Why Chris Judge Almost Turned Down Kratos

I Have Become everything I never wanted you to be run run far away from me hey hey Chris yes there he is there he is the man of the hour how are you Chris I am excellent now it's an honor to be here and I was there in the audience when you gave your speech the well-deserved award that you won thank you so you didn't fall asleep during my speech or anything like Jeff was trying to infer are you kidding me no I did not I didn't fall asleep at all I I was hanging on every single word that you said you know and I I was I was kind of I'm not even joking right now but I was kind of I was like why are they playing that music what is this he doesn't need an underscore let's let him go and my man's go what are you doing little did they know I took that as encouragement I noticed in your speech you you said something that caught my attention and you said that you almost didn't take this particular role and I was kind of I was kind of curious about that because I'm like I feel like you're you're such a you're such an this this role like I feel like it it introduced reintroduced you to a new audience and so I'm kind of curious what was it that almost made you not want to take this role well when I read the script and just the scope of it I was like this is a 200 million dollar film like it's gonna go straight to offer and I'm sure it's these are going to go through Denzel or you know you know at that time God bless us so uh uh Chad or um Idris or you know I was like uh if they have a top 20 list I'd be happy if I was 21 on it so why like why are you sending me this you know this is straight to offer and uh so that's when Tiny broke it to me my agent who I love she uh kind of soft pedaled it like uh so it's actually a game and I just went berserk I went ballistic because I don't feel comfortable like doing like Voice work it's it's like a medium that I've never it's just disorienting to me and I don't have a million voices I have two deep and deeper that's it and so once she called me down she's like no they say it's it's gonna be filmed it's like it's like you're gonna be on a real set the only difference is you have to wear at that time they're called motion capture suits and it's just like your regular set and I was like so she convinced me to at least go see through the audition process if it was what they're saying and you know if it carries on then she said then you know make an informed decision on whether you're going to turn it down or accept whatever so I get to the audition and it's unlike any other audition I've ever been on so you know in a standard film or television audition this is it right here you set the camera there and you know either you have a reader you don't um and they ask you not to move too much and this I was like running all over this face and acting like I was you know rolling boats and throwing rocks and all kinds of stuff so then I was even anger so she said no no that's it's like they said you were really great and blah blah um so we then got the call to do a chemistry test and then I was like what the hell like no film or television thing I've ever done okay maybe twice in 30 years I've had to do chemistry tests so I get to the chemistry test that they don't really tell me who it's with they just send me the material so it's like okay it's supposed to be and at that at this point I my son had read uh some of the sides and he said I think this might be God of War but then there was a kid so my son said no it's not it's not God of War he doesn't have a kid so I still didn't know really what it was I get to the chemistry test and this little runt of a kid is there but you have changed you're not a monster that is exactly what I am not to me but he was so engaging and so intelligent and we just hit it off immediately so our scenes weren't even like we had just met like our relationship was there from the very first words yeah so then it it went from there and I got to see like we actually did the chemistry test in a volume not the volume we ended up using but it was uh yeah and so the you know the rest is history you know Sunny still says hey I should be getting 10 I'm responsible for your career I'm the one who said I had the best chemistry with you yeah no the chemistry is obviously there it's it's and it's interesting you know the I guess the way this all played out because like I know you're no stranger to to you know voice acting in video games I mean you were you were D Mob and and friggin depth Jam I remember that I remember that game you punks are all to say no skill but I'm pretty sure it's it's vastly different like you're I'm assuming that you were probably just in like a vo booth for that and this one you're putting on an entire suit you got a helmet you got polka dots on your face like what was that experience like when no that's natural yeah exactly yeah so I'm kind of curious what was that experience like for for you Dory uh are great uh cinematographer in the mornings we have a table read and then we would start rehearsing the scenes that we're gonna shoot the following day so Dory would always stand back and say okay let me see what your Natural Instincts are and how you guys feel and what you want to do and so we go through it and then Dory we go that was great okay now here's what you have to do so there would be specific places we had to be at specific dialogue and and you know I had never done this this whole no-cut thing so I wasn't used to if you fumble a line you know usually you just pick it up you say hey I'm just going to take it from such and such you start from alpha you start from square one there there are no pickups like every scene has to be perfectly clean I guess the first thing that really surprised me was how much more exhausted I was than doing live action because you know live action you do you know a couple takes and then you move on you know you do a wide close-ups and two shots three shots but there's like sometimes half hour hour two hours between setups so most of a day on set in live action is downtime that's not the way it is in in game not the way we should do it now cinematics uh and performance capture is literally you go until you get it and then if it's perfect which it rarely is you know first 10 times yeah then you got to do another perfect one for safety which may take God knows how many because of the intricate choreography the different emotional beats and so everyone's emotional beats have to be within one shot so if one character is just a little bit off emotionally or timing wise or whatever you gotta start all over so it was exhausting because mentally besides whatever emotional work you had done you still had to be very aware of the choreography and it's actually a fantastic acting exercise and being able to stay in the moment and listen to people and in the beginning it was quite a daunting process I I can imagine I mean especially like like having to do it you know over and over again like do you know a second one for safety and I feel like you you also have to kind of like suspend your you have to like suspend your imagination a little bit because like you're you're your sane partner is is also in this this this weird suit and polka dots on their face with a camera in front of their face so I feel like it takes a lot more concentration uh for for you as an actor um to kind of like Focus to kind of like imagine that you're not seeing any of that but you're seeing you know the character you're seeing atreus you know you're seeing you're saying prayer you're singing the character in front of you that's that's one of the things that I actually founded you easier really because um very rarely in live action especially in your close-ups do you actually get to look at the person you have to look at a dot in the matte box of the camera so this I found kind of liberated because you had to block out everything else but the person you were talking to their eyes their face um because everything else was a distraction you know so to me actually made it easier to lock into other actors because you actually got to use them and what they were giving you right right I I never actually thought about it that way um I mean Stargate you know we you know the the thing that you do is you try to get people to break okay so we got to the point on Stargate where we very rarely did our close-ups with the actual other actor there because we were just with each other so this to actually go full speed every take with the actual person playing the character it was almost a blessing because for the last five years of Stargate we literally very rarely unless it was like super emotional something like that we didn't use the other actor because we knew they were going to try to sabotage you and and not in any malicious way just in fun you know right yeah yeah and also like you all had the luxury of like you could actually break and you know it's not it doesn't have to be like one long take fortunately you know and right like yeah but I'm so curious Chris I I gotta know this like just just being like a long time fan of of the franchise I'm so curious because you you said I want to talk about the voice of Kratos now you said you only have two voices deep and deeper yeah so I'm kind of curious how did you uh how did you find the voice of Kratos and and was any of it like inspired by you know the previous games you know of course you know TC Carson was the original voice of Kratos kind of curious how did you find the voice for me it was uh I let it find me I'm not many people know this um I actually went and did vocal training for like months before we actually started but it was with a British accent okay so a British Kratos wow so I guess there's some miscommunication somewhere down down the road but um so we meet like uh I can't remember it's two or three times a week and this is for probably two or three months and our first day on set we're doing our first take and you see like people like whispering and talking then Corey walks over to me and he says was that a British accent and I said apparently not a very good one if you have to ask me

Channel: IGN

Views: 1,283,008

Keywords: Action, God of War, God of War: Ragnarok, PlayStation 5, god of war, god of war ragnarok, chris judge, chris judge kratos, chris judge god of war, chris judge god of war ragnarok, chris judge interview, chris judge kratos god of war, chris judge kratos god of war ragnarok interview, god of war interview, ps5, god of war ragnarok ps5, chris judge speech, chris judge kratos voice, Chris judge turned down kratos, who plays kratos, kratos actor, Kratos voice

Id: HGk88cc36WM

Length: 11min 11sec (671 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 15 2023