Ultimately, how much did you rely on the Tommy (Jeffrey Pierce) from the games?
I felt it was important to play through it and get a true sense of what Jeffrey Pierce had done with Tommy’s voice and performance capture in the games. So as I played through it and familiarized myself with Tommy, it became more and more evident that we were in the same channel, energy wise, historically and culturally. There were a lot of similarities there. After Craig and Neil watched my tape, they told me that they saw the soul of Tommy, and I started to understand what they were saying as I was being introduced to Tommy. That said, knowing the place where he was born and raised, it felt pretty natural to play him.
What’s interesting is we talk about him like he’s a real person. Having been created 10 years ago, he has a history with the fans and a place in the gaming space, character wise. So you approach it somewhat like a biopic about a person that exists in life. I tried to absorb what I believed to be important and what the gamers are going to hope for in a true translation of the game.
Of course, you also have to live in the moment with all of the varying changes in the story that we incorporated into our version. You have to respond to those as naturally and as honestly as possible, so the character will naturally be different due to the new circumstance. But Tommy’s from Austin. I’m from Austin. The character and I were simpatico throughout.
Luna, a genre regular thanks to 'Terminator: Dark Fate' and 'Agents of SHIELD,' had a particular sequence from the video game circled on his calendar weeks ahead of time.
www.hollywoodreporter.com