After a full year of putting in countless hours into Baldur’s Gate 3, there was one person I knew I had to interview at New York Comic Con: Neil Newbon. Sure enough, I had the immense pleasure of chatting with Newbon—a fellow performer and a prolific multihyphenate—about his iconic BG3 character Astarion, his craft as an artist, and his take on the future of AI in entertainment.
Newbon is deeply entrenched in industry talks surrounding artificial intelligence. Ever since the WGA and SAG strikes of 2023, the use of AI for TV and film has remained a point of contention for artists and executives alike. It was lovely to hear a more hopeful outlook on navigating this new era of entertainment from someone who’s been fighting the good fight from “the inside.” I hope you all enjoy Newbon’s gorgeously articulated thoughts as much as I did!
You can check out the video version of this interview here.
A New York Comic Con interview with Neil Newbon
Anna María: Hi, I’m Anna María. I’m here with the Daily Dot at New York Comic Con with Neil Newbon, the voice of Astarion and many other characters besides. Neil, how are you this morning?
Neil Newbon: I’m good, actually. And it’s full performance! So it’s not just the voice—it’s everything. Yeah. I’m really good. A little sleepy, to be honest. It’s been three continents in three weeks, which is a bit much, even for me. But I’m really excited. I really like Comic Cons, and Reedpop especially are really cool, and I’ve known them for a long time. So it’s just nice to be here with some of my fellow cast members and also just to meet a lot of the players in the audience.
Anna María: Absolutely. Well, we’re very excited to have you here today.
[Neil mouths: Two coffees?]
Neil Newbon: So I feel okay.
Anna María: That’s what it takes at this point. I do think it’s what it takes. So, talk to me about your journey to becoming who you are today. Obviously, you have a long and storied career.
Neil: [laughs] How much time do we have?
Anna María: For sure. 15 minutes, no stress. Give me the SparkNotes version of your journey.
Neil Newbon: So, I guess I’ve been acting for 28 years. I started with the National Youth Theatre, went into method acting, and then started developing my craft a lot. So I went into TV and film and carried on training, which I really recommend actors to do. I worked in the studio system with Giles Foreman for a long time. Did a lot of TV, lot of film, theatre as well, and then got to a point where I just couldn’t get arrested. So I was going up against big people with profiles I couldn’t beat. I got to a point where I almost quit acting. And I’m also a gamer, so during that period of time, I used to read game magazines and in PC Gamer I found a— [Music blasts from an adjacent press room. Neil laughs.] Wow.
I found an article about motion capture. And— I like the fact that we have theme music going. It’s great. [Neil sings and laughs.] You know one of those kind of like, play of the day things? You know what I mean?
So I found motion capture and at that period of time, nobody wanted to do it. Nobody even knew what it was, so I was very lucky that I was one of the few people in the whole of the UK doing it. And it allowed me to take my face off as an actor, which was great because I can now play characters—anything that was appropriate to my ethnic background—and even creatures that weren’t even human and stuff like that. So that in itself was great training and I found I was very good at it, and people were very kind and very supportive. Audiomotion started my career. Brian Mitchell and Stacey Boiselle were really instrumental about giving me a career. Arran Green from Framestore—who’s now at Sony, I think—he was the person that also helped me get into it. And through that I was very lucky. I met people like Square Enix, Capcom, um—Ubisoft was my first game, and I just started working, working, working, working, and found that this was kind of like my place, really. I started directing. I started mentoring as well, so now I get to help other actors and wrestlers and, you know, dancers and gymnasts and things get into motion capture. I direct and produce as well—a production company now, and I was very fortunate to meet people like Larian and have had this amazing experience playing all these different characters. Yeah.
Anna María: That’s thrilling. And now you are this leading voice in the space—and as you touched on, you have this entire mentorship program. Can you talk about developing talent and giving back to the next generation?
Neil Newbon: Sure, yeah. I’ve often championed actors that I feel are talented and good people, and I try to raise them up and give them opportunities. We have a nonprofit workshop that we run, which we just run at cost value. So we travel all around the world. We’ve got places in the UK, but also we’ve done stuff in LA and also in Switzerland and France as well. And we try to basically give a cost-effective, two-day workshop—practical in the volume—for actors to come and experience it so that they demystify the volume. But also it means if they go into an audition or if they get a job, they’re ready to work straight away as opposed to being nervous about how everything works. You don’t need to train in mocap, funny enough. It’s useful, but I wouldn’t say it’s a prerequisite. But what we’ve tried to do is keep it very, very low-cost so that people can afford—they do one job in mocap, they’ve paid for the course, kind of thing. You know?
It’s really nice. I really enjoy it because I had a lot of help when I was starting out. I had a lot of people take risks on me when I was younger. So I think if I can do that for people, then it really just helps pay it forward because I think it’s the duty of any artist to pass knowledge, share knowledge, and also gather other artists to you. If you’re successful and people know who you are, you can influence them in a positive way and help them in their careers. Chris O’Reilly is a good example of that. He’s a young actor who’s in Senua’s Sacrifice, who’s done fantastically well. I’ve known Chris for years. We’ve given him lots of opportunities that we feel and he’s taken them and he’s a really good guy and he’s doing really well. So, you know, there are lots of people like that that we’ve helped along the way. And it’s great because you end up getting to work with them at some point, hopefully, in their career, and it’s just good because it feels just positive, you know?
Anna María: Absolutely.
Neil Newbon: I need more coffee.
Anna María: You’re doing great. You’re doing splendidly. But I mean, speaking about cultivating the next generation—looking toward the future—you’ve been instrumental in navigating the waters of AI and compensating mocap performers fairly. Can you talk about your work in that sphere and how many trails you’ve blazed in that regard?
Neil Newbon: I don’t know about trailblazing, but I’ve definitely—we’ve had some good ideas and I’m trying to help the conversation. So I talk a lot about the avoidance of using AI in performance. There’s a lot of devs I’ve spoken to actually, that most of whom aren’t interested in using AI in performance. There are some bad players out there—not many. I would say majority of people do want to use actors because actually we bring something that you can’t program AI to do. One thing that I have done. which I can’t talk about details because that’s NDA’d, but what we have secured for myself as an actor—I think the world’s first mocap data buyout, which I don’t believe has ever happened before. I might be wrong in that, but I’ve never heard of one. And that’s not for likeness or voice, that’s purely for mocap movement data.
We are now as a company trying to advocate that. So I’m doing a deal about something I can’t talk about where we’re trying to get the actors the same thing. And I think it’s important because all movement, voice, likeness—it’s all performance. So even if you’re doing “mocap only,” it’s still performance and it should be treated as such. Because, you know, ultimately actors tend not to work as much as all that. They have to survive between gigs. And I think to be able to compensate actors for movement, when you can use movement in other iterations of the same game, it means they don’t get to work again on that particular stuff. It means they don’t have as much money. It means they have a harder time surviving. I definitely had a hard time surviving as an actor for a long time. I’ve spent out about 28 years—20 years, I probably was broke.
Eight years have been great. [Laughter.] But I think whatever I can do to help actors survive and also be fairly compensated for their work, you know? Especially if it contributes towards the success of a game, I think it’s fair. We’re also talking about relative peanuts. So I mean, in the grand scheme of a game’s budget—on the whole, you know, what we’re asking, what we’re suggesting for actors to be compensated in that way—it’s very, very little. And I think it’s kind of fair. It also for the individual actor helps enormously. So yeah, that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m speaking to SAG, we’re speaking to Equity as well, trying to advise and help. I’m not the spokesperson for all of this, you know. I’m just another actor, but I have a lot of experience. I have a lot of understanding of the industry, and I think I can help—or rather my company can help.
Anna María: Well, fingers crossed.
Neil Newbon: Yeah, yeah.
Anna María: Absolutely. And have you noticed conversations shifting towards a more positive or hopeful—?
Neil Newbon: Yeah, sure.
Anna María: Okay. Thrilling!
Neil Newbon: Yeah I mean, think— Ultimately, I think that some of the decisions that are being made, I feel from an outsider’s point of view—as in, I’m not a SAG member, so I’m watching from the outside—a lot of it feels like there are people that are number crunching that aren’t taking into effect humans, human beings and their livelihoods and their families. And I think that’s kind of where the problem lies. I think the creative side of it—the games companies, the studios themselves, by and large, they like actors. They want to use actors. They’ve used actors in the past and they try to want to support them. Larian is a great example of highly supportive games company that love actors, that have used 258 actors in full performance. All of us did full performance for our characters, and they looked after us really well, and they still look after us really well.
So I think people have to understand that, you know, there is—it is complicated. It is a new thing. Mocap has only been used really in games for about 25, 30 years maybe—maximum, maximum. So it is a relatively new industry, whereas film’s been around for over 120 years now. Theatre for thousands of years, et cetera, et cetera. People are still trying to understand how to work this, and AI has really come and shattered most industries. It’s affected most industries, not shattered, sorry. But it’s affected and had an impact on most things now. And we’re not entirely sure—people haven’t put boundaries down yet, not proper ones anyway. So it’s an interesting experience being a creative.
Personally, I don’t want to see— I don’t want to see art made by AI. I think it’s incredibly dull. I think it’s interesting as a mind palace like, oh, what if we do this? But ultimately I want to see people make it because I want the flaws. I want the happy accidents. I want the things that you can’t program that just sort of happen and are influenced by human life. I think it’s kind of crazy to try and populate an entire game with AI voices because it sounds crap. It sounds like shit. So, and especially with things like—even things like movements and stuff. I want to work with the actor in the volume. I want to see what they can bring to add to my vision or the vision of the director or the vision of the animation director or whatever. I want to see what you can put together as an ensemble because that’s the— because humans are community animals. I think that’s the spirit of art is it’s all about shared storytelling. It’s all about shared experience and understanding. So to supplement that with AI seems redundant personally, but you know. That’s just me.
Anna María: What do we know? Beautifully stated. How has Astarion changed your life, if at all?
Neil Newbon: Well, it’s definitely had a major impact on my life. I’m usually the bridesmaid, not the bride, in terms of—I’m usually a supporting actor or the protagonist. Sorry, the antagonist or the villain or whatever you want to call it, which is great. Because I often have the joy of having that freedom of not having to worry about carrying the story. I’m very much one character in a big ensemble cast in Baldur’s Gate 3. So in terms of “lead character,” there are like 11 lead characters, I would say, including the narrator that are kind of like the forefront of the game in that respect. There are amazing, many, many amazing supporting characters as well—all of whom have these great personalities. And a lot of people have gravitated towards them, too. So it would be remiss of me to say that he’s the lead, he’s not.
However, he has become the face of the game in some respects. [Laughs] I think TikTok has a lot to blame with that. Not my fault. It’s been great. It’s been very humbling. I’m very grateful for the attention of my work and also the work of all the other actors, and also to be able to thank Larian enormously—and the writer, Stephen Rooney, for instance, the creator of Astarion. Swen, who’s just helmed this amazing, beautiful project. And to be a part of this masterpiece as one actor amongst 200-300 actors is blinding. I think for me personally, it’s great to be able to speak to so many people—see that the people like the story, they connected to the character. They understood what myself, Stephen, and the directors at PitStop and Swen and Larian were trying to do with my story, and also with all the stories of all the characters. It’s really great to see that people connected to it and felt seen by it in so many ways.
In terms of the fame thing, I’ve never been motivated by that. So I have a very public-facing job, which I’m aware of—and I’m really happy to talk about the work and stuff. It has made me very aware of my very strong boundaries in my private life, which have always been there anyway, but they’ve just reinforced that need to—this is great. I’m afraid nobody gets to have that. Because I think the more I would reveal of my private life, the less you’re going to focus on the characters I’m playing. And for me as a character actor, that’s really important to keep that boundary as well as just, my private life is—I don’t make money for my private life, you know what I mean? So that’s my thing.
I do talk about politics a lot because I believe in being an advocate. I do talk about diversity and inclusion a lot. I also believe in that, too. So having a bigger platform now to be able to talk and help people—especially because there’s a lot of trans kids that come up to me, which is really sweet. LGBTQIA+ plus people as well, which is great. So I get to be an ally and support that, too. And I think it’s really useful to be able to have a voice, an educated voice, because I try and educate myself about a lot of different experiences that people have so that I can at least do my bit to have an impact back and help in that way.
It’s very humbling actually, as well. And I think sometimes we have to keep very grounded about who we are and our worth and our self value. Especially when you are being given compliments, you have to sort of keep more grounded in that respect. Because I think the danger is you can start believing it. [Laughs] So I try and keep myself very, very grounded by all of this. But I also think it’s wonderful. I mean, I love the fact so many people have liked my character and so many people like the game and have really connected to it, and I’ve been entertained ultimately. I think I am rambling.
Anna María: Not at all—again, so eloquent. So truly eloquent. Well, that’s all the time we have today.
Neil Newbon: That’s alright, thank you.
Anna María: Thank you so much for chatting with me, Neil.
Neil Newbon: Not at all! It’s been great to chat with you.
Anna María: It’s lovely. Yeah. Thank you.
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