Question: How did you get into Voice Acting?
DC: I kinda fell into it. Almost by accident. I trained as an actor, studied Theater Arts and Acting in Undergrad at Virginia Tech and then worked for three years professionally and then went to Penn State to do an MFA (Master Of Fine Arts) in Acting. So I trained as an actor for stage primarily, for television and film and I didn’t receive any Voice Over Training at all. I had done a little bit of video narration and things like that but not professionally. When I first moved to the UK in 1999, I met an agent who wasn’t quite sure what to do with me because I was American, living in England… She wasn’t quite sure if she could support me. I met her when I was doing a play up in York and she came to see the play and she liked my work so she stayed in touch and one day a couple of weeks later, she called me and said “Doug, I got this video game casting in Harrogate and they would like to see you for the main role.” I was like, okay, video game, interesting, never done anything like that before. So I went along to the audition and that was my first time doing any voice acting of any kind on the mic and certainly for a game. The game was called Independence War 2: Edge Of Chaos and I ended up getting the lead role and it just kind of snowballed from there. The company called Outsource Media just kept bringing me back for more games and eventually this game called “The Witcher” popped up. I went in for an audition and got that role and did three games with him.
Question: Do you like Henry Cavill’s Interpretation of Geralt? And Are you excited for the Series?
DC: Henry is interesting. I tried to reserve judgment when his casting was announced for all kinds of reasons but mostly to be fair to him. He is an actor and what we do as actors is to transform to a certain extent. I wanted to allow him to do that before I had any real personal opinions about it. The trailer that came out recently, I think it looks fantastic and certainly the way that Geralt is described in the books, that’s what they’ve gone for in the Netflix Series. So I’m excited to see an actual episode and see what they do with Geralt. There’s not a whole lot you can see from the trailers but for right now… I’m excited to see where they go with it.
Question: Have you played any of the games you have been in?
DC: Yes. I played The Witcher 3 all the way through. I haven’t gotten to the DLC but soon I will. I got the ending I wanted and I’m very happy that I was a part of that game and that series.
Final Question: Are you excited for Cyberpunk 2077 as both a fan and someone who has worked with CD Projekt Red?
DC: It looks awesome. I think it’s gonna be awesome and my experience with CD Projekt Red is that you can never put out a game that has no flaws whatsoever, but I think CD Projekt does their utmost to put out a game that is ready to be played. I’m excited for it and I think people are gonna go nuts for it. CD Projekt Red tends not to be a company that sits on its laurels. They want to take work that they’ve done in the past and take a big step up from it. That’s what they did with all three Witcher games and the DLC for Witcher 3. They then created the Gwent Game which didn’t exist until they made it and now with Cyberpunk they are making a world as big as or compared to both Witcher 2 and 3’s maps plus the DLC for 3 in its initial release. I’m excited about it.
These were just a few questions from my interview with Doug Cockle. More questions will be available on the MGB podcast when it comes out on the 27th at 6 AM EST.
