“Tingle is life goals!”
This May, MCM Comic Con graciously returned to its home away from home, London ExCeL. With plenty of notable actors, artists and many more in attendance, plenty of fun was to be had, autographs to be purchased and more. One big highlight for us from this year’s event was the chance to sit in on an open panel interview with Patricia Summersett and Sean Chiplock.
As the voices behind Princess Zelda (Summersett), Revali, Teba and the Great Deku Tree (Chiplock), from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, it’s always been a dream of ours to get the chance to speak with them and thanks to Comic Con, we got the opportunity to share the room as them.
Having already shared a video of the complete panel, we have since sat down to transcribe a majority of the questions asked and answered and now, it is our utmost pleasure to share them with you in written form:
Patricia Summersett & Sean Chiplock | Voicing a Legend (of Zelda):
The Legend of Link: (Playable Princess Zelda)
Patricia Summersett: I mean, it’s pretty hard to set Link aside. He’s kind of a main staple guy. I also say like, Hyrule Warriors, they have playable Zelda, so that has actually occurred.
Sean Chiplock: She’s a badass in that, like the very first time you see her she’s got all kinds of different weapons, but she’s immediately in charge of the kingdom She’s on the front lines.
I’m glad that they’re not as afraid to give other characters the limelight nowadays and I think it’s always really cool when Zelda takes the credit, because she’s really quite powerful, even if she doesn’t start out confident in Breath of the Wild. There’s no shame in feeling the weight of the expectations placed upon you, but that means when she finally takes control of that power and puts it to use, it’s a really empowering moment. So, I think it’s really cool Revali cares for Zelda, he didn’t care so much for Link.
A Link to the Past: (Voicing Zelda: Then & Now )
Patricia Summersett: I would say it’s certainly evolved from the first one. I think she’s had more wisdom and a lot more experience and I think that kind of shows up between Breath of the Wild and then also Hyrule Warriors and by the time you get to Tears of the Kingdom, even though they’re not chronologically supposed to be part of the same world, but they still are part of that same world.
I feel like I was able to spend some time actually expanding upon the work that I did in the first game and also new script, new director, new team, partly at least, that always changes the feeling that you get in a room and what you’re going to do with it. So, you are also going by that script and what they offered in the third game, for the sequel, was a really exciting palette No spoilers.
It was very exciting to be able to evolve through that.
Sean Chiplock: People won’t be surprised at all, because Revali is a sarcastic jerk, but I’ve often said that I wish I had known what we learned when recording for the DLC of the first game, back when we were recording for the main game.
From the recording process we weren’t always given everything in chronological order, so there’s a lot of stuff I figured out towards the end and I’m like, “Oh, okay. This makes more sense in regards to this.”
When I came in to record for the DLC And we got that background info I was like, “Oh my god, it all makes so much more sense now,” and then by the time Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity came around I very much understood the characters from different perspectives.
So, for me it was kind of from a performance perspective it was interesting seeing me go from just kind of figuring this out as I went along, much like Link would.
By the time we were in Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, I was so in tune with the characters that switching between Revali and Teba was easy. It was actually kind of impressive even to me because there’s a cutscene where they talk to each other and people who don’t know are like, “I didn’t know that you voiced both of them.” But for me in the booth, I knew them so well by then that it was just, “Are we doing Revali’s lines? Okay, now into that.
“Are we doing Teba’s lines? Okay, now into that” And you would think it was two completely different people It’s a good example of how as actors, we really appreciate having as much info as possible. Not because we want to spoil it for anyone, but because if we understand motivations, if we understand the backstory, It makes it so, so, so much easier to make educated choices about why we are saying what we are saying, in a way that will convince the player base as well.
Patricia Summersett: I think, what happens outside of the game, over the years and we went through a pandemic and all these things. Then coming back to a role, especially in a sort of dystopian universe like that you can kind of add parts of your life outside and inside and it’s all just a little more rich as it goes along.
The Legend of John Wick?: (Keanu Reeves is Tingle!)
Sean Chiplock: Easily Keanu Reeves. He does all his own stunts, man. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, I can explain this in detail because I’m playing Hyrule Warriors.
The funniest thing to me is as a teen, we’re like “Who’s this creepy man in my Zelda game? I want nothing to do with him.” And as 30-somethings we’re like “That is life goals right there.” That man is living his best life, dressed up however he wants. He’s got the butt wiggle that he does when he runs in Hyrule Warriors.
Patricia Summersett: So you want to see Keanu Reeves do the butt wiggle, is that what you’re saying?
Sean Chiplock: YES! When you run as him with every gallop, he goes like, “ooh, ooh, ah.” (Tingle noises). He does little funny noises and there’s confetti coming out of his backside at the same time, and I think Keanu is someone who does basically all his own stunts, If he can waggle his buttocks like that move over Tay Tay, I’m sorry, new favourite.
The Great Chiplock Tree: (The Root of Confidence)
Sean Chiplock: It’s a wonderful story for me to tell when I get the chance to do it in long form, because Revali, Teba and the Great Deku Tree, which many people don’t realize I also voiced, was the perfect mix of stuff that was new to me. Stuff that had a challenge that I overcame and stuff where I had utter confidence in what I was doing.
Revali was probably the most difficult because as I said, I didn’t quite understand his motivations yet and so, it was hard to get the level of grounded realism that they wanted for him in the English dub, compared to the more eccentric showmanship that he was doing in the Japanese (version). I struggled with that for a while, but that was where I learned to work with the team and let them guide me where I needed to go until I felt confident taking over the reins for myself.
The Great Deku Tree was a perfect example of finding confidence in myself, because originally, when we did callbacks they had us prep up to three-character voices and originally when I did two they said “Great thanks” and I asked if I could do my third and they asked who it was and I said “The Tree.”
They were like “Oh, we got big guys for that” and it was the first time in my professional career that I politely but firmly went, “That’s great, but you told me to prepare three I’d like to do my third character, please.”
So, now it was like now you better have made a strong choice for this and I knew I couldn’t do the same big baritone voice that someone with a bigger chest could do, so instead I went ‘What does old and wispy and wise sound like?’ and that’s how I came up with relaxing myself and going all the way down here. This very wide open mouth and that blew them away.
Skyward Sound: (Voicing Teba)
Sean Chiplock: Teba was the one where it was like, this is so funny to me because when I saw his design, in my brain I went I know exactly what he sounds like there’s a similar character, but it’s a different personality, using that info to make those adjustments. And I laughed because back then it was just me being excited and going, “Oh, I know what he sounds like to me,” but in reality it was me telling a big corporation, “Oh, shut up, sit down, I got this” and then doing it and them going “Yeah it works for us. It’s pretty good.”
Sean Says: (Hey, listen!)
Sean Chiplock: So, it’s crazy to think about but that’s the element of play that we as actors enjoy so much, is you know, we may not have the artistic ability all the time to create, you know, what’s just a thought in our heads and then put it onto paper. But to see something and be able to give it life through our voice and make it more real to people, that’s so exciting.
The Great Deku Tree has not had an English voice since the beginning of The Legend of Zelda franchise and it is unreal to me that out of 7.85 billion people, It’s a lot of pressure, but you gotta let the excitement and the passion take over because if you think about it in that term, you’re going to get too scared to take a leap.
The Legend of Live-Action: (In Nintendo we Trust)
Sean Chiplock: First of all, it’s not our decision to make, but we are always grateful for the chance to get to reprise roles. But we also understand that different companies want to make different decisions about different things.
Patricia Summersett: I feel like Nintendo knows what they want and (with) Miyazaki films’ influence, plus director Wes Ball and Shigeru Miyamoto are heavily involved. They’re going to come up with something awesome, I’m sure. I’m just like I’ll wait and see.
Kooloo-Limpah!: (Live-Action Tingle)
Sean Chiplock: I’ve been in the under armor, I’ve been in the skin tight single color suit. I’ve watched those videos. Put me in coach I will do the audition. I think I’m a little tall for the role, I think they have some better options. They can always CGI but I like authenticity whenever possible, but never say never. Try everything once.
I would want them To rig the firecracker confetti in the butt cracks So when I jut it out at the last little hip thrust, it goes out like that.”
Link, Open your Ears!: (Interacting with a Silent Protagonist)
Patricia Summersett: I actually never have a clear vision for who I think Link should be. I see the animated drawing and I’m like that’s Link I don’t think about it too much.
Everything that we do in terms of dubbing and so much video game work, it’s all done where most of it is done without other people in the room.
Sean Chiplock: Sometimes we don’t even have contextual lines surrounding our characters Where we will get the info from the director on what context the line has. But there are times when we will get the whole scene and we can see who we’re responding to, there are times when it’s literally just a sheet of our character’s lines like 200, 250 and we just go through them one by one with no surrounding context So, for many games if it sounds like everyone was in the room having the actual conversation with each other that just means it’s a bunch of really good actors who know how to make it sound realistic.
Patricia Summersett: And editors and people on the team who choose the intonation of which take that they want to put together. It almost would be strange to have reactions of two people because so often you are just getting several variations of a line and then they sometimes are choosing this Long after the fact or changing it around based on what they need at that time. It makes more sense to be able to actually take direction in a room and imagine that would almost be better sometimes than having somebody to react to.
Voice of the Wild: (Hyrule and the Hero)
Sean Chiplock: I would almost argue that in a franchise like Zelda where the protagonist is known for being silent that its almost a little easier to play up characterizations because I’ve always treated, especially Breath of the Wild, I treat it as Nintendo’s version of Mad Max Where the story is never really about the main character, it’s about the world that the main character is involved in, like Mad Max.
They explore, they discover a tribe or a group or someone that has their own issue, they find out what the issue is, they assist those people and then here’s the important part, They move on. It’s that kind of moving on and leaving them behind that goes, oh, there was that experience and it leaves you, the viewer, the player with “I enjoyed that world, I wonder what else they get up to?” and that kind of longing, that passion that desire to wonder what if is what keeps the project alive beyond what the main character does, because it’s not about them, it’s about everyone that they’ve gotten involved with over the time.
For even more Zelda talk, why not check out the full interview with the video below:
And for more MCM London Comic Con May 2024 content, be sure to click on this link here.
