Sabrina Farhi
NPR hired voice-over and theater actress Sabrina Farhi as the new voice of its underwriting credits, with her on-air debut to come next month.
Farhi has previously lent her voice to ads for TIAA–CREF and Bioré Skincare and performed extensively in independent theater productions in New York. She will work out of NPR’s Washington, D.C., headquarters in her new job.
“Out of hundreds of voices, Sabrina’s immediately stood out for its warmth and conversational approach,” said Eric Nuzum, NPR’s v.p. of programming, in a press release. “We think listeners and supporters will find her engaging.”
In a brief audio introduction (hear it here), Farhi reveals that she enjoys Scrabble and Mad Men and tells listeners that “I’m not as serious as I sound.”
“I wanted to be an actress when I grew up, and all things considered, this is a dream career I never thought of as a kid,” Farhi says.
NPR began looking for a full-time announcer for its sponsorship credits earlier this year. Frank Tavares has voiced the spots for more than 30 years, and for much of that time recorded them from his home studio in Connecticut. NPR sought to bring the job in-house to make the process more efficient, it said.
“Many of today’s funding credits are now produced on a ‘just in time basis,’ so basing the new announcer in Washington and combining the voice talent and production of credits into one role allows us to do this critical work more efficiently,” Nuzum wrote in a memo to public radio station managers.
Nuzum added that Tavares “has been truly elemental to the sound and fabric of public radio programming, and we are grateful for his talents and many years of service.”
Now they have a guy who sounds like he has the flu.