Khary Payton

Khary Payton is more than a voice actor who ended up looking after a tiger on television. In 2003, he landed the role of Cyborg in the series Teen Titans, and from that moment on, his voice was worth millions of dollars. It was neither an easy road nor a stroke of destiny.

The voice-over industry is ruthless.

The actor was born in Georgia in 1972 and always knew that acting demanded flawless vocal technique. Before getting into television, he worked in regional theaters across the United States with very few resources. There he learned to project his voice so that people in the very last row of the balcony could hear him.

In 2011, he joined the cast of Young Justice to play Aqualad. But his big break in front of the camera wouldn't come until five years later, when the apocalypse came knocking on his door.

The King of the Walking Dead

The casting for the seventh season of The Walking Dead called for a very specific profile. They were looking for a man with stage presence and a natural gift for leadership. Khary Payton showed up with a gray dreadlock wig and an energy that immediately won over the producers.

Ezekiel was a complex character who lived in a medieval fantasy to protect his community from the horror outside. Payton understood that the secret lay in the hidden vulnerability behind the monarchy's theatrics. He made a man with a digital tiger seem human and relatable in a hostile environment.

And the audience accepted it without blinking.

During the years he spent filming in Georgia, the actor kept an exhausting work pace. He shot his scenes in the forest during the day and flew to Los Angeles at night to keep up with his animation projects. In 2020, he voiced Black Samson in the series Invincible on Amazon Prime Video.

Numbers and Animated Series

His success in live-action television didn't make him forget his roots in the sound studio. In 2022, he returned to his role in Teen Titans Go! and took part in several high-budget video games. The video game industry pays well but demands surgical precision in every audio take.

Because Payton knows that a single badly delivered scream can ruin an eight-hour workday, he treats his most important tool with almost military discipline. His contract to voice King Koopa in 2023 was one of the most lucrative moves of his career.

In 2023, the movie The Super Mario Bros. Movie broke box office records around the world. Khary Payton was part of a cast that included major Hollywood stars. The film wrapped up its theatrical run with a final box office gross of $1,362 million.