Karlach Voice Actress Samantha Béart Talks About Baldur's Gate 3

when um she gets the date and she turns away yeah Factory and the movement directors let's say performance directors as they're credited in the game I will take the credit for that thank you very much yeah [Music] hey what's up guys welcome on into an amazing awesome episode of behind the voice I'm joined by yet another voice actor from Walter's gate Samantha is here play karlak thank you so much for taking the time for joining how are you doing hey there it's my pleasure I'm really well um it's a London summer which means we have all the weathers available all day so it's currently raining outside but um will soon try and kill me again quite soon yep it's happening here too it's raining it's it's a weird weather for us but it's hot sometimes the next day it's raining and after an hour it's hard again I'm like where am I living where are you I'm actually from India so yeah all the way but where are you now I am still in India so I mean the sense like about the changeable weather and I thought you were going to say New York or something like that I wish I wish but you know I I this game Walter's gate has been just going insane it's getting crazier and crazier I have a friend of mine who keeps on telling me after we end up going our conversation is like okay enjoy playing a ball is great and he just shuts the phone after that hangs up I'm like okay great thank you uh so like how has it been you're like you know the support this love that you're getting for God like a lot of people are fans of it what has it been for you very quickly so it's been the opposite for me in terms of my friends because we're all PS5 losers don't say anything I don't want to know I don't want to know how brilliant she is so that sucks but um when I am on my phone um it's just been this sort of outpouring of love and appreciation and everyone touchwood has been so considerate and kind in the way that they approach me and like my follower numbers just shot through the roof and I don't feel I'm doing anything so uh yeah I know it's I'm overwhelmed and um I'd say surprise it's more surprised at the number and you and you know they're great characters and it's written really well and and it's it's sort of it's so sort of narrative first we knew that we'd get some attention we didn't anticipate this I don't think Larry and anticipated this I guess so yeah but as I said so far so far so good oh yeah I love you know the one thing I love about like any games that gets uh popularity over this whatever characters that people love I love seeing the fan arts the fan arts are incredible people just make some insane stuff I'm like how do you guys have these talents like what has it like I've seen some of the fan arts that you have shared on Twitter they look so good I love the people this you know incredible talents it's amazing yeah and I think because the the I can't draw at all like I don't bother it's not something that's in my wheelhouse so I really really appreciate the the love and effort that's gone into that and the fact that one art form can can Inspire another like that and you know it takes time I know they're not just like knocking that out so I'm blown away but I'm just blown away and I love it and keep it coming and I'll retweet as many as I can oh yeah I just love that the people just you know bought so much of their hard work into that and it just looks so amazing I'm like I can't do that but you're just like amazing art is just lovely and there's love I know what I don't have um talents uh yeah that's true actually I will say this one of my friends uh he started playing ball is great like when it came out and he was like a lot of people you know started going to with Shadow heart a little bit and I'm Gonna Keep Shadow art with me and uh my friend is like uh having both Shadow art and garlic and I I and I was like I was just talking about okay oh I've seen you using both Shadow like and he's like yeah but kalak she's gonna be with me forever so I'm like oh wow that's okay so like I love that uh people have such a great morning with this and I know obviously this character has a lot of you know romance scenes and her backstory isn't insane so when you got to know about like the backstory and how the character is what was the initial reaction at the point knowing after all of this so when when you go into a big game like this they don't give you everything off the bat and I think there's there's a bit of psychic casting going on I think I was the right person at the right time for it to be quite honest with you um because there's no time to get me up to speed um and also ndas like you know how um paranoid the games industry is because they are and uh this is my experience across the board again um so they gave me a very general backstory which um Sarah Bayless my writer shared uh has just shared about Colac generally but I think it was on one of the um Community updates she said if Colac was around in 2023 she'd roll in on a Harley with a cigar between her teeth blowing Sabbath like she's got a heart if she said a diesel soap Dynamo with a heart of gold and it's so characterful like you've got so much in there and then for the audition they gave me different points they were all the sort of highs and lows of all the extreme parts of karlak and I obviously did something that they liked so I got the job based on that and then when you get the script it's um and again across Triple A's it's um an Excel spreadsheet so good luck so you know you have a skim of it but you also what you're not getting and this is something a process I use for other media like theater film TV um is you're not getting what other people say about you so if Carla was like super arrogant and everyone's just going oh my God she's arrogant and I'm not aware of that there might just not be that layer in there for example so I think you'd sort of just have to be what they're looking for um she was amazing how could I not audition for her and and shoot my shot and in a car Lackey kind of way just put it on the line and go here I am yeah I I it's amazing and you know when when my first playthrough I actually didn't beat garlak because I was stupid enough for not roaming around so much but like in the second playthrough I got an idea like I'm so stupid I should really look it up and I looked around I really like garlic because I don't know when when we meet the first uh meeting is this so it's much different than the others except at least much different than lisen uh but uh it's uh it's very fun it's like a very friendly in a way and I love that that she was that and the first mission that we do is like going to paladins and like just trying to kill them and and I love that when we just did that and she just went crazy just destroying everything I'm like should I get out of here like am I gonna be in trouble this is crazy I like that one of the first impressions you get of her is that she might be a bit unhinged a bit yeah she does as well yeah it's mental and um I'm just glad that that's in there and that's you know she's not perfect yeah put it that way yeah yeah she hits like a machine but it's a little bit out of control this machine absolutely a lot of out of control but yeah I love uh her journey it's been so good and then um it's just that I love every single character they have this like certain connection everybody has different backstories and that drives them in various ways um but when you got to like when you were doing the recording of God like an initial stages how did you get to the voice of this character how was that process like what did you do to finalize this process I know there was a team behind it but what else like how the process was for you so I think it would be remiss not to mention mocap and and the part of mocap in this and the physicality so she's seven foot tall she's really strong um she's not scared of anything is she like there's that right and we've got to like with that I don't think we wanted to start with a voice and then build the body around it we had to go the other way around yeah and she started off as quite tough actually so she was kind of down there you know all the time and um they didn't want another Edge Lord for the team so um we had to go and have we had to go and redo rewrite some bits and Bobs um and then I found like overall that um the range of her voice goes from down there to like so like we had to justify that and the one thing that didn't change about the story is her backstory is that she spent 10 years in hell so I figured that as long as we keep trauma at the center of everything she doesn't want to address that trauma until she has to and I think you well zario's um uh paladins or paladins of tear I think are a good example of when that red button is finally pushed and then there's more as the game goes on but few and far between and she tries to keep that hidden and sometimes that's by making jokes and things like that there was this is the biggest role I've ever played in a video game so there was an air of self-preservation I figured I'd have to do the this voice for a very long time so and also that my sessions were quite close together so I had to preserve my voice so I decided to make it as close to mine as possible they also said they wanted my voice that the audition is what again it's psychic casting right or they just were like I don't know but undirectable I don't know but um if we hadn't had the the if I hadn't had the idea of how big she is and um just the sort of things you can do with gesture change your voice I think um it would have been a very different kind of voice if that makes sense yeah um I mean she has an adult woman she doesn't need to have a monster voice I think that that's a surprise that she didn't have a barbarian voice but she's just a girl from Baldur's Gate right he's on a very unlucky hand in life um so we don't want a sounding a you know to to um out there um what I'd say is I was thinking about this before we got together and it's like Okay so we've got like a you will do what I say you will do what I say you'll do what I say very different and just two different just you start playing with that with the movement director because like the last thing they want is you just doing that all the time because that's the go-to yeah and it just completely changes you so there are lots there's a lot of color is just chucking the thing over the shoulder just go bloody hell and so I would say it was it was movement and gesture coming together with with voice my my version of the accent which is Lucifer valve's tighter consonants um Secrets um just so she had it was it was a more working class accident but I didn't want to sound in like a goblin yeah right you get two boards and she's gonna sound like one of them ain't she yeah so um you want to go too far and she's been around Devils for 10 years so it's probably become a little bit more clipped a little posher than it would have been yeah that's a thought if you think about it too much it was like more about honoring you know the overall story sorry that's a really long answer I don't know that's great I love the detail the answer because I know a lot of people who are like fascinated to hear the story of how they got the wise done because they love the character so much they want to know more details so I just love the in-depth It's amazing And I'd just love to know love to learn like how everybody processes their own version of the how they go through the characters and that's pretty cool and I know like you mentioned you did you know motion capture and all that stuff so was there any of the challenges at the time when you were shooting even motion capturing or voice acting was there any kind of challenge that you thought like okay this is something that is new to me or something like that yeah so it was a complete learning curve because I've never done mocap before you go in in suit off you go go this is being recorded this is the final version so it was a bit stop start just because every every as far as I'm aware every motion capture Studio has its own rules so the rules for for the um anyone speaking I suppose because because there was a whole other unit doing the stunts and the love scenes and all that sort of stuff but on our own so first of all there wasn't another actor in the room with you right that was just never a thing second of all there was a certain position you had to begin on and end on at the end of every line which I've never had to do and that's a kind of physical discipline that you get into and it was things like I will sign your hips off so that whole emotional scene you did you're gonna have to do it all over again oh my goodness it was a little bit painful at the beginning but uh as we as we went through it became it became second nature I'm glad to say yeah that's that sounds terrifying to me but I'm not an actor but it's just like a thing like you know you have you guys have to do so many different takes uh to make to get it perfectly right according to the larian and it's so great because there's so many amazing moments this character has and it's just done so well so I'm just blown away we're just watching every single cut scene of car like I'm like well this is crazy and it's just blows my mind how it makes me feel things in a video game so it's just absolutely amazing but you know you mentioned about the romance scene and everybody loves romance and Baldur's Gate I know it it you have you had like a whole theme around it and so how was it like was it what was the process like at that point when you had to do these romance voice lines and these scenes in general well it was headed up in advance but again Triple A games um because of ndas tend not to tell you that this stuff's coming up at the audition point so it can be a bit of a surprise on the day there was like on the day it was like imagine right no but I said I got the spreadsheet so I knew it was coming okay but it wasn't like filming TV let's say they will say um sex scene required or whatever which is also interesting wording uh and I say no thank you very much but um they they don't do that in video games and um because it's that degree removed from me I'm okay with it personally I think you just have to be going into games like because you're gonna get a shock otherwise um I said I wasn't asked to do anything that that I I was uncomfortable with I never had to work with another actor and I didn't have to mind working with another actor so that that was removed um the rest of it was just I suppose um uh they whenever they got the crash mats out you knew something was going down right so crash that came out and there I'm reclining saying Godzilla variety to EC stars and I went oh that's the line from the audition it's in there now forever um yeah it was all it was fine I didn't feel it was um gratuitous or anything like that I'm sure the modders will disagree and oh yeah yeah for now um it was all it was all cool with me um uh they'll get the crew get quite serious and they go intimacy scenes today okay got it let me know if there's any new lines so I can look at them very much yeah oh man I I just I'm also blown away with the fact that you guys have to like act the kind of like alone without bouncing off anybody so that must be requiring requiring a lot of imagination and obviously your actors you know it but like I just it's just it's amazing that uh you have to like go through that uh did you thought at the time like oh I have to do this or was that a thought in your head like how will I proceed with this or was that something that you already knew like okay yeah I can do this I've done this before or something like that been very lucky in that I had um a British drama school education which is is generally Shakespeare and then you do some Modern plays and then you get a week of TV and film at the end right but the idea being that if you can act then you can bring it down um what they don't really go into is certainly didn't go into games when I was there because that wasn't apparently a thing they didn't exist till five years ago and um audio was sort of seen as a an optional thing and then when I got out long story short I ended up doing a lot of audio but I've still got that very physical training so actually I feel like I'm very ready to do this sort of game because it all comes into one so your imagination is there of course if you do monologues on stage or who are you talking to who knows and then audio you're used to working alone um and bless them all directors either would play through a recorded line with the other actor which was amazing or they would act themselves oh wow that's always fun but that's that's an audio thing as well I've done whole um audio dramas where the director's very flatly just read in the other line and then you don't hear it for months and you forget that that's the way you recorded it you have a false memory of being in the room with other actors and you have to go hang on a sec so you know they do magic you do magic and I'm just you know the reason I've watched my scenes and no one else's is I'm going to play sort of spoil but also I I want to see how it works how it all fits together and they've done a bang-up job on it so I'm just gonna keep them at mocap because I think a lot of people people still don't know we did it like 248 actors don't quote me for the love of God do not quote me on this it might be 250 I might be wrong but it is around that if you follow Pit Stop tweets who've been talking about this um every single one of them did Mo cup and I think on a subliminal level that's why they all feel so good narratively that's why everyone is just sitting right you know with everyone else it's a set of I don't know however many you know recycled uh you know uh uh a woman mocap versus Man mocap they can just plug you into and I don't know how the games work but I just think that should be uh called out you know as as a feat just in games you get that many people in the studio over the years and get all of that down but I think on a subliminal level um that's what's making this game stand out from a narrative at some point yeah you're right there's a lot of uh as you mentioned it's it's a lot of more Gap artists being dead and you know I've been seeing like a list of all the Moga parties ever part of this game well that's the same like so many people gave everything uh to make sure that every single character is done in a way that is you know whenever whoever is playing it whenever they see that character it's believable to them they are in that world uh so I'm just so glad that people got to you know do this in such a great way and you know you guys are so talented you guys have done such an incredible job bringing all these characters in I just love it come on stop it tell me more oh man but I you know there were definitely some moments like especially for God like because of her backstory uh as you said like later in the games we found some things out but you know there must be scenes where you there are some emotional factor involved in how was that day like for you was like how how did you go through that was did you get emotional completely on set or was there something else like what was happening doing those scenes especially if it was like emotional scenes time yes there's two I can think of and it's about whether or not you want to get into spoilers or not or I can be quite General about it if you like I mean yeah really vague yeah okay so there's two I can think of specifically that were really huge emotionally um I don't get warned before the day as I said I've got if I haven't gone through that spreadsheet that's on me yeah um but as a performer that's my job to access that very easily the good thing about Carla uh technically is that she's got such deep buried trauma that I've been ignoring and pushing away the moment I'm asked to to release that is like a volcano and and thankfully by the time I was doing those big scenes I had got the discipline of of what was required for me to to make a good makeup as in returning to the end at the end remember to stop because you're nothing like giving your heart and then it's an unusable take yeah um and you get so many of those that are genuine so they would they would use maybe we do it twice we'd do it twice and then they would have it to be quite honest with you so that's good isn't it but yeah um just in that that helped me because I was repressing her trauma and we weren't dealing with it and it's all bans and jokes and la la is when we get to it it just all comes up it's all been ready to come up for ages and there it is it must be it must be a scene I mean you know to have all of that out there and it's just uh amazing to see like you know especially for you guys you guys have to know these backstories and you have to then Express his emotions in such a way and then when a player sees it they feel it so it's just uh it's just so incredible to see this whole process from how it starts from the writers too then to you guys performing it then to players seeing it and experiencing it it's just I just thinking about it just makes me like wow this is just a amazing uh path of uh you know this character Arc I guess you can say but you know like a lot of people I know are trying to be voice actors themselves trying to get into video games trying to get into all of this because you know it's popping up so do you have any of the like kind of advice for anybody who's starting up or who is already in there what kind of advice would you like to give to them yeah I've got some tough love and some home truths for everyone across just so nice about it I thought well why not be me um I mean just don't concentrate on The Voice think of the actor part I get people who are like they literally rolled out of bed and they're like oh you seem to be making a living out of it I think I fancy it looks easy yeah what's your advice and you know well you know what have you acted in and then they get very confused so I would say fall in love with the the storytelling part as you said it's this beautiful chain from the writer to the actor to the cinematics team to the to the audience and then back to the creators again because we get given our clothes back and that's again it's an incredible thing to experience and as you can see we do these sort of public appearances because we want to show how how grateful we are and the fact that you love it means that we did a good job so when times were hard I would think of the audience and go but they're gonna love it mate they're gonna love it they're gonna love it so do it um there's a great website if someone's starting out there's a great website by D Bradley Baker who if you've seen the bad batch he is I want to be a voice actor.com and there is so much information particularly particularly for us actors when it comes to Union versus non-union um another thing is like you get I get people saying well I don't um I shouldn't charge anything yet because you know I'm not good enough and it's like well if you're not good enough you shouldn't be doing this and if you're not charging you're undercutting me it's not you're not going to get the answer that you want if you say that so you have to have that self-confidence and you say well how how do you get that self-confidence um you crazy and like perform in front of people like just go and see and you will learn that's how people used to do it there's no it doesn't it's not all about like you have to go to a drama school for three years in fact that's kind of what's replaced that um touring theater thing that we used to have in the UK you're not getting that experience so you'll so you train for three years and it's very intensive and the idea is it replicates that experience it's not about um elitism but yeah like if you can afford classes go and do them please everyone just wants to buy a microphone go for it but like don't be upset when you don't understand why it's not working out that's true so yeah love the home truths for everyone yeah I think hey everybody needs to hear this actually because a lot of people I know uh just buy great microphones and then um when it comes to acting I'm like oh you have to do that too so so yeah like accessing the emotions you know when they chop that big scene at you like you're the one on the line you can't blame the rights or the director like even if it was their fault you can't blame them so it's all on you yeah yeah it's that's that's that's true that's very true I hope a lot of people get to know understand this and you know proceed with that in in that way but uh I'll end you up with like this one last thing and I know a lot of people uh love sending you know asking you stuff about the character is there something that people always ask you all the time just just just going back to like Oh They'll go I love the voice and you go that's really sweet but so much of it was my cup I'd say like less than 10 was voice and that's your in battle box you know what I mean all of that sort of stuff like there's a bit there's a lovely bit I love when um she gets the date and she turns away yes that was me yeah and the movement directors let's say performance directors as they credited in the game and like you know it's it's I will take the credit for that thank you very much we all put in so much hard work for that and you've got um uh Deborah Wilde who who you know was pregnant very pregnant and and did all that I think again amazing technology they could put all the dots like like it was and it got to you know get to Summer and uh Heat Wave and you know I'm absolutely gonna keep saying that we did mocap for this yeah yeah that's great no I love that and you brought up the dead and I love that date I just really loved that day it was so sweet it was so amazing I was like this is great I want this this is amazing I just love her you know I'm so unconscious to maybe you know yeah other characters in the game well it's very courtly you might get a kiss on the cheek yeah the game spoilers sorry at least it's like completely different from you know Lazelle and I was like I want this well that's kind of like it's like oh um let's go to a date that would be great one of those wants this but there's a reason why she can't get it oh yeah I think I think within the dates in but because of the way and it should be because of the way the options are structured like if you miss your chance you're not going to get that option again um I remember recording something about and it may have been cut that she used to get around a bit in the gate she had a reputation um but now she's been to the hills and she's been back she's had a little bit of a chance to actually think about relationships with people that she actually wants she never had a relationship and it doesn't mean that like she has not got experiences so it's quite the opposite actually she's looking for Quality rather than quantity now so that's it's in there somewhere I'm sure it's in the a data mind of what you smile somewhere but it is in there but it's like a little bit of backstory because you have that instinct and um you you assume stuff and then when it actually comes in the script you go oh yeah thank God that's what I've been playing oh man that's lovely uh well I just want to say thank you so much for taking the time for talking about garlic a lot of people having such a great time playing garlic and I've seen especially some people I don't know how they get this but they have their own camera built in in the game and they take some really amazing screenshots I'm like Jesus Christ this looks so good so oh yeah those are amazing [Laughter] yeah but like I'm excited for people to finally get to play on consoles coming next month uh so yeah thank you so much for all taking the time it's been great and uh I'm just excited for more people to play this than just having such a great time thank you so much thank you [Music]

Channel: GaminMadness

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Keywords: karlach voice actress, karlach voice actor, karlach voice actor bg3, baldur's gate 3 kalrach, baldur's gate 3 karlach voice actor, baldur's gate 3, baldurs gate 3, bg3, karlach, samantha béart, samantha béart karlach, voice actor, voice actor of Karlach, voice actress of karlach, karlach voice actor baldur's gate 3, about baldur's gate 3

Id: 0rIXUecg6mA

Length: 27min 12sec (1632 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 25 2023