TOAs an actor, Doug Cockle is no stranger to unsettling workplaces. From fighting Nazis in Spielberg’s Band of Brothers to rubbing shoulders with Christian Bale in dragon movie Reign of Fire, disappearing into a role on set, whatever the set, has become second nature. However, when he landed his first role in a video game in 2001, Cockle suddenly found himself all alone in a vocal booth.
“It’s strange,” he says. “You just have to be in character at that moment in that world, in your brain. On stage and on screen, you have other actors, you have props, costumes… all these things that help you do this thing called ‘acting’. “When you’re a voice actor, it’s just you in the booth and the director and the engineer on the other side of a glass wall, eating Jelly Babies.”
Cockle devoted himself to video game work while filling his free time in Hollywood contributing additional voices to PS2 games like Timesplitters 2. Without realizing it, he was laying the groundwork for acting in this nascent medium. He has now appeared in more than 45 video games, including last year’s megahits Baldur’s Gate 3 and Alan Wake 2, although he is best known for playing the witcher Geralt of Rivia.
“When I started, there weren’t many voices in video games,” Cockle recalls. “The type of voices that were in games then were Mario’s, where you just hear a ‘wahoo!’ ‘…We were just starting to see the really deep storytelling that games are now known for.’
With no big-name voice actors to emulate, Cockle channeled the gruff charisma of his childhood actor hero, Harrison Ford, in turn influencing a new generation of actors. “I think you’re like Harrison Ford, Doug,” chimes in a smiling Ben Starr, the voice of Clive, the stoic protagonist of Final Fantasy XVI, “you’re my Harrison Ford.”
Sharing my Zoom window with Cockle are a smiling Starr and Harry McEntire from Xenoblade Chronicles 3. Both Starr and McEntire have landed major roles in popular TV shows and West End productions. However, after their respective leads in massive role-playing games, the trio has joined forces to embark on a new type of role-playing adventure, the improvisational Dungeons and Dragons series, Natural Six. Dice and damage sheets aside, the three actors enjoy a rare opportunity to inhabit a less fantastical world and talk business together.
“Rarely do you get to play a leading man,” Starr explains. “I think in this industry a lot of people are famous for the amount of work they do, rather than the characters themselves. You often find people who have played 40 or 50 characters. While I haven’t… played one. And what a gift to receive something like putting your flag in the sand and saying, ‘I have to shape that for people!’”
“It’s unusual,” agrees Cockle. “Most voice actors play ‘third shepherd from the left’ type roles, playing various non-player characters along the way.”
While he’s best known for playing the lovable villain Aethelwold in Netflix’s medieval drama The Last Kingdom, McEntire reveals that he enjoyed spending a lot of time with reluctant hero Noah in Nintendo’s 2022 RPG, Xenoblade Chronicles 3.
“If you said I’d never be on screen or stage again, but I could work as a voice actor consistently, I’d bite your hand off,” Harry says. “My word count on Xenoblade is much higher than three series of The Last Kingdom… that depth of storytelling… It’s really appealing to me to be with a character in such an intense way.”
While Starr and McEntire were fortunate enough to join an already established game series, Cockle had no indication that CD Projekt Red’s RPGs would become such a phenomenon. “No one knew or really cared,” Cockle says. “(The Witcher) was a cult game. Until suddenly it wasn’t. Until about six months after Witcher 3 was released, he still had no idea how big the game had become.”
Despite starring in BBC show Dickensian, three seasons of Sky period drama Jamestown and even British TV institution Casualty, for Starr, Final Fantasy XVI was the role of a lifetime.
“I was terrified!” he says. “(Final Fantasy) is a franchise that means a lot to me. It’s a huge risk to walk into something and put yourself in a world where what means the most to you could reject you. That was something that scared me very much.”
Starr, who starred alongside stage and screen legend Ralph Ineson, quickly learned that she would need a new set of acting techniques to land her dream role. “I didn’t realise how many of the skills I learned in film, TV and theatre were actually helpful and how many of them are actually a hindrance,” she says. “Being able to maintain a character for over 40 hours – for what will be the equivalent of six seasons of a TV show – is actually very difficult. Because you can pick a voice that sounds amazing, but can you do it months later, on a rainy day in Stoke?”
Fortunately for Starr’s inner child, and for his X mentions, Final Fantasy XVI was released to critical and fan acclaim, a return to form after the divisive 13th and 15th entries. “I have to hang my head in shame and never play a Final Fantasy game again!” says Starr. “Fans constantly tag me in moments of the game… The realization of my dream is still happening, really. “I feel very lucky to be able to talk not only about this game, but about the series of games that have shaped me as a person.”
While most professional actors would be expected to covet the glitz and glamor of television and film, the fantasy-loving trio enjoys the freedom to experiment afforded to them in the booth. “There’s a horrible feeling when you’re in front of the TV or the movie set and the day slips away and you can’t get it back,” explains McEntire. “But with VA, you can really focus on your performance, because you don’t worry if someone’s hair is in the wrong place. Or if the other actor leaned into your shot.”
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“We can make mistakes,” Starr adds. “There’s enormous pressure, obviously, but on a film set, (you’re shooting) a lot of £100,000 worth of camera equipment, so you can’t just ask to keep testing shots.”
However, for all the imagination-stimulating advantages and experimental freedom that come from working with games, they also bring with them a unique set of challenges. “I only worked on one game that I got a complete script for. The rest of the time, they send you little bits of context,” McEntire says. “It is an exercise to lose the ego. I really enjoy having to trust that no one will let me look like a fool. At one point, I was doing a scene and they said, there’s a monster, it could be a man, it could be a woman, or it could just be many, many eyes. Could you maybe give us some versions of all that?
“In games you have to be the character, but you also tell the player what to do: ‘wow, look at this temple!’ kind of nonsense,” adds Starr. “I love telling a character to look at something without having ever seen it. So it’s degrees of ‘how much does Clive marvel at this temple?’ and how you will have to modulate your performance to achieve it. I think an expert on this is (Horizon Zero Dawn actress) Ashly Burch; she does it very well.”
Although some roles in video games today require full motion capture, many still limit themselves to taking advantage of the actor’s voice; McEntire welcomes this break from typecasting. “I’m 5’6″ and I look the way I look, and my entire career on stage and in film I played 5’10 people who looked like me, and suddenly I can play anyone,” he says. “I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere close to the characters I played in Xenoblade if they were making a TV adaptation.”
“Video games allow for stories that simply can’t be told anywhere else,” Starr says, reflecting on epics that couldn’t possibly be filmed, like Jedi Survivor. “You just don’t have the budget (in film and television) to tell the scope and scale of these stories.”
However, for Cockle, his “unfilmable epic” has been partly filmed, with the massive success of The Witcher 3, which saw Geralt played by Henry Cavill in a live-action Netflix series. “(Henry Cavill and I) have talked since, but before he was cast, he did an interview for Forbes where he was very generous and mentioned my performance as the inspiration for his approach to Geralt’s voice,” Cockle says.
What does the original Geralt think of Cavill’s attempt? “Whether you’re a fan of the Netflix series or not, Henry did a fantastic job,” says Cockle. “I remember sitting down to watch the first episode of the first season at the premiere in London and being very nervous. I had no interest in this at all. But because I love the world and the character I play, I just wanted justice done!
In a twist of fate, Cavill recently left the live-action series, and Cockle is now the one playing Geralt for Netflix, reprising his role for the upcoming animated series The Witcher: Sirens Of The Deep.
“I feel really blessed by all of this,” Cockle says. “I feel part of this fun little club. There are a limited number of English-speaking Geralts in the world. There is a Japanese Geralt. There is a Spanish Geralt, but even so there are very few (Geralts). “A lot of people have played Hamlet, and I’m not putting it down at all, but it’s interesting to be a part of something so specific.”
