What Laura Bailey Has Learned From Playing Black Widow - Exclusive
Laura Bailey is maybe one of the most prolific voice actors working today. She's been Mary Jane Watson and Gwen Stacy in Spider-Man projects, she's Abby in The Last of Us: Part II, and, of course, she's one of the stars of the juggernaut table-top role playing game series Critical Role.
But Bailey's also Natasha Romanoff, better known as Black Widow. There's certainly something to be said about Scarlett Johansson and her performance as the butt-kicking superhero across many Avengers movies, but there's no denying that Bailey is Black Widow too. The voice actor has been bringing the character to life in games and cartoons for just as long as Johansson, and over the course of so many titles, it'll make your head spin.
In an exclusive interview, we asked Bailey to look back at her spy-assassin career that starts with 2011's Marvel Super Hero Squad Online and goes all the way up to the recently released title Marvel's Avengers. So, how much is Black Widow a part of Laura Bailey, and how much of Laura Bailey is Black Widow?
The responsibility of being Black Widow
You might wonder if the voice of the character has changed much since 2011. To that point, Bailey shared, "I don't know if the voice print has changed drastically. Just my voice has probably matured, so, so has she. But every iteration is a little bit different, depending on what storylines they're pulling from. And [Marvel's Avengers] is just very grounded in a way that I've never been able to experience with Black Widow before."
Marvel's Avengers is different from other previous games involving Black Widow because there's motion capture involved, which evolves Bailey's performance as much as it does the depth of the story.
"I got to experience this internal struggle with her that I've never gotten to do before just because of everything that happens with A-Day," Bailey said. "A lot of really terrible things happen, and Widow feels responsible for it. She feels like she should have realized what was happening and she wasn't on her game enough. So she does what she does best, and she pulls away from everybody and says, 'I'm going to fix this. I'm going to make this right on my own, on my own terms.' And she goes back to being a spy, playing both sides."
Over the years of Black Widow, Bailey has learned from the superhero. The most important lesson? Heroes are heroes because they always choose to do the right thing, even when it's difficult. Applying that to real life can be tricky at times, but Bailey is making Black Widow proud.
"I think one of the things that makes her so wonderful to play is that she's experienced both sides. And being good, being a hero, is a choice. That's something that I struggle with — always making the right decision and going, 'What's going to help others?'" Bailey said. "It's really easy to just do the selfish thing and only think of yourself in certain times. But yeah, that's something that I have definitely learned from her and some other characters as well."
Marvel's Avengers is available across gaming platforms now.