You and I have a different interpretation for better, I don't see the importance of having the VA match the characters, not in games or any other animated characters, it's on the director to make sure it matches to his vision.
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TBT to when Naughty Dog cast a white girl doing an accent as a South African black woman and said she was better than actual South African black women
- Thread starter LifeLine
- Start date
Here's the funny part. Phil LaMarr is such a nice guy that if Tartakovsky decided to reboot Samurai Jack with a Japanese voice actor I bet Phil would be THRILLED for that actor. LaMarr knows better than most of us how hard it is for a voice artist of color to get a defining role like that.
It's not accurate race casting, but it's not really problematic because Phil himself is a PoC as a black man (plus, his voice work as Samurai Jack is iconic).
The issue here is whitewashing.
Phil LaMarr is awesome. I loved him in mad tv, and he did a great job as Vamp from metal gear solid.
She played a character strawberry shortcake in an animation. Strawberry shortcake is white, my friend is black. I'm saying that according to OP she should not have gotten that job.
Not voting because overall for Nadine I agree they should have figured out the character's background first and not make that mistake again and recasted, but I do think she gave a good performance as she's one of the better VAs in the business.
You don't think he should have gotten the Samurai Jack role?
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The quote kills me because you're saying that among all the thousands of EXTREMELY talented black actors, you can't find one? That only means they didn't even TRY.Of course I'm talking about Nadine from Uncharted 4 and Lost Legacy. She was supposedly added as a representation of powerful women in gaming. It's completely tone deaf to have one of the few major black female characters in gaming and having her be voiced by a white girl doing an accent.
Now with a lot of pushback occurring for having black/multiracial characters played by white voice actors, is it time for Naughty Dog to make amends and change Nadine's VA for future roles? How many black voice actors land AAA mainstream roles, it's messed up that for the few black characters there are, white people are taking those roles.
And what should making things right look like? Should ND go back and edit voices of Lost Legacy and U4 with a new black voice actor? Or would a Twitter apology be enough?
this is what they said last time;
If they really wanted to cast a black person to play a black role, then 110% sure they will find it.
The character originally was not black. They designed the character after casting the voice actor. Not saying they should not have asked Laura to withdraw from the role but it is more nuanced then just wrong casting decision.
Why do people keep using this example? Phil LaMarr is a black man.
Nadine is a PoC voiced by a white woman, hence the term "whitewashing."
He's fantastic in everything he does. One of the most consistently talented actors in the voice field.
That makes it worse, not better.
It's not, though. Black Lives Matter isn't just about police brutality. It's about systemic inequities that prevent Black men and women from participating in what white people get to in every aspect of life.
It's only a fucked up comparison if you look at each individual inequity as a single thing and not part of an incredibly fucked up tapestry that creates a whole picture.
Uhh..Elena gets blown up point blank by a grenade and it's honestly astounding that she survived.
Citation needed. Note by UC4 ND would actually go in an scan real life people as the basis for their characters and that actress is on record saying that she was not involved with the project.
Wasn't Chloe retconned to being half indian (I assume the other half is white Aussie, but I couldn't find any information about the mother's side) . She's pretty much portrayed as a white Aussie in 2 and 3. And Claudia Black has a real distinct voice, I can't imagine how you could recast without significantly changing her voice.
They cast their actors in advance of the characters design. Hence there was a white character in the game voiced by a black woman as far as I remember. Not saying its right though. They should maybe start casting options after finalizing the design and have done a much better job with TLOU Part 2.
Hmm, they should have just made the character latina then, instead of designing her to be black. It's not like her ethnicity/race was detrimental to the story anyway.
You guys need a reality check.
Merle Dandridge(Jap-American) AKA Alyx Vance(Black-Asian)
Terrence C. Carson(Afro-American), Christopher Judge(Afro-American), Antony Del Rio(Hispanic?) AKA Kratos (Middle-eastern/Greek)
I can go on and on but really this isn't worth the time to even discuss, Voice actors are interchangeable depending on the required tonality of the characters, skin color is irrelevant either way.
Merle Dandridge(Jap-American) AKA Alyx Vance(Black-Asian)
Terrence C. Carson(Afro-American), Christopher Judge(Afro-American), Antony Del Rio(Hispanic?) AKA Kratos (Middle-eastern/Greek)
I can go on and on but really this isn't worth the time to even discuss, Voice actors are interchangeable depending on the required tonality of the characters, skin color is irrelevant either way.
beceuse people, either out of sheer ignorance, or simply being intentionally disingenous, keep coming at this issue from the standpoint that the playing field is equal. "Well if a block person can play a white role I don't understand why a white person can't play a black role". They are literally using the same logic that racists use when trying to argue that white people should be able to say the N-word, and again, it's going over their head either intentionally or out of pure ignorance.
I'm pretty sure she wasn't going to originally, but Amy thought it was too dark for Uncharted's tone.
Did they do a facial scan for her?It's even worse than that. The character is straight up based on a real life black actress that I'm going to assume they never even approached to play the character(If they did and she declined, ripping off her likeness and hiring someone else who is white to do it would be worse yet):
Strikingly similar.
Here's the thing. If you cast a white actress, don't make the character black after the fact. It's not like her South African ancestry mattered at all to the character in the final script, they just picked an accent because it sounds exotic.
The whole character's just a mess.
I have no idea what your second sentence has to do with the topic at hand, but I was disputing your point about ND getting the best actor for the job. Even ignoring the gross digital blackface aspect of the situation, Bailey clearly wasn't the best actor for this role given her performance.
The dynamics are different, white people don't have a history of erasure in media. Just look at West Side Story or Aliens where they painted people brown in order to portray dark skinned characters. Combine this with the history of blackface and you can see it's just not the same.
if they suddenly made her indian, they could've changed the VA.
otherwise don't do it
I'll share then, because I absolutely don't doubt that there are many people with the wrong mindset voting "Yes" but I don't agree with what the OP is pitching.
If we consider the reasons people are giving as to why Laura Bailey shouldn't have voiced Nadine the answer is either A) She does a poor job or B) She is not black. In regards to argument A, it's a valid point to recast but it's under the assumption that the replacement would do a better job when there's no guarantee that a replacement (black or otherwise) would do better. Argument B is what everyone should focus on because that pokes at the issue within the industry, that voice actors of color do not have nearly enough representation.
I voted "Yes" because I am of the opinion that (in most cases) your skin tone should not have a bearing on who you voice, that we should get many more POC voice actors regardless of the ethnicity of the characters that they voice. The golden example I can think of is Cree Summer (Freddie from A Different World, Susie from Rugrats, Elmyra from Tiny Toons, Auriel from Diablo) who has an absolutely gigantic list of characters to her name. Seriously, just go through her credits and take a look at how many different characters she's voice. A lot of people are brushing off the argument that Kratos being voiced by a black man is a one-off thing but many POC voice actors end up voicing white characters because there just aren't that many POC characters to begin with. I want more diversity in the characters that we see and I want more diversity in the people that voice the characters but if the existing POC voice actors have shown me anything it's that your skin tone and your characters skin tone often don't have a relationship.
It doesn't even seem like Troy Baker or Laura Bailey even have to audition to get roles. They just come automatic.
If the voice fits. That's all. I would argue there should be more black, ethnic( I hate that word ) etc characters period. In general Games should be more inclusive of all races. I've worked on games where white black mexican Asian actors played different races and you the player would never know.
Yeah I'm aware, I'm criticizing the game's use of lynching for shock value, presenting lynching as de-racialized, and doing all of that while saying nothing about lynching. Better to just not have it at all.
You're right I jumped to post too following on a specific post, it was bad and I didn't intend it as a comparison which is why it was on a different line but just as an agreement with the poster above that he was a great casting and that a black man/woman should be cast for more characters any character that their voice fits including like others have said having more black lead characters for them to play as well, but that too completely missed the point of the issue since I didn't read the poll so it was still wrong.
That's what I intended to say by saying he was great in the role.
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Also here's the other thing , maybe don't cast the same 5 people in everything and branch out a little bit.
Not the same thing. Nobody is painting anybody's skin. This is not blackface. Go look up Al Jolston, Minstral show to see what blackface actually is.
I know that, that's part of why the use of lynching in the game is an issue.
It's the same reason why many trans folks are taking issue with the transphobic violence and deadnaming in the game.
It's one thing if it's a dub where you need a lot of actors to cover a bunch of characters who are presumably not all white(bar instances like FMA) but for a single woman of color in a western made IP? Yeah no I may have defended this a few years ago by they goofed here.
Agreed. They decided they wanted Laura Bailey in the game before they even had their character finished and didn't think even a little bit about making a role that fit her.
Yeh.
I think it's great she's now half indian, more representation etc, but now it screws with the VA casting.
User Banned (2 Months): Dismissive trolling in a sensitive thread. Previously banned for trolling.
It's disingenuous when you ignore half of the quote and substitute a false interpretation of what he's saying in order to condemn it.
I don't care how married you are to your incorrect assessment. An author at any time can reexamine their own assumptions about a character they are creating and their past. How do you think Apartheid goes unaddressed? I assume you memorized the entire script in order to support your assertion? Or is it more realistic to think one day while working on the character and seeing the black designs he thought, "well, what if she was black?" and started to work that out in his head and on the page and in his collaboration with Bailey? What must her journey have been like to go from that history to running a successful mercenary outfit only to lose it again? Does it not count unless she starts every sentence with "as a black South African who experienced Apartheid"? Does Ellie need to start every line with "as a confirmed homosexual"?
If you think accent accuracy is the only thing that matters in a performance, not sure why anyone should trust any of your opinions.
As much as I like Uncharted they absolutely get away with a lot of stuff because they audience is mostly from acountry that doesn't know what it's like for real. Her accent being just one thing.
Standard Hollywood/videogame fare ofcourse, every game out there does it to some extent, but I didn't realise how much till I showed my friend this game (she's from India). Safe to say she had some choice opinions about LL first level.
Back to Nadine though, I've known a couple of women from South Africa and not one of them sounds even close to Nadine. Even that aside it's one f those voices that just isn't natural. Sounds like someone putting on an accent rather than an actual accent
Yeah they should have recast iconic James Earl Jones after it was revealed that Vader was white in Return of the Jedi
What I mean is... please let the creative director have his own vision for the film/game/whatever else the fuck it is. If you don't like it, don't buy it. It's simple. It's fine to not agree with the casting of a white VA for a black character, but I think it's too far to "demand" the change and even more to call people that don't agree with it racists.
What I mean is... please let the creative director have his own vision for the film/game/whatever else the fuck it is. If you don't like it, don't buy it. It's simple. It's fine to not agree with the casting of a white VA for a black character, but I think it's too far to "demand" the change and even more to call people that don't agree with it racists.
Sure, but they don't need to cast the black VAs specifically for black roles. Nadine being voiced by a white VA isn't any more outrageous than Elena being voiced by a white VA.
They (and other devs) need more black VAs but it is a systemic problem, any one casting decision is just a drop in the ocean.
Indeed, a future where you see white characters being played by black VAs and vice-versa is a lot more desirable than a world where we have segregated roles for each race.
So I'm with you if you say "90% of the VAs in gaming are white, and that's bad" or "90% of ND's VAs have been white, and that needs to be fixed." Those percentages need to change. But the problem lies the aggregate numbers, and no individual casting is necessarily at fault. And if, say, 50% of the VAs are white I would want them to take up 50% of the black characters - and vice versa: if 25% of the VAs are black I would expect them to be cast to interpret 25% of the white roles as well. I think this is what we all would like to happen.
Ah, of course, should've thought of that for a game like this. Thanks
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Oh wait, they made the character black after hiring her? Oof
OP
OP
its insane they Found actual South Africans to audition for them and still picked the person doing a fake accent
Fuck you're not kidding, their wikipedia pages are insane. Never looked them until now.
Do the people throwing random black VAs around realize they're doing the, "I have a black friend" shit and sound ridiculously ignorant or nah?
