Neil Newbon, the performance capture artist for Astarion in Astarion quotes in Baldur’s Gate 3, which would not be as impactful if they were not delivered by Newbon.

The English actor has also played other roles in gaming, such as Heisenberg in Resident Evil Village, Nicholai in Resident Evil 3, and Elijah in Detroit: Become Human. Along with his more serious roles, Newbon is no stranger to the weird and wonderful, even playing a sentient fish in Warframe called Fibonacci, in one of his funniest roles so far.

Newbon paid a visit to Brazil to attend Brazil Game Show (BGS) 2024 and, in an exclusive interview with Screen Rant, the actor spoke more about his career, how it was to bring life to Astarion in Baldur’s Gate 3, his favorite games, and much more.

Neil Newbon On Building Astarion In Baldur’s Gate 3

The Actor Mentions Astarion Was An Easy Character To Get Into

Screen Rant: I feel like, out of all of your most notable characters, maybe the one whose voice and mannerisms resemble your own a bit more than all the other characters is Astarion.

Neil Newbon: I think so, yeah. I think that he's got a lot of fluidity and I have a lot of flow as well. There's a lot of stuff that he does that I don't do, but I definitely felt very comfortable with him. He's very easy to get into.

Screen Rant: After Baldur's Gate 3, have you been recognized by your voice, by perhaps people who didn't know you, but knew your character?

Neil Newbon: No, my voice, because my accent is very different from Astarion’s. He's got a high-inflected accent. See, he talks up here. He's also got a higher , darling. Whereas my voice is actually kind of like, a little bit London-y, a little bit American, and it's a little different.

People don't tend to recognize me for my voice, they recognize me weirdly for my face. So, I kind of look like him anyway. I think people have become very aware of my work because of the Game Awards and things like that. And being on TikTok apparently a lot, which is not my fault. Not my fault.

Screen Rant: You've spoken before about this, how some of your friends and your various acting techniques and your extensive training helped you mold Astarion into what he is. Do you think there was a change from what he was when you first auditioned for the final release?

Neil Newbon: Yeah, I originally didn't audition for him. Originally, I auditioned for generic races, so they didn't know how they were going to cast us. So instead, PitStop Productions, who were the directors and the engineers that worked with Larian, gave us generic castings for like, play a dwarf, play an elf. And my elf audition was very similar to where they wanted Astarion to land.

When we started working, we didn't really know where he was going, so actually the performance was very guarded and much more closed. And actually, that kind of worked out because chronologically, we ended up shooting the first bit first. And so when you get to know him, he starts opening up. So there's a slight change in his voice because he's way more guarded. It was a happy accident. But he changed quite a bit after the first month. But then after about two or three months, four months in, I think he was very settled, and I knew exactly who he was. It was great. Then the next four years were just fun.

Neil Newbon On AI In Video Games

Artificial Intelligence Does Not Interest The Actor When It Comes To Creating Art

Screen Rant: You mentioned happy accidents once before, talking about how AI can't replicate that. There's been a massive push towards AI, and [moves] against it. Do you think we can avoid AI altogether?

Neil Newbon: Yeah, we can, by people just not being d***heads. Don't be a d***. It's a rule of life, right? The bottom line is I don't want to see a performance or a piece of art or a photograph or a video made by AI because I don't have any relationship to an AI. I'm human and I don't care about AI. Also, as a director or an actor, it's not useful because it doesn't offer up anything. You have to program it, and it makes a very bunch of logical connections to what it thinks that you're trying to ask it to do based on a lot of information, but there's no spark of its own creativity because it's not f****** sentient.

It's not there yet. It's not an entity that we have to say that is a life form. Maybe one day, but right now, and one day if AI is a life form recognized as sentient, it'll make art for itself. It won't make art for us. Do you know what I mean? I think it's pointless. Also, we're talking about human beings' lives and livelihoods. We spend years, sometimes decades, training to offer up great storytelling and entertainment and try to tell stories as well as possible. It seems very ridiculous to take that away from people by just using a quick software program.

Same thing with developers, I might say. A lot of developers' jobs are at risk, not just actors, with AI, and it seems like people are rushing toward a new technology in the same way that people overuse CGI. Also, I think the audience won't like it very much. It won't feel human. It'll feel weird and slightly jarring. And honestly, you're still going to need human beings to have a look at the work in the first place to make sure it fits into the game. I think it's stupid to...I want AI to mow my lawn, do the dishes, and do my taxes. I don't want AI to replace creative artists because I think it's boring as hell, and quite frankly, I'm not interested in it.

So, hopefully people will see sense and realize, ah, it's better with humans. Even if it's a bit more effort and it costs them more money, it's actually better. So, yeah. And Larian are very good about that. Larian have been great. They used 258 actors, full performance, every single person. Didn't have to, but they wanted to because there's a point. We can connect in a way that you can't really do at the moment with AI voices or programs.

Neil Newbon On The Power Of TTRPG As A Storytelling Medium

The Actor Highlights The Active Role In Such Games

Screen Rant: A lot of voice actors and performance capture actors are finding a haven in TTRPG shows, right? And I know you've always been interested in D&D. Why do you think this specific group of actors is maybe gravitating towards TTRPG shows as a sort of entertainment, which was once considered maybe niche?

Neil Newbon: Well, I think the whole geek power thing has come to roost, you know? When I was a geek in the 90s, it wasn't cool. I used to role-play, I used to play games. None of that s*** was cool. But it's become cool, and younger generations all play games now because of smartphones and accessibility to consoles, graphics, and the level of storytelling, the level of the games themselves. It's changed people's attitude towards these things. They're actually taken very seriously as storytelling mediums. People really get a lot out of it.

A lot of people come up and tell me how much they connected to the story of Astarion, but also the other characters in the game. And it actually helped them, or they met other people in communities, and they brought them closer together. I think the advent of the Internet and all those kinds of things changed fundamentally the way we see it. But also, we recognize it as an active storytelling medium. And being active is more powerful than being ive because you're a part of the story. In fact, sometimes, like Larian, Baldur's Gate 3, you change the story depending on how you see the story. That's very powerful as a storytelling medium. And it's very cool. So I think, yeah, that's changed.

Neil Newbon On The State Of The Gaming Industry & Advocating For LGBTQIA+ Rights

The Actor Talks About Preserving Workers’ Livelihoods Before Profits

Screen Rant: You and several of your colleagues, like Ben Starr, have been very vocal about the current state of the gaming industry. What's your perception of this and do you think there's a solution to it?

Neil Newbon: The solution, I think, is stopping all the layoffs. And bear in mind, some of the layoffs are freelancers who are on contract. Not every single person laid off is... I mean, as far as I'm aware, there are some people that are just temporary people. However, the people that have been laid off, like contract people, and long-term people with a lot of skill sets, it seems redundant to save your profit margins over people's livelihoods and their work. It will affect their families, and affect where they live. You can put them in financial jeopardy. It seems a bit ludicrous when people made so much money during the pandemic and continue to make so much money. It's like, take the hit on the profits, guys, and look after your people.

Because the more you look after your developers, the more you look after the staff, all the people that work, and make you the money in the first place, you'll actually make more money in the long run, I think. And I just think it's ridiculous. When you're firing people, then you have to rehire people, maybe junior people who don't know as much. You lose all that experience. You lose that wealth of knowledge. I think to save a few bucks is crazy. And it might be a lot of money, but in the long run, you're better off sticking with and ing the people who make you the money in the first place. And I don't think a lot of these massive companies are in financial jeopardy. I just think they're cutting... They just want to increase their profits or keep their profits the same. Take the hit, guys.

Screen Rant: Another thing you've been outspoken about for your entire life is anti-discrimination, or as you call it, "anti-a-hole." How do you feel having been given a wider audience to cater to with the role of Astarion? Not that you didn't have a wider audience before, but Astarion blew up, and that blew up for you too.

Neil Newbon: I'm very grateful that this particular role has helped me help more people. I'm not saying that I'm an amazing human being or anything like that. I just think it's a decent human being. I think I try to live my life with as much virtue as I can. And I think one part of that is gratitude for what you have and what you are given. And then my belief is you can earn money, you can work hard, you can succeed, but you have to give something back, anything. Even if it's in small ways, even if it's just helping other actors or whatever. Generosity is needed in the world because we're in a really f***** up position at the moment.

I think if I can help my friends who are trans, who are gay, who are pan, who are everything under the combination of LGBTQI+, as well as straight people, if I can help them in some way, why wouldn't I? So I think myself, Tom DeVille, and Blue Hours Medic started our stream, for instance, as a safe place, as a comedy show, interview show, but also as a safe place for people just to mingle and be themselves without any fear of discrimination.

I think it's weird when people have prejudice against stuff that doesn't affect them. I think homophobia and racism are weird because you're just dealing with the unknown, which is why people get afraid, I guess. But really, it doesn't affect their lives at all. If they're not gay, who cares whether the person they meet is gay and loves women or men depending on their gender? Who cares if they're trans? That's their life. But the respect element is something that we're really trying to help . People don't necessarily need to understand what it is to be gay or be trans, but they definitely have to respect you as a human being and respect it's your life, your choices, and you should live the way that you should live, and you should love who you should love.

Neil Newbon Talks About Method Acting & His Favorite Games

The Actor Clarifies Some Misconceptions

Screen Rant: I noticed you've been talking a lot about how we can jump in and out of characters through method acting. And we know method acting has a bit of a bad reputation because of some bad apples.

Neil Newbon: Because they don't understand what method acting is. Method acting is not what people think it is. I've heard of some stories of very big actors who play pranks on people and stay in character outside the set. I think it's bulls***. Because if you're upsetting somebody because you think it's going to feed you your character study, it's a very weak excuse to be nasty to somebody. I've heard stories, it's bulls***.

Method acting is not that. Method acting is based on Stanislavski's methods of building up the character for the life of a character. You do that by yourself. You do that on your own time. If you want to go and learn, like Daniel Day-Lewis, a great example. He went off to be a cobbler for seven years. He quit acting and then came back to it or whatever. But he learned to cobble for another role. He learned carpentry for The Crucible. He learned how to butcher a pig for Gangs of New York because he thought it helped him bring something to the character. He's not hurting somebody by doing that. He's just doing that. If they want to be called the character during lunch, yeah, sure, why not? The line is that when you start upsetting other people, causing their work to suffer, that's not cool. And that's when people start taking the p*** with method acting. Method acting is not what people think it is.

I'm actually more trained than method. I do Meisner, Laban, Yat Malmgren's work, animal work, commedia dell'arte, mask work, creature work. I do a whole bunch of stuff. And method acting sometimes doesn't work. Maybe that scene doesn't require that tool. It requires a different tool. So I don't believe there's one way and one thing. I wouldn't call myself, "I am only a method actor." I'm an actor that has a lot of skill sets. I started in method and then learned more stuff because you should, you know? Sometimes you just need to get through the f****** door. Do you know what I mean? So I think people who want to be a method actor, learn it properly. Don't assume that it means you get to act out because that is somebody who's clearly f****** ignorant of what method acting actually is or thinks it makes them a brilliant genius actor and actually just p***** people off.

Screen Rant: To cap it off, what are your top three games of all time?

Neil Newbon: Fallout series, all of it, from 1 to 4. Skyrim, Elder Scrolls series, 1 to 6. I guess some of the earlier games really, like all the kind of the old-fashioned roleplay tactical games like Rebelstar and things like that, I used to love those games. So, kind of things between, mixture between isometric tacticals and RPGs.

Screen Rant: And finally, what's your go-to class in D&D?

Neil Newbon: I'm not telling you that, that's personal. *Laughter* No, no, I gravitate towards Rogue, I think. I was very well cast [as Astarion].