Wanted: Dead Vivienne Interview

February 14, 2023 at 1:00pm
By Jason Stettner

Interview with Stefanie Joosten, Actress for (Vivienne) in Wanted: Dead

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?

Stefanie: I'm Stephanie Joosten and I'm an actress, singer and freelance director and I play Vivienne in the upcoming title Wanted: Dead, coming out on February 14th.

In Wanted: Dead, you provide the voice for Vivienne. Could you tell us a bit about the character and the situation she finds herself in?

Stefanie: Vivienne is a very interesting character, she's mostly referred to as “Gunsmith” in the game, that's sort of her nickname and also her function. She's really a side character, she plays quite a prominent role in the marketing campaign of Wanted: Dead.

I'm sure you've probably seen the cooking show, she's just a hilarious character. It's been so much fun portraying her because she's so diverse in her interests. She's an ex-Olympic medalist turned celebrity TV chef and now she works at the Hong Kong police force.

So very interesting life choices and just a very fun character. She's quite quirky, she's very smart but at the same time she's very much in her own world you know so she comes across pretty awkward which I find really fun about her.

I understand there’s a cooking element to this role, care to talk about that?

Stefanie: The cooking show was an idea that came up quite late in development. I was already voicing the Gunsmith as a character and the idea came up since a lot of the mini games and Wanted: Dead in general, the story beats they tend to involve food and eating a lot.

So there's a Ramen mini game and the crew hangs out at a diner and there's a lot of eating and yeah somehow a cooking show came up. I love the idea, I enjoy cooking myself and I'm very much a foodie. I really just enjoy, like delicious food, the look of it, the taste of it and so that was a perfect match for me to do the cooking show as Vivienne which was gonna make things even more interesting.

There also seems to be a bit of music attached to the situation too, what was it like working on the song portion of the experience?

Stefanie: Very fun, I think the music we've worked on matches the vibe for Wanted: Dead so well because it takes place in this old school universe and so the music is very 80’s inspired and I did a couple of cover tracks of some great songs.

My favorite being “She Works Hard for the Money” by Donna Summer originally and it was just such a pleasure to get to do those songs and there's also a such an amazing anime music video made especially for the song. It's just such it's such a joy how broad this universe of Wanted: Dead has become.

Just to further go onto the musical elements, do you personally partake in karaoke at all and did you find it at all odd that this was featured within the performance?

Stefanie: Oh, the karaoke was my idea. I've also been involved as a cutscene director for Wanted: Dead so I got to insert some ideas of my own and karaoke, I spent about six years living in Japan and it's such a part of the culture there after work, karaoke.

It's something I thought would be really funny to have you know, like Stone and her team actually go do karaoke after work and it ended up becoming a mini game so that's awesome.

What do you feel was one of the more memorable moments for the character, in terms of a voice line you did or just a particular part of the whole experience that you most enjoyed?

Stefanie: I really enjoyed the interactions between Hannah sand Lieutenant Stone. She’s called Hannah, and Vivienne, they're very good friends and I like the little interactions between them. Just shows like this companionship, it's so full of character. I can't really like bring up something specific but I also really like the interactions comes with.

I mean Vivienne and Hannah will have, when the player is participating in the shooting range mini games and just you know Gunsmith, she comes across pretty cute like at first but then she has this really like, this Cockiness and when Stone actually defeats her she sort of feels offended so there's some really fun lines in there so I like that double-sidedness of her character.

You mentioned some behind the scenes work on this game, how did that get started, any interesting challenges based on this element?

Stefanie: At first I was approached just as an actress to perform in the game but yeah, after interacting with the people from 110 Industries more. I've always had this ambition to be more creatively involved in video game work so that's where I actually got the opportunity to be directing on this game.

So that's how that started and it was a very big challenge because most of the development took place during Corona lockdown times. So it was actually much more challenging than it would usually be. A lot of remote work having to direct motion capture sessions through Zoom calls so.

I'm so glad that's over because we're on the next project, we're finally, I'm more hands-on and actually being able to participate in person so that makes a huge difference. But I'm just so proud, actually of the entire team of how everyone managed to get this result during such challenging times, it's really amazing.

When preparing to voice the character, were you given any initial direction in regards to the character?

Stefanie: I got a lot of creative freedom for Gunsmith. There's actually a lot of myself in there, I think just taking the quirky parts of my own personality and putting them in there. It's just been very, it felt very free and very liberating to play her so yeah I did get a lot of freedom there.

What’s it like to see your voice attached to a game character?

Stefanie: It's been a dream really, I grew up a gamer so you know it's my dream job to be voicing game characters. It's just, video games are so magical to me because they really last and they really tend to have an impact on the lives of people that play them since you're spending so much time with these characters.

Much more than you would compared to watching a movie for instance so that's what really makes video games special to me and it's just such an honor to get to bring these characters to life through the voice performance.

This role seemed to offer a lot of differing tasks for you, which aspect did you find the most entertaining or well perhaps challenging?

Stefanie: As I said the most challenging part was working remotely and just having all these extra steps in communication instead of just being able to directly talk to someone you know, so that was that was very challenging.

The most enjoyable part is how rewarding it is to see everything come together and the whole universe come together combined with the cooking show and the music and the game now coming out very soon.

For video games it requires a lot of patience to work on them because you start like, we started two or three years ago on this project so you can get like in the middle, you get kind of impatient to see it all finally take form and come together and sometimes there's moments where it seems just impossible, but then you reach this moment where it all becomes very real and you actually get to play it so that's just so magical and such a rewarding feeling.

What are some other characters and or performances that people might know you from?

Stefanie: Well, the most obvious one is my role as Quiet from Metal Gear Solid 5 which sort of kick-started my career. That was almost ten years ago now that I started working on that one. More recently I've played Briar and Lute in a game called Solstice.

Briar and Lute are two sisters so I had two roles in one game which was quite a challenge as well but it worked out really beautifully. I think the story was really so beautifully written so I really recommend people check out that game as well and I've also played Katya in Last Labyrinth which is a VR title which came out 2020 I think and those are my most memorable roles.


So, I understand there’s another project you’re working on?

Stefanie: Yes, it's called Vengeance is Mine and it's the next title 110 Industries and Soleil Studios are working on currently and it's still quite early in development. I do have a more expansive creative part in the development.

I'm also a creative director on that project so that is another very exciting step in my career and just currently keeping me busy. I enjoy it to the fullest so there's not much I can say about it yet but it's something to look forward to in the future.

Lastly I would like to leave a spot for you to say something or go over anything I might have missed during the interview?

Stefanie: Well, another exciting thing that happened last year was that I released my first own album and it's called “Singing to the Sky” and it came out in December last year so it's quite recent and if you like disco music it's produced by Giorgio Moroder and if you like disco music I think you should check it out because there's some pretty cool songs on there.

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