Why The Apex Legends Voices Sound So Familiar
Since its launch on Feb. 4, 2019, battle royale game Apex Legends has taken the gaming industry by storm. In a Beyonce-esque move, the battle royale shooter was launched the same day it was announced and managed to cross the 25 million player mark within its first week of release. It's also going over well with critics, with Nerdy Bits calling it "a bundle of nearly endless joy," and IGN praising its "impactful and precise" combat.
With all of this attention on EA's surprise hit, now seems like a good time to take a look at the actors behind the rifles. The voice cast of Apex Legends is made up from some familiar names and faces from the world of entertainment. Some of these performers will already be rather familiar to gamers who are well versed in the world of Titanfall, of which Apex Legends is a spinoff. From video game legends to anime dub superstars to live action actors, this is why the voices from Apex Legends sound so familiar.
Erica Luttrell - Bangalore
While Erica Luttrell is known to Apex Legends players for voicing the soldier character Bangalore, who joins the Apex Games hoping "to reunite with what remains of her family," she may also sound familiar to fans of DC Comics. Among other DC characters, she has voiced Wonder Woman nemesis Cheetah in the video games Injustice 2 and Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham, as well as in the animated feature JLA Adventures: Trapped in Time.
She has also been seen in live action, with a recurring role on CBS' Salvation, as well as appearances in episodes of iZombie, Arrow, and Westworld, among many others.
Elsewhere in the world of video games, Luttrell played the lead character, Emily Kaldwin, in Bethesda's Dishonored 2. Of Luttrell's performance in Dishonored 2, the game's director said, "She does a great job of splitting the difference between someone who's used to being an authority figure but who's had her feet kicked out from under her and is on the run."
Branscombe Richmond - Gibraltar
In Apex Legends, Branscombe Richmond voices Gibraltar, described by EA as "a gentle giant with a wild side." He is also one of the game's two confirmed LGBTQ+ characters.
Branscombe Richmond is a character actor and stuntman, who may be best known to children of the '90s for his role of Bobby Sixkiller in the television series Renegade. He has also been featured in supporting roles in films such as The Scorpion King and Batman Returns, in which he memorably played an evil clown who uses a taser to take Michelle Pfeiffer's Selina Kyle hostage. In a 1997 interview with the Las Vegas Sun, Richmond said his fondness for playing "tough guys" has almost landed him in trouble on a few occasions, including one time at Stevie Wonder concert when he overhead someone ask, "Hey, you think I can take him?"
In 2016, he played the role of Puna on the Showtime television series Roadies, which also starred Luke Wilson and Carla Gugino. Despite Roadies' A-list cast, the Cameron Crowe-created series received unfavorable reviews and was not renewed for a second season.
Zehra Fazal - AI Announcer
Similarly to her computerized AI roles in Titanfall 2, Zehra Fazal voices the AI Announcer of Apex Legends. Though her character never physically appears, she's the voice you want to hear the most, because she'll be telling you when you've won.
Outside of the Titanfall universe, she's had many other voice roles in animation, including Nadia Rizavi on Netflix's Voltron and multiple characters on Young Justice: Outsiders, including Halo. In a panel at San Diego Comic Con, Young Justice executive producer Greg Weisman said of Fazal, "I wrote the role with her in mind. She plays Halo, but she also plays about a dozen other characters ... This time next year, you will be lining up to meet her." Den of Geek referred to Fazal's performance as Halo as "a revelation," adding, "The joy in her voice is infectious."
Other roles include on-camera appearances in television series such as How to Get Away with Murder and Living Biblically. Fazal was also featured in another science-fiction series, Netflix's Lost in Space, as — you guessed it — the AI of the Robinson Family's ship.
Shantel VanSanten - Wraith
Shantel VanSanten is no stranger to the world of science fiction. Outside of Apex Legends, wherein she voices the mysterious, void-manipulating Wraith, she is also well-known to DC Comics fans for her role as Patty Spivot in the second season of The CW's The Flash. Patty, a love interest of series hero Barry Allen, left the show after their relationship didn't work out. The Flash's showrunner Todd Helbing has said that they wanted to bring VanSanten back for the show's 100th episode, but lack of time made it impossible to fit the character in.
Outside of The Flash, she may be familiar to TV audiences for her roles in several other shows, including the series Shooter, an adaptation of the Mark Wahlberg movie that ran from 2016-2018. She was also a series regular during the last few seasons of teen soap One Tree Hill, a series she hopes will be revived in some form.
As far as voice acting goes, Wraith marks only the second voice role in her career. Her first foray into the medium was recorded back in 1999, with a small role in the English dub of Kaishaku's Steel Angel Kurumi.
Roger Craig Smith - Mirage
Roger Craig Smith voices the "charming" Holographic Trickster, Mirage. Due to his many, many high-profile voice roles, Roger Craig Smith is a name that should be fairly familiar to nerds of all stars and stripes. In the world of video games, Smith has been the English voice for Sonic the Hedgehog since 2010, a role which he says "never gets old." He's also well known for his role as Ezio Auditore da Firenze in the Assassin's Creed series.
However, Craig will sound familiar to Saturday morning audiences for his long-running performance as Steve Rogers/Captain America in Disney XD's Avengers Assemble, also voicing the character in related Disney XD series, such as Ultimate Spider-Man. On voicing Captain America, Smith told The Star Online, "To take my voice and put it to such an iconic character, it's incredible. It is a big, big honor for me."
He is also well known for voicing another major superhero: in WB Games Montreal's Batman: Arkham Origins, Smith took over the role of the Dark Knight himself, playing a younger incarnation of Kevin Conroy's beloved version of the character. He has gone on to voice Batman in Batman Unlimited and the English dub of Batman Ninja. On playing Batman, Smith told GameSpot, "Batman for sure ranks in the top three" of his favorite characters he's voiced.
JB Blanc - Caustic, Kuben Blisk
JB Blanc pulls a bit of double duty in Apex Legends. He mainly voices Caustic, a mad scientist character who specializes in toxic chemicals and gases. However, in Apex Legends' cinematic intro, Blanc briefly reprises his role as an older and grizzled version of Kuben Blisk, a mercenary character who served as an antagonist in Titanfall 2.
With over 200 credits to his name, Blanc is another veteran of film and voice acting. In live action, he may be familiar to fans of Breaking Bad as Gus Fring's doctor, Barry Goldman (a role he reprised in the spinoff series Better Call Saul). In anime, he has voiced the villain Enrico Maxwell in both Hellsing and its remake, Hellsing Ultimate. In the English dub of Bleach, as well as a few of its spinoff movies, Blanc voiced the character Sajin Komamura.
True to his profession, Blanc was very vocal during the video game voice actor's strike of 2016, during which voice actors in the video game medium protested sub-par working conditions and fought for new terms of payment for their work. In an effort to explain why voice actors were fighting to be treated in a manner comparable to film and television actors, Blanc said, "Games want to be movies and movies want to be games. These are basically 100-hour-long movies."
Chris Edgerly - Pathfinder
As Pathfinder, the MRVN automaton on a quest to find his creator, players should immediately find Chris Eagerly's cheerful voice familiar. That's because he's been involved in a ton of projects that should bring up nostalgic feelings for gamers.
After starting his career as a touring stand-up comic, Edgerly landed the job that would change everything. Since 1999, he has thrilled a full generation of theme park attendees as the voice of Spider-Man in Universal's Islands of Adventure ride, "The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man." Other voice roles include Gobber in the Dreamworks television series Dragons: Riders of Berk and a plethora of miscellaneous characters in over 200 episodes of The Simpsons. Fans of Adult Swim will likely recognize him as the voice of the high-strung Peter Potamus on Harvey Birdman, Attorney At Law.
Edgerly has a regular YouTube video series called VO Notes, in which he goes over different aspects of the voice acting industry and gives advice and encouragement to actors looking to break into the business. When asked by Blast Magazine what he enjoys most about voice acting, Edgerly responded, "It's a constant challenge to my imagination to see what I can do with a script."
Allegra Clark - Bloodhound
"One of the greatest game hunters the Frontier has ever seen," Bloodhound is the second of two LGBTQ+ characters in Apex Legends: Allegra Clark confirmed via Twitter that Bloodhound is non-binary.
Clark should sound recognizable to fans of anime. She has voiced multiple characters for English dubs, including Kaela Yoshinaga in B: The Beginning and Julia Jinyu in FLCL Progressive, a performance which earned praise for Clark's "straightforward no-nonsense delivery."
Though she's racked up quite a resume as an anime voice actress, gamers will most likely be more familiar with Allegra Clark as the voice of Josephine Montilyet in BioWare's Dragon Age: Inquisition. In an interview with Princess vs Peril, Clark explained that her favorite thing about voicing Josephine was "being able to give back to a franchise I care about, and to help to create something that can inspire people the way that I've been inspired."
Mela Lee - Lifeline
Mela Lee voices Lifeline, the Combat Medic of Apex Legends. With the ability to call in supply drops and a healing drone, its very likely that players will always be excited to hear Mela Lee's voice coming from a member of their Apex squad.
Lee is a well-established voice actress, particularly in the world of anime. For more than a decade, she has been the English dub voice for the character of Rin Tohsaka in many of the different permutations of the Fate series, including Fate/Zero and Fate/Stay Night. Beginning her career with roles in shows like Saint Tail and eventually Vampire Knight, Lee says she didn't realize how popular voice actors were until she was at Comic-Con and she noticed "this huge line waiting for autographs that was going out the door."
In an interview with Con Freaks & Geeks, Mela Lee explained the appeal of voice acting, saying, "I love in voice-over that I can be a three-year-old or a 1,000-year-old fairy that sounds three. But then the next day I could be a warrior goddess, then the next day a pilot or scientist."