Interview with BAFTA Breakthrough 2024 talent Jennifer English on the ‘magic’ of Expedition 33, performing with Andy Serkis, her theatre background, and the differences between working on Baldur’s Gate 3 and Elden Ring

Photo by Manuel Vazquez at BAFTA

Baldur’s Gate 3 set the gaming world alight when it launched last year, and its fantastic cast earned the praise of the gaming community. Today, Jennifer English, the voice of Shadowheart, has been named in this year’s BAFTA Breakthrough 2024 UK cohort for her work on the game. This new talent initiative, supported by Netflix and now in its 11th year, aims to ‘accelerate extraordinary people who are on the cusp or in the midst of a breakthrough moment or year’.

Dom Sacco caught up with Jennifer to discuss her work on Baldur’s Gate and Elden Ring, the upcoming Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, an RPG where she voices Maelle, and whether she likes esports or not.

Great to talk to you today, Jennifer, big fan of Baldur’s Gate and Elden Ring here – what a CV you have!

(laughs) I’m hoping for a third game of the year, that’d be a really good one!

Absolutely – we’ll come to that! First off, congratulations on being part of this year’s BAFTA Breakthrough cohort. How does it feel to be a part of this?

It’s so exciting – what an honour. It’s something I dreamed of. I remember going to BAFTA for the first time a few years ago and seeing the portraits of the BAFTA Breakthroughs filling the corridors, and I thought I’d love to be at the point where I could be on the wall, where I could do that photoshoot. And then it happened!

I’m like, ‘did I manifest this? I think I manifested this, oh my God, I can manifest!’ (laughs) 

You’ve been a part of some blockbuster video game titles, but I’m curious about your background. What did you do leading up to those roles? Is acting something you’ve always wanted to do?

So, when I graduated from drama school – many moons ago – I mainly did theatre. That is my background, I grew up in rural Shropshire in the middle of nowhere, and did amateur dramatics with my family. We’d do little outdoor productions of Charles Dickens and things like that. So it was always in my blood and I always adored the community aspect of it, and performing. 

It was only theatre that I really wanted to do. And I would still definitely do it, I love performing in whatever medium. I just sort of fell into games. 

And I’ve done lots of filming this year, I do all kinds of acting. And I think that’s the thing with the UK, I don’t think any actor working in video games calls themselves voice actors, and for a start we did motion capture for Baldur’s Gate 3 – and that’s hard!

We all do all kinds of acting. I did an indie game called Augmented Empire, which had Kate Mulgrow (‘Red’ from Orange is the New Black) in it. It’s a VR headset game and so I got into that, and I just loved it. Amelia Tyler (who plays the narrator in Baldur’s Gate 3) played my mum – and we got to be in the studio acting together! 

So that was my first game, I think, then I did Divinity, and that’s how I got on Larian Studios’ radar and got the part on Baldur’s Gate 3. That took four and a half years of my life, during a pandemic when there was no other work, and the rest is history!

Someone needs to update your IMDB profile, that game isn’t listed on there so I now feel like a bad journalist not knowing about it!

(laughs) Oh no, you’re fine, do not worry about it at all! 

I also noticed you don’t have a Wikipedia page. Do you think you’ll get one now you’re in the BAFTA Breakthrough, or do you even want one?

I don’t know, it’s not something I’ve yearned for, to be honest! Lots of people have fake news on their Wikipedia, and I’m like, ‘oh no, anyone can put anything’ (makes an eerie ‘wooo’ ghost-like noise)

You played Latenna in Elden Ring. What was it like being a part of that? It must have been unique, being involved in a game whose world-building came from the likes of George R.R. Martin.

It was such a different process. It was completely different from Baldur’s Gate 3.

It felt like we had about 30 people on Zoom, including [FromSoftware president Hidetaka] Miyazaki and translators, and the game’s translator, and their personal translator and the devs… 

They had such a very specific idea of what they wanted from the voice, the character and the acting. It was very whispery and very close. It was very overwhelming – and thank goodness I had experience in games and I’m pretty unflappable – because there was a lot of adjusting and specificity. It was really fun and challenging to work in such a different way. 

It was so beautiful to work with people that care so much about the specificities. So it was a really different experience to Baldur’s Gate 3, where we had tons of freedom and we were literally bouncing around a room, chucking ideas around.

That’s the joy of this job, it’s never a one-size-fits-all. You’re not gonna be working with the same kind of creativity, and that keeps you growing and developing as an actor, because you’re going, ‘great, my brain is changing, I need to adapt to this and I need my creative brain to adapt to this’. 

So it was a really exciting project to be a part of, and is very brilliant. I can’t play it, it’s too difficult! But maybe as my gaming skills do develop – and they are developing, through playing Baldur’s Gate 3, maybe I’ll get there. But I’m not good enough to play it, unfortunately! 

On the topic of big games, you’re working on the RPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which feels to me what modern Final Fantasy titles should feel like. You’re playing a character called Maelle, right?

(Corrects my horrendous pronunciation of the character’s name) ‘Maelle’. It’s all French, so we had to learn to say French words a lot. And I got ‘putain’ wrong a lot! 

That’s a naughty word, isn’t it? (laughs)

Oh yeah, maybe don’t put that in, Dom, because I don’t know if that’s a spoiler. Putain, putain!

Honestly, it’s one of the most gorgeous projects I’ve ever worked on. I’ve had so much fun with it, and as we got the recordings of other people to act opposite, so I wasn’t in the room with people, sadly – you don’t get that a lot in video games. 

But, I had bloody Andy Serkis playing opposite me! And we’ve met now, and he’s the loveliest human. And the acting I’ve heard from the others is phenomenal. When I got the script, because they sent it in advance, I was like, ‘oh, this is going to be magic…’

I am so excited for everyone to play this game. It’s truly special. And I’ve now become friends with Ben Starr, who’s in the game as well. And we’d just call each other up, going, ‘God, this game is special! This game. This game. It’s really special, isn’t it. Yeah!’ (laughs) 

We’re insufferable! 

I hope it’s as good as I think it is, but I think it’s going to be brilliant. 

As we’re publishing this interview on Esports News UK, which mainly covers esports teams, players and news, I have to ask: Do you like esports or follow any esports teams or players? 

Absolutely no idea what you’re talking about Dom, if I’m being really honest, I’m not quite sure what that is. 

(Jennifer gets her smartphone out and swipes it) I play snooker on my phone with my girlfriend, that’s as far as we get! I watched one game of baseball in real life, because I was forced to, that’s as sporty as I get.

Well I admire your honesty, and I hope you get to work on an esports game in the future like League of Legends or Counter-Strike, these sort of competitive titles.

Oh yeah I know about League of Legends! Yeah, is that an esports game? I didn’t know that.

Yeah, we just had the Worlds 2024 finals in London the other week. 

Did the hobbits go? [Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd who play Merry and Pippin in Lord of the Rings]

I’m not sure! Possibly, there were a lot of people there. 

Well, [if I get to voice a character in one of those games in the future], then I’ll be able to go, ‘I know what this is!’ 

And hey, Arcane is great. I’m a big fan of that. Arcane Season 2 is very exciting. 

It is indded. Thanks for your time, Jennifer.

Thank you!

Full BAFTA Breakthrough 2024 cohort

BAFTA Breakthrough, supported by Netflix, is BAFTA’s flagship new talent initiative to ‘accelerate extraordinary people who are on the cusp or in the midst of a breakthrough moment or year’.

This year, five subcommittees of industry professionals have selected 21 names in the UK, 13 in the US and 9 in India from across the film, TV and games industries. They are as follows:

UK BREAKTHROUGHS

• Alice Russell, Director – If the Streets Were on Fire
• Beth Park, Lead Performance Director – Black Myth: Wukong
• Clair Titley, Director – The Contestant
• Cobbie Yates, Costume Designer – Layla
• Daf James, Creator/Writer/Executive Producer/Musical Director – Lost Boys & Fairies
• Fred Hoffman, Art Director – Paper Trail
• Georgina Hurcombe, Creator/Producer/Director – Pop Paper City
• Harry Gilbert, Casting Director – G’wed
• Jennifer English, Performer – Baldur’s Gate 3
• Kyla Harris, Lead Performer/Co-Creator/Co-Writer/Associate Producer – We Might Regret This
• Lauren Sequeira, Creator/Writer/Executive Producer – Domino Day
• Lee Getty*, Co-Creator/Co-Writer/Associate Producer – We Might Regret This
• Loran Dunn, Producer – Hoard
• Luna Carmoon, Writer/Director – Hoard
• Luned Tonderai, Series Director – Miriam: Death Of A Reality Star
• Mawaan Rizwan, Performer/Writer/Creator/Executive Producer – Juice
• Otto Baxter, Writer/Director/Performer – The Puppet Asylum
• Poulomi Basu, Creator/Director/Writer/Art Director – MAYA: The Birth of a Superhero
• Rochelle Newman, Producer – White Nanny Black Child
• Shahnaz Dulaimy, Editor – Top Boy
• Sophie Knowles, Lead Artist – Viewfinder

US BREAKTHROUGHS

• Angela Walker Patton**, Director – Daughters
• Elaine Gómez, Creative Director – Blink Land
• Erica Tremblay, Writer/Director – Fancy Dance
• Hanna Park, Editor – Bottoms
• Jih-E Peng, Cinematographer – Girls Will Be Girls
• Joy Ngiaw, Composer – WondLa
• Juliana Hoffpauir, Costume Designer – Hit Man
• Karrie Shirou Shao, Game Writer/Lead Designer – Pacific Drive
• Nafisa Kaptownwala, Casting Director – Dìdi
• Natalie Rae**, Director – Daughters
• Nava Mau, Performer – Baby Reindeer
• Nicole He, Creative Director – The Crush House
• Sean Wang, Writer/Director – Dìdi

INDIA BREAKTHROUGHS

• Abhinav Chokhavatia, Game Producer – Down and Out
• Christo Tomy, Director – Curry and Cyanide: The Jolly Joseph Case
• Deepa Bhatia, Writer/Director/Producer – First Act
• Dhiman Karmakar, Sound Designer/Production Sound Mixer – Amar Singh Chamkila
• Jaydeep Sarkar, Showrunner/Series Director/Executive Producer – Rainbow Rishta
• Monisha Thyagarajan, Series Producer – The Hunt for Veerappan
• Neeraj Kumar, Producer/Lead Developer – Artifice: War Tactics
• Sindhu Sreenivasa Murthy, Writer/Director/Performer – Aachar & Co.
• Varun Grover, Writer/Director – All India Rank

Related article: Baldur’s Gate 3 won five awards at the 2024 BAFTA Games Awards last year, and was in the running for a record 11 categories

Dom Sacco

Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.

As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.