a dog, you don’t have a human skull, you have a long nose. You might want to twist your tongue to the side to create this shape and change the shape of your instrument based on posture. When you make a creature, you’re going to want to try to look like them, to stand like them.

You start with that and a picture of the clickers. They don’t have a voice – they’re not really a voiced character. Her voice box got hit, she got infected. We want to stay away from anything that sounds too human but remind us that they were once human. We don’t want to eliminate humanity completely.

It was such a remarkable image to give to someone. It’s such an amazing thing for an actor to feel. You tear your family apart and you can’t stop it. What? Wow. It was such an incredibly emotional soul moment. That’s where we started. We changed the shapes. Exhaled, screamed, cried. We found it.

Is it a different shot for the video game and a shot for the show?

Yes. The video game was all blind creation – they had an artistic picture of the clickers. For the show we took on picture. And this is where knowing where the sound lives and being able to act really matters. If you have a clicker running around or just randomly looking for something –

[Lee does an inquisitive clicker sound.]

– How, is there something out there In contrast to:

[Lee does an alarmed, alert clicker sound.]

[which is] they find something. And now an attack:

[Lee does an aggressive clicker sound.]

You must know the difference. There’s a scene in the museum where Ellie has never seen clickers. Remember it?

The first thing we did was get a picture and it was this clicker that went and went [Lee does curious clicker sounds] and like the click, the shake – it moved, it went, and all you saw was his hand move [Lee does a clicker sound].

We could see it, and Craig [Mazin, The Last of Us showrunner] let us track the whole fight.

They showed us the scene and then paged us into the scene. They usually have headphones on and play the audio very quietly without the music. There is no clicker sound, so make the clicker sound live when you watch it. Phil and I took turns, then we did things together.

Does it hurt to make the clicker sound?

When I had this session with them, I was down there for four days. It doesn’t hurt to make the sound, but it does cause damage. I’ll teach you how. I was depressed about the voice rest count and had a sore throat. It’s probably severe voice damage. It left no scars, but I have to be careful. The game was a session. You got everything from me in four hours. For the show it was twice – we went in the first time and shot several episodes and went back to do some things that they shot later.

It was an incredible vocal strain. But now the union has imposed a moratorium on our vocal stress. Even if you just scream, it’s hard. If you’re doing something like Call of Duty, you’ve got 300 lines to get through in a couple of hours. And they are all GRENADE! It’s a matter of life or death. You are at war and there are loud sounds of war. So it’s now two hours of Union sessions that are vocally stressful. You have to protect the stuff.

Have acquaintances ever asked you to play the clicker voice like your friends or family?

I had a friend here last night, he tweeted something about how much he loves the show. And then I Get your ass over here and watch it with us. He came by last night and I thought: Would you like to learn how to do it? And he was likeYes yes I do. He came over last night, watched the show with us, and I gave him a clicker lesson. He went home knowing exactly how to do it and practicing in the car.

I would like to learn.

[Lee instructs Nicole to make the sound. Nicole tries and fails. Misty encourages Nicole some more. She is embarrassed, but eventually makes a weak clicker sound.]

If you do it often, you will get hoarse. Imagine hours of doing that, trying to make someone happy, because that’s our job as actors. But they were like We just want weird noises. When he said that to me, someone who likes to play and is rough – watch what you wish for! But we got what we were looking for. It wasn’t until they got that click where they were going, Oh my god, this is it. Like I said, the clickers don’t have eyes. You are no longer human because the fungus has taken over. What is the ultimate evolution of a Pokemon called? It’s more fungus than human. They look for things by echolocation. What does a mushroom with an eyeball need?