Speaking to actor Samantha Béart about their fan (and PC Gamer)-favorite turn as Karlach in Baldur’s Gate 3, I was surprised at how close we were to a different actor portraying the character.
Béart was initially turned down for what sounds like an early version of Karlach, as well as some side NPCs. It took a breakout indie performance and some off the cuff social media maneuvers to make it happen in the end.
“I auditioned in 2020 as a character called Kayra, and she was more of a fighter,” Béart said. “Sarah Baylus, who wrote all the dialogue for Karlach, said she was a bit similar to Lae’zel, so they changed her quite radically.”
Béart didn’t get the role, and they had also auditioned for more minor NPCs, ones they characterized as “Goblin 49”-type guys. Béart ultimately didn’t pursue these either, but noted that some of BG3’s most prominent actors, including Theo Solomon (Wyll) and the BAFTA-winning Andrew Wincott (Raphael), put hours in the Random Side Character Mines.
As for Karlach, she seems to have been one of the most iterated-on characters in the game, and didn’t fully come together until BG3’s final release. “There was an art change, because they used [a standard Tiefling model], and then they beefed her up into the muscle mummy that we know and love,” said Béart . “Shala Nyx is the actor who played her in early access,” they added. “I think we sound quite similar, so people always think I did it.”
Hobnobbing
Watch On
“In 2022, I was in a game called The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow, which had some really nice attention, where I played a very different role,” said Béart (we gave it a 78% in our review). On Twitter—confused readers will know it now as X, “The Everything App”—Béart noticed a Larian developer praising their performance. “As the only person in Britain who wasn’t going to be in Baldur’s Gate, I slid into his DMs.” They requested any suitably major role still left in the game, no penny ante Goblin 49 action this time around.
“There was, and that was Karlach, and I had a home audition,” said Béart. “I did an in person audition, and this was very quick after each other, and then was cast within a day. It was kind of crazy. My recall audition is on YouTube. If you want to go and watch it, you can see me move and everything.”
Recording took “the better part of a year, on and off,” at UK recording studio PitStop, where BG3’s cast turned in their performances. “I had a full time job, and I did evenings and weekends at the studio,” Béart said.
“They told me it was 10 sessions. It ended up being around 65,” the actor recalled. “It’s just one of those things like, ‘Can you do another 10? Can you do another 10?’ And I was like, ‘Well, I can’t leave my very well-paying IT consultancy job for this one videogame. And then they added up quite a bit. But by the end, we sorted it out.
“I quite like the intensity of it. Every other day is fine on the voice and the body. We’re talking four-hour sessions here, and they didn’t need to play me back my performance, because I’d only just done it the other day. So there was a really nice momentum to it, especially in a character who’s very aware of the time she has.”
Hey soldier
“It’s been a bit of a shocker that this is where I’ve ended up,” said Béart. “But I’ve been playing games a lot longer than I wanted to be an actor. I’ve been playing games since about eight years old, so this is very cool.”
Béart credits their classical, Shakespearean training at the prestigious Guildhall school for preparing them to quickly adapt to motion capture work, despite not being specifically prepared for it.
“They teach you everything but audio and videogames,” they said. “So it’s a real testament to that training, the fact that I can take theater skills—because you are using theater schools in mocap. It’s a black box. You’ve got no scenery, you’ve got someone describing to you what’s happening, but you’ve got no idea, you’re being filmed 360 and you’re going line by line.
“[Baldur’s Gate 3’s performance directors] all came from that, so we had the same vocabulary, and it was just very comforting to have them in the room along with our voice directors. It was a lovely collaborative, fun, experimental sort of agreement, but you pick it up very quickly.”
As for what’s next, Béart hopes to be entering their “1990s Gary Oldman era,” popping up where players least expect as a character actor. “I’m hoping to be very annoying and everywhere, like some of my contemporaries.”
Béart can already be heard again in a supporting role in the recently released Tron: Catalyst, an isometric brawler from Thomas Was Alone and John Wick Hex creator, Bithell Games. Béart will also be appearing in the upcoming Fading Echo, and as a playable character in roguelike beat ’em up Absolum, which PC Gamer strategic director Evan Lahti called “the best game of Steam Next Fest.”
Béart also has a podcast series on game development, It Takes a Village. They said that they’ll be working on new episodes in the coming year, but you can check out the first season now on YouTube.
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