Dragon's Dogma 2 Wilhelmina Interview
Interview with Charlotte East, Actress for (Wilhelmina) in Dragon's Dogma 2
For call based interviews we try to present the conversation replies as close to verbatim as possible, for context.
A staple I do in all interviews in order to start things off is to ask that you elaborate a bit about your work, and this particular role for those not familiar with it?
Charlotte: I play Wilhelmina in Dragon’s Dogma 2 and my general work is acting or anything creative really. I work in theatre. I also work in bits of TV and screen when they come in. I don't know if you have it in America, but Air Wick. I'm currently their voice.
In Dragon’s Dogma 2, you provide the performance for Lady Wilhelmina. Could you tell us a bit about the character and the situation she finds herself in?
Charlotte: She's sort of a bold woman, she really sticks to her guns but she's very warm and kind. I think generally just a nice person who's been put in very high positions in her head and is going to push through whatever comes her way.
So yeah she is a proprietress at the Rose Chateau and she runs the place. She keeps things moving but she has lots of stuff going on underneath from her past that she intends to, see through is the word I think I should use.
When preparing to perform as Wilhelmina, were you given any initial direction in regards to the character? Just in terms of an example of prep work to get into the mind set of this particular performance?
Charlotte: I remember the audition being, I played her very differently in the audition to what we ended up with. I felt she was very still; she was quite, this was in the audition very quite like snake like and then we got into doing the motion capture. The body is of somebody else but I'm the face and voice. So I was having to match my voice to the woman who had done the body.
Who has done a brilliant job, so again really snaky and really sort of strong. So I was matching my voice to her and originally I had gone in with my accent. Which is East Midland/North England and the version of Wilhelmina they wanted was quite a little bit more refined.
Not as much in the sound but a little bit more sort of a softer sound that was a little bit lower and a little bit more forceful and a bit more RP with the sound of an ass still being in there so I wouldn't say grass like they would do in London I'd say grass like in America or Canada. So yeah my version of her was quite different to what we then ended up with which I'm really happy that we got to what we have cause I feel like she's a force.
Your character has a very mysterious angle to her, particularly in how players will first meet her. Could you talk about that from your perspective, being initially a mystery to the player and how it opens up over the course of the narrative and or interactions with her?
Charlotte: Goodness, well I will say that we did things in terms of like, how you meet the character. How we were creating and recording and building wasn't, it was chronologically but it was all on one day, so two days I think, actually two days. So what I sort of found was that I didn't really know whereabouts in the story Wilhelmina would be coming.
Because I was doing everything in one batch and then gradually over the two years I was recording it I would come back and be like okay where are we now? Okay; great, cool and can you just play back my voice again because I have no idea what I was doing. Which was again super fun to keep on touching back into her story but not really having much of an idea of where she was going to be coming in and what her story meant to other characters stories because we didn't.
We weren't really told very much because the NDA was so strong so we were very much tunneled into, this is what your character does, don't worry about all the rest this is what your character does and this is her story. So I don't think I've answered your question very well there at all.
I think you kind of went over it pretty well and kind of got to it. But yeah I would say that her story evolves quite quickly. I think you're, you meet her at a time where she's made a decision and she will be doing it and you're just coming along for the ride and if you can get involved with it then great but if you don't then it's going to happen anyway. Yeah she's cool.
So Wilhelmina has a bit of a, romancing option with her character. What was it like to bring that connection to the player to life?
Charlotte: Really fun, really fun. I think you have to also remember that we were, again physically I wasn't doing anything physically with my body but we were facially doing everything. So the scenes that you see the sort of cutaway scenes that you see we were still doing those scenes physically but with massive headsets on with cameras.
So you had to still be aware of what your counter actor or your fellow actor or the person who was doing the body was doing to be able to make sure that eye contact was in the same place. Which was really fun because then you'd kind of, I felt like I could just keep trying new things really because someone else had already done the physical side of it in terms of the body.
So I had to now just be more playful with what more can we do vocally to make her sit in this body that has already been built. So I found it really fun and I really enjoyed it and it was a challenge definitely because you're doing someone else's physicality which is fascinating but it was a challenge that I completely loved and definitely do it again.
Could you explain the process of voice acting to motion capture, for those not familiar with it?
Charlotte: Yeah sure, so motion capture you would start with the motion capture. Sometimes it varies, it depends on what sort of game they want or if they want to record motion capture. So for example our motion capture was recorded. I think it was recorded in America for the bodies and then a lot of the voice which you'll hear are English or certainly from around our part.
So they were then putting vocal and facial capture into the bodies that were already built. So that was really interesting because you were watching something that had been done a couple of weeks or a couple of months ago with people who had had their own version of the character that you were now voicing and you were matching that with the voice that you are now delivering.
So we had a massive headset and it had a huge camera on the front with a light and it makes you look lovely as you can imagine. But it records your facial expressions so her facial expressions are mine, her head tilts on mine her, her like little weird things that she does with her face are but the body of this person doing sort of all of the fanning and walking around were somebody else.
It's fun and yeah what I think is clever about that is that you can get things done in different sections and then just move and play with what you want. So it wasn't sort of like you do one take and that's the take or you do sort of three takes of this scene and that's the scene. It was more like well we know what the body's doing so let's just do loads and loads of vocal takes but I was still doing everything physically in the space in the motion capture studio to try and make sure the eye lines were in the right place and I mean it's funny because my eye which is her same eye.
So if we're looking at the right on this one, my eye blew up and I had like blood vessels pop in my eye because we were doing the camera and light work for quite awhile. I think it was a long time and so my eye completely blew up and it was just again really interesting to see because we didn't have an idea of what they were going to solidly look like I had no idea what Wilhelmina was going to look like until the trailer really so seeing that this eye was then covered was like oh it literally was the eye that was bright red which was fun.
What’s it like to see your voice and movement attached to a game character?
Charlotte: Super fun, I mean it's fun it's just like it's you know this is a dream job. I think it's a job that many people who play video games, many people who love anything CGI or you're literally in a different world and yet you haven't physically been there. It's a really interesting concept that is fun to just keep on playing and it gives you the freedom to go.
I don't have to make this extremely modern or natural or I can, like I naturally speak a lot quicker than Wilhelmina does. I naturally speed through things quite quick and I think that comes from being Northern English so having to go well she's going to speak a bit slower.
Okay, right how do I physically and mentally make myself go through lines and make sure that I'm staying at the same level so that over the next two years it's doable to keep coming back to. So to answer your question it was yeah, it was just exciting to see how they built the world and it's so beautiful. Like when you see videos or if you play it it's just, it's just stunning and you can believe that you're in that world with them completely. Which I really appreciate and seeing my face move around.
When performing the role, were there any particular lines or moments that really stuck out to you? Whether that’s a behind the scenes moment or from the dialogue?
Charlotte: SPOILERS: Yeah so for me the scene with Allard at the end. Arisen with the her final resolution of what she's been trying to do I really enjoyed playing that scene. Really; really, really enjoyed playing that scene just because it's a nice in terms of character depth and plot and story and who she is really. It's a nice way to end it to feel like she got what she was always pushing for.
So yeah I felt like that moment specifically for me was really fun to have a play with. There was so many and it was over two years as well and sometimes I'd say, like there was words that I had no idea how to pronounce. Like no idea and I was walking into the studio going like I don't know if I'm going to be able to say this word, but I’ll have a go.
That's a really good question because now I'm going to have to rack my brain. I mean her opening line when you first meet her is just well, and I love they're like well like who do we have here. I think general every single line she does has a little bit of sass, like a spiciness to it that you've just sprinkled some chili flakes on top of it and what comes is a spicy saucy lady.
Should there be some sort of expansion and or sequel to the game down the road, is this a role you’d be interested in reprising should that happen?
Charlotte: Yeah of course I mean there's so much more you could learn about Wilhelmina. I think there's so much that, her story I think it's definitely finished. We see the end of it but we haven't seen the beginning of it. We haven't really seen the story of how she got to where she is.
What I mean, you could go down a whole route of Wilhelmina I think like you could give her a whole thing which I'd be definitely keen to play with that thing of like how did someone become hardened like she is but yet have gone through quite a lot of grief and quite a lot of pain and still maintain this thing of yeah I think that could definitely be a sequel.
I wonder if it could be a prequel which is difficult to do with this plot but you would maybe, sequel would be that you'd follow where Wilhelmina goes next. What would be her thing that she does next because she can't just sit still you can tell from her that she's like she's definitely not going to be someone who just goes oh well I'll just continue being a proprietor then.
That's what my job is, I think she would probably use her skill set in many other ways and her sort of under layer of the story that she shows the mask she shows on top with the under layer underneath. I think the under layer is what I would be really keen to continue playing give her more weapons let make her into a full-blown like saucy ah!
What are your thoughts on the genre of role playing games in general?
Charlotte: I mean, I'm not a massive video game player. I do play, absolutely love just losing myself in the world like I think that's it's kind of important as a video game voice over artist. To know where you are as an actor and what sort of vibe you need to try and give and how to really commit enough to make the player believe that they are following someone who knows what they're doing.
Because I think if you sometimes can hear it in voice over jobs where someone has no idea what this means in terms of the video game world and you can kind of hear it. You sort of like go okay, so you have no idea what it means when someone says come this way or come follow me or let's go this way.
But you haven't got this, go get it so my opinion on it is that it's I think it's really fun and I think we need to have things to be able to lose ourselves in and ultimately this world is mad enough and so having something like Dragon's Dogma 2 or you know one of these free roaming games that you can just go and do loads of different quests and you can find different things and you can really lose yourself in it I think that that's I think it's important to have something that's other to everyday life for me.
Do you see yourself being interested in additional game related performances in the future?
Charlotte: Yes! That's the answer yeah. Yes I do, no I definitely do and I'm really keen. I have a a background in movement and physical theater and that's so physically. I'm really keen to go down the route of motion capture as well in a physical way and give myself those characters that are really physically different to me. Because I find them just so fun to play when you're playing sort of a character that's got a lot of like physical strength but you might not have a lot.
I think that's really fun to be able to go okay so I know that my shoulders are about this big really and I'm not five foot six which is what I am I'm actually six foot three and how does that make me walk and how does that make me sort of like move and does that give me like an energy that's a bit heavier or do I do I need an energy that's like slinky and a bit more like Wilhelmina.
So I'm definitely keen to keep going and I just love the video game world. So fun and the people in video game world are really lovely like every time that I've worked on one it's just been really nice people just wanting to make really fun things and have fun and just enjoy the process of exploring these worlds and meeting people along the way and whether that's you're working in the studio as the sound guy.
Whether that's your the motion capture person or whether that's like you're editing later or you're building the world or you're drawing it or like all these jobs are just in. They're so we're so fortunate to be able to do these things I think and to keep doing it is a joy and so I would love to.
Lastly I would like to leave a spot for you to say something or go over anything I might have missed during the interview?
Charlotte: Oh gosh, so anyone who lives in England or London. I also do a bit of writing and I have written a play and it is going on tour in 2025 and it's about toxic masculinity within the East Midlands of England and male mental health and how important it is for us all to know and see it and it's got a bit of mystery to it. It's very folklore and yeah that's going on in 2025 and it's called “The King Stone”.
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