I've been feeling nostalgic, since looking back at my activity here...and since Solas is still one of my favorites...figured I'd quickly paint a Solavellan. Even after all these years...they are still each other's safe place.
I wanted to capture a moment of pure longing and reminiscence.
"I'm a fifty-year-old man trapped in the body of a thirty-year-old man" - interviewing Will de Renzy-Martin
The second interview with the cast of Rogue Trader, this time with the voice of Marazhai, Will de Renzy-Martin. Will and I spoke in early January, and he shared not only his time but his advice generously.
Join me as @willvoiceit talks about the reason he studied computing first, why he thinks acting and computer programming share many similarities, what his favourite musical is (it's one where he plays a dog), how he goes about his day and why he's drawn to playing psychopaths.
This interview will be published in two parts, today and tomorrow, because Tumblr only allows audio uploads of 10 MB. Please credit me if you share this interview outside Tumblr.
Fran: Hi, Will, and thank you for taking the time to sit and chat with me today.
Will: Sure. Yeah, no, not a problem. It's my pleasure.
Fran: You graduated in 2017 from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. How did your career in general start? Did you always dream of becoming an actor?
Will: In short, yes. I did drama and things a lot when I was at school. Did a lot of singing in choirs and things, and fell into doing plays and musicals, and it was definitely always an aspiration of mine. I didn't initially pursue it because I sort of had this idea in the back of my head that if it was going to happen, it was going to happen. And so I went and studied something else to begin with. And while I was doing that degree, I found myself spending more time in the student union doing plays and musicals again, and realised that if it was going to happen, I had to make it happen. That's sort of I did always want to be it [an actor], and eventually realised that I had to take it seriously.
Fran: You studied computer science or computing first, right? What made you choose this very different field?
Will: I think there are probably more similarities than people give it credit for, but I always enjoyed the academic side of things, particularly the maths and science, and languages as well. And computer science computing was technically the degree; it was a way of doing a kind of engineering degree that didn't involve anything that could physically cause me harm or anyone else harm. [laughter] I mean, nowadays, that's a slightly different thing. But yeah, and it was, it's kind of a very pure form of engineering in a way where you're kind of presented with a problem, you have a load of different tools that you can throw at it, and in that, that's I think what I mean when I say that it's not that different to, um, yeah–
Fran: That’s true.
Will: Acting because you've got this sort of abstract problem that you are trying to solve, both in creating a character and then in the acting of the scene and all of the parts, and you are just throwing the stuff that you have at your disposal.
Fran: In preparation for this interview, I read somewhere that as part of your acting training, you studied biomechanics? I assume this is a very physical way, a very engineer-like way of getting into a character. Would you like to elaborate a bit on that?
Will: It's funny, you write one sentence, and people cling onto them. I studied biomechanics under a woman called Maria Shmaevich, who is a Russian biomechanics teacher. It sounds more complicated than it is. It's not really the study of bones and muscles. But I suppose, in a way, it's a, I cannot remember her partner's name, who started this [Nicolay Karpov], I think, started this particular school. You're very much focused on how basically your physicality is informing the way that you are acting, and, in a very technical way. So, you know, kind of almost punctuating every single sentence with a particular kind of movement, and every thought landing on a movement that you are doing, I was very sceptical of this when I started doing it. I did it for a (laughs). Very long story.
I was doing it for about three weeks at a kind of acting symposium in Italy. And I enjoyed it a lot, and I've always, from going to drama school, I've really got into kind of the movement side of things, but I didn't really get it until I saw photos of Maria doing a production of, I think it was, The Seagull. And just the way that her intention came through in those photos was incredible because I always find that production photography is a bit hit and miss. Sometimes you get these incredible shots, but every single photo of her, there was a sense of action and purpose. And I connected the two in my brain as going well. Yeah, there's a reason why it is, because all of her actions are intentional, and so you can't capture a moment that is not that.
Fran: Thank you for sharing that. That was very interesting to listen to. Then let me get onto another bullet point on my list.
Will: Yeah.
Fran: Because you listed ballet on your spotlight page, but do you have any training in dance?
Will [laughs]: So I do have a little bit of kind of formal training in some bits and pieces of dance. I like to dance, but in my own, in my personal life I've done a lot of, so Lindy Hop dancing and also kind of, Scottish reeling, so sort of partner dances, some of which are kind of choreographed, set dances in your head, some of which are more just freeform, where two people trying to kind of communicate through dance. But like I said, a very small amount of stuff formally. I think it's one of the problems with the Spotlight system that if you show me an actor who hasn't exaggerated on Spotlight, I will show you a liar.
Fran: Obviously.
Will: Because you are just, it's this thing of, you're trying to kind of trap a casting director into being like, no, I can do several things. You know, I have the capacity.
Fran: Yeah.
Will: If you put me in a room, I could do a medieval country dance if you taught me the steps.
Fran: Yeah.
Will: But I don't know them all off the top of my head.
Fran: That reminds me of the anecdote Eddie Redmayne shared about horse riding. He said he got one of his first roles because he said he could ride a horse, and the only thing he could do was not fall off the horse [Elizabeth I Miniseries with Helen Mirren as Elizabeth I].
Will: Yeah, exactly.
Fran: But I understand you. Who hasn't like polished their CV, you know?
Will: Yeah.
Fran: What led you from stage acting to voice acting?
Will: I think in the back of my mind it was always something that I would have liked to do if I'd known, if I'd understood what it was. I played a lot of games, watched a lot of cartoons and things growing up. But it kind of didn't really occur to me that that was the same acting I was doing when I was in my spare time. So it'd always sort of been in the back of my mind, and we did a little bit of voice acting training at Guildhall. So I kind of had it as a focus as I was leaving, thinking if I could make this work, that would be great. Never particularly thinking that it would be able to be my kind of full-time career, and more as a thing that I knew people did, that it was a thing you could do on the side.
Occasionally, someone would call you up and go, "Can you do an advert for such and such?” And they'd pay you more money than you'd seen for the last three years. So that was my perception. That was what kind of passed on, and as I was leaving drama school, I did a kind of musical workshop thing for a friend. I seem to have done many of these over the years, and they've always resulted in no musical, but lots of lovely connections. And this particular one I was sat next to a lovely actor called Leonie Schliesing, who is now a very famous voice actor as well, and she turned to me and said, "You've got a good voice. You should do voice acting. I do voice acting. This is what I did.”
And so I started out, she gave me a few hints, pushed me on my way, and I spent the next sort of three years or so doing odd jobs on sites like Fiverr, and all of that. Gradually, just making a lot of mistakes and figuring out what was right and what was wrong. Started off recording stuff in a cupboard, with a microphone that I had and built from there.
Fran: So, do you have any plans on returning to stage acting or even landing a musical role, if that's your love?
Will: I would love to. I would love to. It's just a very difficult world to get into. It's one of those brown grass situations where I know a lot of people, a lot of my colleagues from drama school look at what I'm doing and go, I think you've got it sorted. I'd rather do what you do. And I look at a lot of what they do and go, well, I wouldn't mind a shot of what you do either.
I really kind of fell into voice acting at the start, as I can't do the stage acting thing. It's not working. So I need to make something work where I'm doing the thing that I love. And I've never really managed to crack back into the kind of IRL face body acting stuff.
Fran: Is it a form of type casting in the end? I come from the publishing industry, and I was an editor for a large publishing house for more than a decade. And if you were like editing romance novels, you were going to be editing romance novels till the end of your career. You couldn't just switch to, now you're editor for science fiction. And it's the same for what I'm writing. I'm a romance novelist too. So once you start with that, the public and even the publishing industry don't take you seriously. If you want to write science fiction, or if you want to break into that. And is it perhaps the same like you're now voice actor? So obviously, people think you're good at voice acting, but not good at stage acting, as wrong as that perception might be.
Will: There might be a bit of that, but I don't think it's ever got, I don't think it's ever even got that far. The last agent I had, I had a long conversation with about what was preventing me from being able to get into those spaces. And I think the conclusion of the conversation was that I have a type that is about maybe 10 years, 20 years older than I am. So it is not necessarily that my face doesn't match my voice, but I'm a 50-year-old man in the body of a 30-year-old man, which is great for voice acting, because nobody cares what you look like.
Fran: That's true. Yes.
Will: And I can be, I can play things that are, that are much older or much younger. Very different physical types from what I am. To answer the original question, I would love to go and be able to sing live in musicals. That would be one of my favourite things to do. Whether it can ever happen again, I don’t know. It's not up to me, basically.
Fran: Do you have a favourite musical?
Will: It changes frequently. Sunday in the Park with George [a Steven Sondheim musical] is probably my favourite at the moment. I did a production of it. Two God, not
Fran: Three years ago, could it be?
Will: Yes.
Fran: Yeah.[It was performed from 20/6/2024 to 29/06/2024, 28/07/2024 and 04/08/2024.]
Will: I find that the best way to learn a musical is to do it, and it's just really got under my skin ever since.
Fran: So, would you like to guide us through a typical day of yours? Do you even have typical days?
Will: Not really. They vary pretty wildly. The last year has probably been the busiest year of my voice acting career. And a kind of typical day would be: wake up, eat, get out the door, and get to a studio somewhere in London, do four hours of recording there, have lunch, go to another studio, the other side of London, do another couple of hours at least of recording there, go home and collapse. But that's kind of the extreme of the most I've worked for a long time. Most of my days are much more: Just get up. Have I got any emails? Are there any auditions I need to do today? No, not necessarily. And then flitting around trying to make myself feel like I'm being busy.
Fran: If you have those long voice acting days, where you have to take care of your voice, how do you prepare your voice for voice acting for a day of recording?
Will: So, I don't know whether I'm unusual in this, but well, if I've got something particularly intense that I need to be doing, I might do a specific warmup to do that. So, you know, if I know I'm going to be screaming for an hour, then I might do a bit more of a warmup. But generally, I kind of treat it less like a kind of warm-up thing and more like keeping the voice, exercising my voice regularly. I find that doing a four-hour recording session with no particular difficulties in it won't cause me any harm, and I can get through it fairly straightforwardly. Even up to about eight hours a day, I think I can basically talk, as long as my voice is in general good health, that's fine for me. It's when it comes to, like I say, specific efforts and difficulties that I really need either preparation or just rest afterwards.
Fran: Looking at your list of video game voice acting credits, it is already impressive. Was this something you said from the get-go you want to do, like, I want to do video game voice acting specifically, or how did that come to be?
Will: I think yes. In that period after drama school, once I'd realised that it was a world that was possible, video games were at the top of my list. As I say, I had played a lot of video games when I was younger, and I think at some stage when I was at university, I realised I had to stop playing them because I didn't trust myself basically. (laughs) So, I didn't really play a lot of games for a period of about 10 years, but still kept in touch with things and would occasionally play the odd thing that came out if I was interested in it. But yeah, I'd say it was a world that I knew and loved, really wanted to get into, from the start of my voice acting career.
Fran: How do you find the right voice for a specific type of character if you aren't given directions? If you are open to finding it, like say for Blood of Dawnwalker, where you voice the player character.
Will: That particular voice was one that I found. It's quite close to my own voice. That one, it's one that I, if I remember correctly, the casting sheet had some information. I don't think it had a picture. It described the age of the character and maybe not much else, I think. I would say the majority of the character I get from the lines, I find that maybe I'm just very lucky that I've worked with a lot of fantastic writers and that the character generally seems to come through. So in this case, I knew it was something a bit younger than myself, a bit not quite as sort of posh-sounding as I am generally. And from there, I kind of just had a go, and maybe I'm strange, but I also tend to give up if I'm like, no, I don't immediately click with that particular thing. I don't think it's for me. On the rare occasion, I will find myself going, “Actually, I kind of know what this is, and I haven't quite got it; it's a bit of a stretch, but I can get there.”
Fran: That's very interesting that you have that perception of this is not going to work, and then you're not doing it. But did you have a type of voice work where you generally think it's difficult for you to get into, but you want to get into, you want to do the character, you want to get the job? Any experiences there?
Will: I suppose I must do, but I suppose the jobs I remember that I don't get are the ones that I think I've done very well. (laughs) So yes, because those are the ones that play on my mind. I go, like, I thought I was right on the money with that, and I don't know the stuff that I'm less comfortable with, and quite often that's a good chance to just try something, you know, go for something a bit off the wall and see what happens. And sometimes, those come back, and those are always fun. And if they don't come back, then I've sort of already forgotten about what it was.
Fran: Do you have characters and types of voice work that are very easy to get into, where you say it was an incredibly easy time to find the voice?
Will: I think, looking at my growing list of credits, I've clearly got a thing for psychopaths and very troubled people somehow. I know I'm sort of talking about characters here as opposed to voices. Yeah, I find it hard to know what my limits of things are, in terms of what's difficult or not, because I'm blessed with having quite a wide range of accents and tones and pitches that I can access. Yeah, I'd say probably the hardest stuff for me to do is younger characters. Probably just because the kind of general timbre of my voice is quite low. If I'm facing a character that's sort of 16 or less, then that's a challenge for me.
Fran: Understandably. And because you spoke about psychopaths, let's talk about our favourite Drukhari. How was working with Owlcat? When did you get involved with Rogue Trader?
Will: So I got involved with Rogue Trader, I want to say it must have been about, Hmm, I can't remember. It was like three or four months before the release of the game, which may feel like it's too short. Like it was, the year, it was in 2023, I'm fairly sure. Working with Owlcat is great. I love their writing team so much. They are not only excellent writers, but clearly excellent wranglers of the relationship that they have to uphold with Games Workshop. I sort of get the impression that they're very good at going like, “no, no, no, we can do this thing because,” and then throwing a load of information at them and then Games Workshop going, “okay, yes, I trust you on that one.” And then only when, you know, two years later, someone says, “Hang on, did we approve this particular thing?” And, Owlcat go, “Well, we did tell you.” Then Games Workshop can come back and say, "Ah, yes, maybe we shouldn't have.”
But I've enjoyed every encounter I've had with Owlcat. Like I say, they're wonderful writers. They've got a great sense of humour as well as being able to write these incredibly dark, you know, I suppose maybe that's, maybe that's the same end of the spectrum.
Fran: Yeah. How did you find Marazhai's voice?
Will: It was one of the ones that came quite quickly as soon as I saw. So I think that the audition had the character portrait in it. Maybe I'm superimposing that in my mind, but the lines clearly had this voice to them, had this kind of snarky, snarly [tone]. I tend to kind of feel things like we've talked about the physicality of things, but like I tend to move my body into positions that make sense. And there's something about Marazhai and the way it was written that was very like this kind of looking down your nose at people, and that, I mean, if I'd known that he was seven foot five or whatever it is, that might have informed that. Olga wrote a lot of him. It just came across. So yeah, there was a lot of that, a lot of kind of leaning back, looking down someone's nose.
And then in my head that became a mixture of things, like I've said this before in another place, that kind of Mark Hamill's Joker, and sort of Varys from Game of Thrones, played by not [Will thinks long and hard]. No name's gone out of my head. [The actor Will was looking for is Conleth Hill.] Yeah, I tend to kind of mix and blend characteristics of other characters that I know, as a way of getting me into it. And then once the voice is sort of somewhere in my body and head, then I'm just running with it.
Fran: The performance you just gave is very Marazhai-looking, looking down at people. So, can you talk a bit about him as a character? What's your insight into him? What did you find in the character when you saw it and said, I want to voice that guy?
Will: I think one of the audition lines was him talking about Yremerrys, his sister, and with like real vitriol, and I think what was interesting about the lines that they gave. Owlcat is also very good at, they tend to give at least five or 10 lines with a bit of, if not context, then sort of a few emotional cues as to where you might be. Obviously, it was clear that this was someone who felt like they were superior to a lot of people, but also had this element of real vindictiveness and insecurity, really, about their position. That was such an interesting thing to play against itself.
It comes out in lots of different parts of the character in the romance, in particular. I remember when we were doing the lines and talking about how you have this option to either treat it as a dominant relationship with Marazhai or the other way around. And Olga was always going; he's in control of this situation. He's playing a game here. He is also very good at playing. He's like, he's a good actor. You know, he's playing it because he enjoys this submissive role and that contrast. And then, you know, he's playing a game, he's playing games, playing a game until suddenly he maybe isn't.
And he's kind of, you know, whipped that his feet are whipped under him, because that insecurity has shown itself again. It's such an interesting character to play that, and he just gets to scream and shout a lot, and generally be very sarcastic to people. So that's fun.
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