As an actor, Doug Cockle is no stranger to unsettling workplaces. From battling Nazis in Spielberg’s Band of Brothers to rubbing shoulders with Christian Bale in dragon romp Reign of Fire, disappearing into a role on set – whatever the set may be – has become second nature. Yet when he landed his first video game role in 2001, Cockle found himself suddenly standing completely alone in a vocal booth.
“It is bizarre,” he says. “You just have to be in the character in that moment in that world, in your brain. On stage and screen, you have other actors, you have props, costumes … all these things that are helping 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 got into video game work while filling in his Hollywood downtime by contributing additional voices to PS2 games such as Timesplitters 2. Inadvertently he was laying the foundations for acting in this fledgling medium. He has now appeared in more than 45 video games, including last year’s megahits Baldur’s Gate 3 and Alan Wake 2, though he is best known for voicing the gravelly Witcher, Geralt of Rivia.
“There weren’t a lot of voices in video games when I started out,’ Cockle recalls. “The kinds of voices that were in games then were Mario, where you just get a ‘wahoo! ’… We were only just starting to see the really deep narrative storytelling that games are now known for.”
With no big name voice actors to emulate, Cockle channelled the gruff charisma of his childhood acting hero, Harrison Ford, in turn influencing a new generation of actors. “I think you’re like Harrison Ford, Doug,” interjects a smiling Ben Starr, the voice of Clive, Final Fantasy XVI’s stoic protagonist, “you’re my Harrison Ford.”
Sharing my zoom window with Cockle are a smiling Starr and Xenoblade Chronicles 3’s Harry McEntire. Both Starr and McEntire have scored major roles in popular TV shows and West End productions. Yet following their respective lead turns in massive RPGs, the trio have joined forces to embark on a new kind of RPG adventure, Dungeons and Dragons improv series, Natural Six. Putting down the dice and damage sheets, the three actors enjoy a rare opportunity to inhabit a less fantastical world and talk shop together.
“You very rarely get to play a protagonist,” explains Starr. “I think in this industry, a lot of people are famous for the quantity of the work that they do, rather than the characters themselves. Often you find people that have played 40 or 50 characters. Whereas I haven’t … I’ve played one. And what a gift to be given something to put your flag in the sand and say, ‘I got to shape that for people!’”
“It’s rare,” Cockle agrees. “Most voice actors are doing the ‘third Shepherd from the left’ kind of roles, playing multiple NPCs [non-player characters] along the way.”
While he is best known for playing lovable villain Aethelwold in medieval Netflix drama, The Last Kingdom, McEntire reveals that he relished spending so much time with reluctant hero Noah in Nintendo’s 2022 RPG, Xenoblade Chronicles 3.
“If you said, I’m never going to be on screen or on stage again, but I can work as a voice actor consistently, I would bite your hand off for it,” Says Harry. “My word count on Xenoblade is higher than three series of the Last Kingdom by an absolute country mile … that depth of storytelling … It’s really appealing to me to be with a character in that sort of intense way.”
While Starr and McEntire were lucky enough to join an already established game series, Cockle had no indication that CD Projekt Red’s RPGs would become such a phenomenon. “Nobody knew or cared really,” says Cockle. “[The Witcher] was a cult game. Until suddenly, it wasn’t. Right up until about six months after Witcher 3 came out, I still didn’t have a clue 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 so much to me. It’s a huge risk to go into something and place yourself in a world where the thing that means the most to you could reject you. That was something that I was really, really scared about.”
Performing alongside stage and screen legend Ralph Ineson, Starr quickly learned that he’d need a new set of acting techniques to help him nail his dream gig. “I didn’t realise how many of the skills that I learned in film and TV and theatre were really, really useful, and how many of them are actually quite a bit of a hindrance,” he says. “To be able to sustain a character over 40 hours – for what is going to be the equivalent of six series of a television show – is really, really difficult. Because you can pick a voice that sounds amazing, but can you do it months later, on a rainy day in Stoke?”
Luckily for Starr’s inner child – and for his X mentions – Final Fantasy XVI launched to critical and fan acclaim, a return to form after the divisive 13th and 15th entries. “I’m so thankful that I don’t have to hang my head in shame and never play a Final Fantasy game again!,” says Starr. “I’m constantly being tagged into in-game moments by fans … My dream fulfilment is still happening, really. I feel so lucky to get to talk about not just this game, but the series of games that have shaped me as a person.”
While you’d expect most professional actors to covet the glitz and glamour of TV and film, the fantasy-loving trio all relish the freedom to experiment they’re given in the booth. “There’s a horrible feeling when you’re on a TV or film set, and the day is getting away from you, and you can’t bring it back,” explains McEntire. “But with VA, you can really hyper focus on your performance, because you’re not worrying about whether or not someone’s hair is in the wrong place. Or if the other actor leaned into your shot.”
“We get to make mistakes,” adds Starr. “There is a huge amount of pressure, obviously - but on a film set, [you’re rolling] however many 100,000 pounds worth of camera equipment so you can’t just ask to keep trying takes.”
Yet for all the imagination-stirring perks and experimental freedom that comes from working with games, they also bring their unique set of challenges. “I’ve only ever worked on one game where I got a full script. The rest of the time, you’re sent tiny little chunks of context,” says McEntire. “It’s an exercise in losing your ego. I really enjoy just having to trust that no one’s gonna let me look foolish. At one point, I was doing a scene and they said, there’s this monster, it might be a man, it might be a woman, or it might just be lots and lots of eyes. Could you maybe just give us some versions of all of that?”
“In games you have to be the character, but also you’re telling the player what to do – the, ‘wow, look at this temple!’ sort of nonsense,” adds Starr. “I love telling a character to look up at something, not having ever seen it myself. So it’s degrees of ‘just how much does Clive wonder at this temple?’ and how you’re going to have to modulate your performance to do that. I think a person who is an expert at this is [Horizon Zero Dawn actor] Ashly Burch – she does it so well.”
Though some gaming roles require full motion capture nowadays, many still just harness the performer’s voice; McEntire is grateful for this break from typecasting. “I am 5ft 5in, and I look how I look, and for my entire stage and screen career, I was playing 5ft 5in people who looked like me, and suddenly I can play anybody,” he says. “The characters I played in Xenoblade, I would not have got anywhere near them on screen if they were making a TV adaptation.”
“Video games enable stories that just can’t be told anywhere else,” Starr says, reflecting on possibly unfilmable epics such as Jedi Survivor. “You just do not have the budget [in film and TV] to tell the scope and scale of these stories.”
Yet for Cockle, his ‘unfilmable epic’ has been partly filmed, with the Witcher 3’s massive success seeing Geralt played by Henry Cavill in a Netflix live action 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 the voice of Geralt,” says Cockle.
What does the original Geralt make 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 season one at the premiere in London and being so nervous. I had no stake in this thing at all. But because I love the world and the character I play I just wanted to see justice done to it!”
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 The Witcher: Sirens Of The Deep animated series.
“I feel really blessed by that whole thing,” Cockle says. “I feel like I’m part of this funny little club. There are only so many English-speaking Geralts in the world. There’s a Japanese Geralt. There’s a Spanish Geralt, but still, there are very few [Geralts]. Lots of people have played Hamlet – and I’m not diminishing that at all, but it is interesting to be part of something that is so niche.”
• Cockle, Starr and McEntire’s D&D adventures stream weekly via Natural Six on YouTube.
