With so many incredible characters in Baldur’s Gate 3, it takes a lot for any of them to stand out. That’s exactly what Mizora, the devil on Wyll’s shoulder, has done though. Whether it’s because of her incredible powers or her personality, fans are, well, big fans of the devil.
Well, we got the chance to have a chat with Tamaryn Payne, not only the voice but the motion capture actress responsible for bringing Mizora to life, or death, or whatever state of being it is that devils in Baldur’s Gate 3 exist in. We got to chat about how you even find yourself playing devils after being in a British soap, what the process is like, how you find work, and some tips. Plus, we got to talk before she embarks on a new journey on Twitch.
A Change of Pace
Naturally the first question we had was how you go from Hollyoaks, a very long-running UK soap opera, to then embodying characters like Lohse and Mizora. Payne explained that having come to the end of her contract with Hollyoaks, she wanted to branch out when it came to playing characters, having been cast a lot as “the girlfriend, the girl next door, you know, it’s been a lot of like, sort of nice, sweet, romantic kind of characters, which is lovely, you know, always grateful for the work.”
“At drama school just loved my radio classes. I think it’s just a classic case of; I had an amazing teacher, I had a really fun teacher who we all just loved.” She explained that spending time learning that side of the industry and playing around with accents was a lot of fun, even though it’s “not the sort of thing that I went to drama school for.”
Payne said that it felt as though voice acting was meant for her, something she had an intuition of saying it made sense at the time. “it just clicked. I went to a meeting with an agent, I signed with them straight away. And I’ve been with the same agent this whole time. I’ve been with Voice Squad, you know, for 12 years. And it’s been amazing.”
That’s how Payne ended up doing voice acting, but what about how she ended up working with Larian Studios on two of the best CRPGs ever made?
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The Devil’s in the Details
It turns out that for a lot of these things, companies will put out a massive casting brief full of different character archetypes and voices they’re looking for. This was the case even having worked with Larian Studios before as Lohse. Payne stated that luck is definitely involved here, but she got an email from her agent, and then she said that you ” just throw as much as you can at the wall in terms of what you think you could actually do. Of course, there are some characters I might look at and go, not quite me. But yeah, you just try and be brave with that.” There were different characters listed on the sheet including a Tiefling character and a Princess-esque character, who could have been Shadowheart based on her voice.
Payne felt there were a lot of potential options there, so she tried voice lines for a few different characters, although “I don’t remember actually taping anything Mizora at all.” This all happened all the way back in early 2020, and we all know what happened shortly after that. Then, “October last year, I did the scene again. Where I was stuck in this pod. Yeah, I was sat down in this pod. And I was like, this is weird.”
That’s because the motion capture side of things was pretty involved. Payne, along with the other actors, though never in the same room, had to get dressed up in the ball motion capture suits we’ve all seen. While a touch off topic, we had to know if they were comfortable, and to our surprise, Payne said that they were. “It’s kind of like just wearing a cat suit. It’s trousers in a zip-up top. And then over your hands, you have these loops that they put on. And we now have the gloves. So you can do they take the hand movements as well, and the finger movements, which is great. You have like a little bald cap on so you look really attractive.”
Now, you might assume that you’d know what you were doing when you step into a room to record lines and motion capture. But it turns out that the secrecy of the games industry pushes things a bit further. “I didn’t know what or who she was, it’s all quite top secret when you start out, so you don’t really know what you’re you’re kind of doing until you get a bit further in.” Then they just dropped on her that she’d be playing Mizora, “And I was like, okay, and then they were showing me who she was and everything. And I was like, oh, wow. This is amazing!”
While fans of Payne’s work will no doubt recognize her voice in Mizora, it’s not quite the same as her standard one. Each character requires something a little bit different, and finding that takes work. Payne explained that it’s a mix of multiple directors and their suggestions and ideas, and then the actor trying to find the right vibe. One of the first notes was, “we want your lower register, we want your lower, powerful and seductive register.” The motion capture helped here as acting things out physically helped Payne to really embody, quite literally, the role.
When Good Meets Evil
Given the somewhat solitary experience of actually recording things, we had to ask when she met some of the other actors. It actually turns out that Theo Solomon, the voice behind the mighty Wyll, who many of you will know Mizora has at her beck and call, is actually part of the same agency as Payne, and the two have worked together before. Payne also remembers getting to see Jennifer English, the actor who played Shadowheart, in-between sessions too.
However, the biggest surprise was Neil Newbon, who we all know (and love) as Astarion. Having seen a tall and vaguely familiar person a while away, some actually asked Payne if she’d been on Hollyoaks, and that’s because Newbon also had a role on that show. They didn’t have a lot of crossover, but Newbon played a villain on Holyoaks. ” I went out and said hi to him as well, and just reconnected, which was lovely. A lovely little blast from the past experience and incredible character as well.”
“He did sort of blow me away when I came out of the booth and said hi to him, and you know, we had a bit of a chat and everything, and then I said, Oh, who are you playing anyway, a story and he went into this like, massive like performance.” We find it reassuring to know that everyone’s a little bit impressed by the actors in Baldur’s Gate 3, not just us gamers.
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Doing it for the Thralls
First of all, the thrall subheading is a joke. Anyway, we asked how it felt to be playing Mizora, and the fan reaction to the character and the game. “It sounds a bit cheesy, but I feel really humbled and just taken aback and so happy… I just want to say that, the gaming community is just so lovely. And everyone has been really positive about Mizora even though she can be a bit annoying; it’s just awesome. I just want to say thank you so much.”
We also had a quick chat about the romance scenes. While Mizora’s isn’t as intense as some of the other characters, yes, we’re looking at you Minthara, it still must have been unusual to act out. “I mean, the romance scene, I remember was really funny, because like I say, you’re just stood there alone. And it’s not like there was any kind of really sensitive content, but they were very sweet about it.”
Larian Studios got an intimacy coordinator and checked with the actors that they’d be okay with the required scenes, which is reassuring to know. “The funny bit was when I had to kind of like, like, pretend I had someone’s hands. And then just like, put them on my boobs. On my own in this room. Being Mizora and being seductive.”
Casting Guidance
When you’ve got an established and talented actor in a video call, it’s good courtesy to ask about the advice they’d give themselves or anyone else. While Payne didn’t have proper advice for their theoretical younger selves (it’s a weird question anyway, but we like it), they did have a few suggestions for budding voice actors. Payne said they’d be happy to help with specific questions if people reached out, including a good voice reel person.
The biggest bit of advice was to “go and get a voice real made fast.” Aside from that, Payne said you had to really want to do voice acting. “You need to be obsessed, you need to really want to do it. So just check in with yourself and just make sure that you really cannot think of doing anything else and that you are in love with it.”
Payne also said to make sure you were happy with your voice reel, and that it’s rarely worth doing lots of accents. “Mainly you will get cast as yourself like even with Mizora, it’s a version of my voice, but it’s still me. Lohse is very much my speaking voice, very much my natural self with a very kind of heightened hero energy. Mizora is a lower register, a more velvety feel, but she’s still a version of me. So you want to lean on who you are, and embrace that.”
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Streaming and Beyond
We asked why Payne wanted to do streaming, and she said that at first she didn’t. However, in interviews with other people, and with other voiceover friends who stream like Harry McEntire, who taught her everything she knows about Twitch so far, and even Neil Newbon himself, the idea kept creeping in. “And then I thought it could be quite fun, because of the whole thing of me never really playing video games, for my first time to be live in tonnes and loads of people and with Baldur’s Gate 3.” It’s also a chance for Payne to talk about mindfulness and meditation, which is something she’s a huge supporter of, and she wants to find more ways to put that positivity out into the world.
Streaming is a lot of fun, but for some people, it’s a fleeting thing, and for others, it’s a full-time commitment. Payne actually did streaming during the 2020 lockdowns of her reading kids’ books, and then adult books when she wanted to read something, as a way of keeping her mental health more positive during the early days of COVID, so this style of entertainment isn’t alien to her. “So I do think that it’s got legs because I enjoyed that process. And also, the plan is to do boulders gate, and then do divinity.” She’s also planning on going on to Divinity: Original Sin 2 once she’s done with Baldur’s Gate 3, and that’s a lot of gameplay hours.
When interviewing anyone in the gaming industry, it’s customary to ask questions you’re not going to get answers too. We asked if she was doing anything more on Baldur’s Gate 3, and naturally, we got nothing back. The same is true of any upcoming projects too, because NDAs are terrifying things that Mizora herself basically makes use of in the game.
However, we did also ask what Payne thought of the secrecy that’s sort of unique to gaming. Would it be better if people could actually talk about games while they’re working on them? “I suppose yeah. I haven’t really thought about it. But it would make sense, wouldn’t it, to be able to big up what’s about to come out. There must be a reason for it. It must be too important.”
Payne also asked developers not to forget actors, who can sometimes be working on games with codenames instead of real names and not always even with the right character names either. They just want to advertise all the cool things they’ve worked on, and said, “send us an email. Send your actors an email to say it’s come out this is the name of it and this is your character name. Don’t forget about us.”
If you want to make sure you don’t forget about Tamaryn Payne, you can catch her very first stream on 11/04/23 at 6PM GMT.
