The man from Jujuy who sneaked into The Simpsons and El Chavo: Sebastián Llapur, the most successful voice bank

He recognizes himself as “an idiomatic outcast”. He was born in Jujuy, lived in Córdoba, became a Mexican citizen and after 20 years in the Federal District he divides himself between that city and the records of his bunker in Cordovan. It can be programmed to speak in the way the other needs. Sebastián Llapur is Mr. On demand of accents.

He believes in distant points that come together as if by magic, in the distance between two events that end up binding as in a film. She has spent a life “like a monster” imitating Quico out loud until Roberto Gómez Bolaños himself put an end to the story and He chose him as the voice of Quico (and Professor Jirafales) for the animated version.

It can generate chills with its tone from beyond the grave and, instantly, sweetness. With those needle-breaking basses, she’s been the official voice of Darth Vader in Latin America since 2015. Immediately the rumor cracks to be Abraham’s grandfather The Simpsons, or Krusty the Clown, or Fat Tony, or the gardener Willie, or Professor Frink. It holds a record: seven characters at once in that “yellow” series. in which he has participated since season 13.

Commercial announcer obsessed with dubbing, 2001 sent 300 emails to Mexico. He only got two answers, which helped him decide to travel. In the Aztec lands he was able to immediately work on the recordings for horror movie trailers. The next step was knocking on doors at a time when “dubbing wasn’t that ‘glamorous’ and there were no academies”. This is how he confronted the directors, was invited to voice tests and the first major character arrived, Bruce the shark from Finding Nemo.

“The peculiarity of my career is that I have not passed Buenos Aires. From Córdoba directly to Mexico, in Buenos Aires I only did the dubbing of The incredibles“, he tells and unfolds a curriculum that is pure familiarity. We heard about it Frozen frozen adventurein the jungle book 2in Fifty Shades of Gray, in old Fox Sports promotions, cell phone ads, shampoos promising royal jelly and a hundred more and so on.

The third child of a lawyer and prosecutor and a teacher, Llapur was born on Christmas Eve 1969, in San Salvador de Jujuy. He grew up influenced by the good diction and declamatory art of his mother, Clara, who “recited in the living room every day after washing the dishes”.

At that time there weren’t too many “windows to the world” in the north, “just a radio station and a single television channel, which started its broadcast at 4pm and stopped at 10pm”. The break was provided by a gift from his father brought from Bolivia, a tape recorder with which he began to experiment with tones, nuances, inflections.

“At seven or eight I already knew I wanted to do the dubbing. I think I know how it came about,” he says with the suspense of an expert. “I went to a fair in Salta where they showed an English short film about The 3 minions and when I get home I tell my mother. She explains that the rumors we heard weren’t the real ones. I remember thinking: ‘But this is the best job in the world..

Since then his childhood has become a permanent and solitary game: cloning voices, inventing others, speaking for himself. “My father was worried enough to ask my mother to take me to a psychologist” to confess.

At 15, while preparing for a show with his rock group Nostradamus, in which he was singer and drummer, he played multiplier voices at a sound check. A DJ was impressed by this flow and invited him to the studio of Radio Nacional Jujuy and, later, to the “first trout FM” in the area, where Llapur ended up in charge of jingles and promotions.

At 17, with the excuse of studying Dentistry, he went to Córdoba. Six months were enough for him to understand that his vocation had nothing to do with oral health but with his voice. He changed course, tried to study at the Manuel de Falla Superior Conservatory of Music in Buenos Aires, but hit another deviation: a return to Cordova to graduate as a Higher Technician in Advertising.

Nationalized Mexican more than a decade ago, the term – without an official title – has become his way of life: “In many parts of the world you don’t need a license plate, mine is totally empirical”, explains the one who in these days holds the role of commercial announcer for various points of ‘Latin America and also for the United States. He is the owner of the Hi-Fi Mix recording studio in the province of Córdoba.

For the man who put his lungs to the institutional announcements of the old ATC and FM Blue 100.7, it’s not strange to have to dub for a while in languages ​​he doesn’t speak. In The sum of all fears, for example, Phil Alden Robinson’s film with Ben Affleck was supposed to act in Spanish, but also “phonetically mimic” the part of the presidential speech in Russian.

Director of his own vocal academy (Labia), he thinks and rethinks that catalog of inner voices that populate his head, a “borderline” mystery: “It won’t be schizophrenia, but it has to do with a strong inner life, maybe everyone has those voices, but the difference is that I put them to work.”

-As a child your father wanted to take you to a psychologist because he heard you talking to yourself and making voices. How did that story end?

-Dad was worried and suggested to my mother to seek professional help, but my mother calmed him down, told him it was natural. I didn’t know why I did what I did, nor did it occur to me from tapas that this could be my destiny. So it was that years later they called me for the test The childI told this anecdote to the son of Gómez Bolaños. He had tested more than 80 people and none passed the filter, Roberto didn’t like anything. Finally I stayed with the two characters, Quico and Jirafales and I met Roberto, I was able to hug him at Forum 5 on Televisa, during the premiere of the animated series.

-How did you come to The Simpsons?

-After closing the jungle book 2 as the villain Shere Khan, whose role in the first era of the great Carlos Petrel, who passed away, is premiered at the National Auditorium of Mexico and Humberto Vélez, the leading dubbing actor, voice of Homer Simpson, comes to greet me. He tells me: “You have paid a great tribute to my teacher Petrel, I want to invite you to a test”. I joined the cast in 2001. Many people don’t know some of the rumors of The Simpsons today they leave from Córdoba, I record them in my studio.