There was something about Nolan North’s energy that reminded both Fred and myself of Robin Williams. The actor, perhaps known for voicing Nathan Drake in the Uncharted video game franchise, spoke candidly at the Montreal Comiccon about life as a voice actor, all while changing his voice dozens of times while he spoke. Honestly, I could’ve listened to a two-hour panel with this guy, he was great. I’ve taken down his quotes and tried to make a seamless entry here for you based on pages of note-taking, so most of this is just his words but restructured. Naturally, due to the SAG strike, North could not talk about any current or upcoming projects, so everything was about his career up until this point.

Nolan opened up by talking about his early days as an action, doing weekly bits on the like of NCIS with no aspirations for doing voice work. That was the stuff of Mel Blanc or Jim Cummings and Nolan said he had no business entering that realm. But he was also very goofy (still is!) and would constantly be making impersonations or making new voices on the fly, to the point where an agent suggested he look into this voice acting gig, which in the earlier days of gaming, involved actors yelling “grenade!” over and over again for a paycheque without residuals. Nolan was quick to abide, it was easy money in an industry where you don’t know when your next pay cheque will be, which when one has kids, becomes a necessity.

But games quickly evolved to become much more story driven and by the time his work on the first Assassin’s Creed wrapped (he’s Desmond Miles), he felt the need to know what happened next. He found himself suddenly invested in the narrative, which is not something he experienced working in video games up until that point.

After some time working in Marvel TV animation, he landed the role of the titular Deadpool in the PS3/Xbox 360 hit Deadpool video game. In typical Deadpool fashion, he revealed that there was no script for this particular game and that he improvised the whole thing based on what he was seeing on screen. So if Wolverine got shot in the ass, he’d comment on such an act of defiance as part of his dialogue. To his surprise, just about everything he did in the recording sessions ended up in the finale game, meaning when asked what was his favourite Deadpool line he’s done, he honestly can’t recall as it was totally on the fly. His comments about working with Troy Baker on Play, Watch, Listen also echo this sentiment, citing that the fun in that kind of work is just bouncing off Troy without a script or direction.

But it seems like Nolan thrives in the chaos. Not knocking his most iconic character, Nathan Drake, but he also cited that Nate’s voice is just his own, which means that while he’s acting and bringing that character to life, he’s not diving into something new or absurd that’s anything but his normal voice. When citing him playing an ailing cat on a Nickelodeon show, his wife asked him if he was going insane or rehearsing when he was pretending to cough up a furball at home. His reply was “both”. This is why he says he really enjoyed voicing Gyrocopter from Dota 2, whose voice was inspired by those old television commercials, or the Cores from Portal 2. This is why he loved playing these characters, departing from your own voice is just so much more fun.

On the topic of awards within the acting community, North didn’t really seem to be fussed about it, citing that he doesn’t like the idea of actors competing for prestige. That said, he said he was completely honoured to have received a BAFTA award given to him specifically for recognition of his work. He grew up watching PBS in New England and ended up idolizing many British actors and works as a kid, from Monty Python to Anthony Hopkins, so to have that particular outfit approach him for recognition while Uncharted creator Amy Hennig presented him with the award was more than enough to make him happy.

On the topic of the Uncharted movie starring Tom Holland, Nolan stated that he liked the idea that the movie wasn’t a one-to-one adaptation of the games. He said games are interactive while movies are passive, so it made sense to do something different for moviegoers who may not have played an Uncharted game in their lives. The game series is also so cinematic, so he thought it was important to avoid redundancies. He does hope that there’ll be an Uncharted 2 movie at some point but says it’ll only happen if they get a good script for it, citing a conversation with Mark [Wahlberg]. On the topic of the movie, we got a funny anecdote about his cameo in the movie and his flight over to Spain. This was during the pandemic, so no one was flying so while he was flying first class, he took quite a few drinks and passed out, woke up to a dark nearly abandoned plane, freaked out and thought Samuel L. Jackson was going to pop out and shout “get off this plane!”. Since everything was closed in Barcelona due to COVID, his only comment on the city was “I bet it looks nice inside there” in reference to all the closed museums and historical locations he couldn’t visit.

While he wasn’t asked to cameo in The Last of Us on HBO, he did have a quick comment on the series, specifically the character of David, who he voiced in the game. In the original story, when playing as Ellie, she teams up with the ambiguous David, unknowing about his true nature for quite some time, which created a bigger shock for the players once they learn more about him. Nolan thought that the show revealed David’s nature far too early in the show, saying his wife was able to say that he was a bad guy right away which he thought took some tension out of that episode.

In a funny anecdote, he mentioned that during the first Uncharted game, they hadn’t learned how to do the mo-cap work and the audio recording at the same time, so they’d have to retreat to a booth and dub over their footage. But Nolan mentioned he had put on some weight for a previous live-action role and that his motion-capture suit was brown, so when walking to the booth to record audio, he observed that he looked an awful lot like Mr. Hanky from South Park. He got a gym membership later that day.

One of his closing stories was talking about the most heinous character he’s ever played, the over-the-top racist Remy Duvall from Mafia III. Unlike Uncharted, by the time of Mafia III, they would record audio while doing motion capture, which meant saying lines in front of everyone in the room. When action was called, Nolan froze and called for a five-minute recess, despite just coming from break. I mean, that’s understandable, have you seen any gameplay with Remy Duval? Nolan said that one of the African American actors actually pulled himself and Nolan needed to hear that it was okay to verbalize the racially charged script in front of them. In fact, he was told to “go there”. Some of the hatred may be glossed over in history class or not register to some just how bad it was in 1967, so by bringing it to life in a video game was important. He never got any backlash for his role, in fact he was given praise from the African American community for bringing the horror to the attention of gamers, which Nolan was grateful for despite the stress the role gave him.

He closed out with some sage words in regards to the SAG/WGA strikes currently happening, and that if actors don’t have good words to say, then there’s no point.

Nolan walked next to yours truly outside the panel room, where, not being able to resist, I simply said “well, well, well” to him, to which North replied: “because it’s a well”. Day made.

We’d like to highlight this fundraiser for The Douglas Mental Health University by Geoffrey Gardner, who will be undertaking the 4x 4x 48 David Goggins challenge, with the funds going for mental health research.