Lae’zel’s voice actor Devora Wilde also auditioned for Shadowheart, Karlach, ‘And probably Astarion?’
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GINX TV’s video series The Games That Made Me has featured interviews with several cast members of Baldur’s Gate 3, including Astarion actor Neil Newbon, who talked about his work on Fallout London. The latest is with Devora Wilde, who plays Lae’zel with such snarling ferocity it’s tough to imagine her as any of the other characters. And yet, as she told GINX, she auditioned for several roles in Larian’s romance-em-up.
“It was a 45-second audition for Lae’zel. I did audition for all the other characters too, I believe. I definitely auditioned for Shadowheart and Karlach… And probably Astarion? They were all sectioned into, like, races. So they had, I think the githyanki were called plane walkers.”
To avoid giving away that the project was a new Baldur’s Gate, certain character details were obscured. “They were all code named”, as Wilde explained. “The tieflings were devilkin. I think you had a half-elf, a dark elf, and so I think I just auditioned for all of them because I have no reference, and I was just like, might as well. Let’s just go for it!”
That 45-second audition recording came with the stipulation that it had to be a video. “And it’s got to be from my head to my knees,” Wilde said, “because it’s for motion capture. And I was like, motion capture? The only reference I have for motion capture was Lord of the Rings and Andy Serkis. That’s my only reference. I know there’s dots involved in, like, a suit. That’s it.”
Wilde was cast based on that first performance, where some of the other actors had to go through several rounds of auditioning. “I think I found out pretty quickly actually that I’d got it. And I had no idea what it was for. I had no idea of the scale. I had no idea it was a main character. I had no idea it was a githyanki.”
Obviously Wilde turned out to be the perfect Lae’zel, and it’s interesting Larian saw that immediately. I think she’d have made a great Minthara as well, and whether or not she was joking about auditioning for Astarion, now I can’t stop thinking about how she’d deliver his memorable solar-powered freakout.
