Patricia Summersett has lent her voice to many games and has even appeared in front of the camera a number of times, but what the voice actress might be most known for is her role of Zelda in Legend of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild. We spoke with Summersett about all things Zelda, video games, and her upcoming appearance at Fan Expo Canada in Toronto.
Horror Geek Life: Thanks for talking with us, Patricia! Did you always want to be in the entertainment business or was this just something that happened on its own?
Patricia Summersett: I was always doing art from a young age. I actually started originally as a competitive ice dancer before I got into acting. I think the thing that got me from a young age was the fact that before I would ever consider it a career, I was doing it for the love of it, and my family was really involved both in athletics like figure skating, but also singing as a family. So, I guess I would say I did a lot of training growing up; both in church and in different venues. I always had cross-training elements, so maybe it was natural by the time I decided to make a choice about it.
Horror Geek Life: Fast-forward to today, and you are working as an accomplished voice-over actress in several notable video games, one of them being Zelda in Breath of the Wild. How did it feel joining such an immensely popular franchise as one of gaming’s most iconic characters?
PS: It’s still one of the most amazing and tense career things that’s ever happened to me. It actually changed my life a bit because now I travel and meet fans and go around the world. It’s been incredibly enriching. I had auditioned for it without knowing what the game was, and it came after a very big, courageous move to L.A. that I made for my career so that I could specialize in voice a bit more. It was also a symbol that I was heading in the right direction. You can’t prepare yourself for something like that to happen to you, and when it does it’s very immense.
Horror Geek Life: Did you have any previous personal experience with the Legend of Zelda series?
PS: I had a NES and SNES as a kid, and my sister and I would play a lot of Nintendo, but really more Mario Bros.. But I played the original (Legend of Zelda) and in high school, I played Ocarina of Time, my boyfriend was also into that game. I also played Twilight Princess, and I’ve also just known it as a household name. Growing up, it’s always been there, so when I discovered that I would be a part of the new game, I knew instantly that it was very special.
Horror Geek Life: Have you had a chance to playe Breath of the Wild?
PS: I have! At this point, I’m wondering if I’ll actually beat the game! I thought I would when I first got a hold of the game two years ago, but to be honest, I was so inundated with interviews and travel and constantly being surrounded by people who play the game. It took over a really big chunk of my life for a while, and so I ended up deciding not to play the game as much. But I’ve played about 40 hours and I absolutely love it. It’s incredible. It’s breathtaking.
Horror Geek Life: We agree! The character of Zelda has only been voiced a handful of times previously. Did this make the role easier or more difficult?
PS: At some point, whenever you’re given a large task or something within a big franchise, you always do feel a lot of pressure, and I certainly felt that with this one. Because she had existed for 30 years before, I did a fair bit of research. I bought Hyrule Historia and I started looking into revisiting scenes from the former games as I was working on the recordings. But at some point, when you’re recording something like this as an actor, your training kicks in. For me, it’s also about the text that’s in front of you. What you need to do with it at that moment, what the character wants, what they need, and why are they relevant right now. You can’t really play the past when you’re acting; you have to play what’s relevant for that character right now. Focusing on that to a certain degree, having ten years of voice-acting and acting experience before getting this role did help me try to process that information and work from the craft that I have developed.
Horror Geek Life: Speaking of your voice-acting career, you also provide the voice of Ash in Rainbow Six: Siege. How different would you say was your approach to voicing Ash as opposed to voicing Zelda?
PS: Very different. For one; Ash, when that character was first created, I was brought in to do a lot of really technical shouting. I knew that it was going to be a really cool game, and I loved working with Ubisoft. I had no idea that that character was going to grow and that the game was going to start at one place and end up three times larger than when it started. Initially, the work was quite straightforward and it was a lot of shouting, and then it was about a year into the process of that game growing that they decided to bring me back to do motion-capture and try some different things with character development for the game. So, that was super cool, and that was also full performance capture in the studio with the reflection balls all over me, blocking out physical scenes, and getting military training from the people and their advisors and stuff like that. With Zelda, it’s just a dub of something in English that’s done over Japanese lip-flaps. It’s an incredibly different technical skill, a very different approach. Even in the character development, they are incredibly different character types, so I almost couldn’t compare the two.
Horror Geek Life: If you could voice a character in any other game franchise, which would it be and why?
PS: I’ve been so lucky so far and I’d hate to jinx myself by being too picky. I would love to be apart of the Overwatch team. Yea, right now I’d say something like Apex Legends or Overwatch. With Overwatch, I know a lot of the actors in it, and they’re all really really awesome people and I would feel like I would be able to hang out with them more if I did voices for that fun game. Might be more of a personal reason, haha.
Horror Geek Life: You’ve actually had roles both as a voice actress and in front of the camera. Do you have a preference when it comes to what kind of roles you take?
PS: It’s interesting. I like them both equally for very different things, and I’m honestly glad that I don’t have to choose. If I did go with voice acting, I would have missed the live-action elements that I’ve been developing for years. Yet, from the beginning of my career, I knew that voice-over would be a very big part of what I wanted to do, and I love that you don’t actually have an image for it and that you can go in and it’s all about the voice. I approach them both differently and they go hand-in-hand. So in that way, I’m not sure I do have a preference, it kinda depends on the project and nowadays, there are so many hybrids. I find that, for example, doing motion-capture is one of my favorite things to do, and that’s a really nice hybrid of both voice acting and live-action. So yea, there are opportunities for all of it.
Horror Geek Life: In 2012, you started your own band, have you always had an interest in music?
PS: I have. I have a very musical family and two sisters who are singers. One of them is a folk singer/songwriter, the other one is an opera singer; I have three sisters altogether. So, the four of us would all sing together from a young age. I have always had that interest in music, but to create my own music and have a musical partner, as I do, who’s really into doing a 50/50 process developing songs is truly one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever been given. I don’t play an instrument, so I have really amazing collaborators who help me and go through the development with the music. It’s really great to make your own original work when you’re in a field where your auditions don’t necessarily lead to anything. It gives you a sense of autonomy and helps develop your craft.
(Patricia’s music can be found here.)
Horror Geek Life: You will be at Fan Expo Canada this month! What do you enjoy most about attending conventions?
PS: Definitely the fans. I definitely enjoy meeting so many interesting people who come to those places who have their own amazing stories. They come in great cosplay, a lot of them. I really enjoy the diversity of the interactions that I have at those things. It’s a huge gift to be able to do stuff like that, and it’s always been one of my dreams to travel so when I’m asked to go to places like Fan Expo, which is a wonderful convention and I’m very excited to be there, it’s a big privilege and I never take that for granted.
Horror Geek Life: Lastly, are there any future projects you have coming up that you can talk to us about?
PS: Well, I’m going to have a little animation announcement in the next couple of weeks, but of course, it’s secret. I’ve got a couple of secret games that should be announced, maybe in the Fall. The other thing that I could talk about is I’m about to release a second album with my band, and we’ve been working on that for a year and a half. We’re quite excited, and we’re in the final stages. There are some great things coming up, I just can’t talk about them much, unfortunately.
Meet Patricia Summersett, and many other awesome guests, at FAN EXPO Canada from Thursday, August 22nd until Sunday, August 25th. The event will be held at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre in downtown Toronto. Tickets can be bought HERE, a full guest list can be viewed HERE, and a schedule of all the weekend’s events can be found HERE.
