“It was hard sometimes, because she goes to some really dark places and her journey is a very psychological one,” Jane Perry tells me about her character Selene Vassos in Housemarque’s Returnal, having just picked up the BAFTA for Performer in a Leading Role at this year’s ceremony. With trophy in hand, I caught up with her to talk about the rewards and challenges that came with stepping into the shoes of such a multifaceted heroine.
“There’s a lot of subconscious things going on with [her character],” she continues. “As I said in my speech, she’s dealing with a lot of loss and trauma in her life. Then she finds herself in this incredible, hostile environment she needs to fight her way through. There’s no joke or light little reprieve - it’s full on - so that was really challenging. I would go home and be like, ‘Wow that was a day in the studio oh my goodness’ but when these things are so hard to play and difficult to do there’s still so much joy and pleasure in it. Because we don’t always have the opportunity to go on these great journeys with a character, and I’m so grateful to be able to do that.”
Selene is a rare sight in the realm of female protagonists. She isn’t a young and attractive bombshell designed to pull in a heteronormative male audience, but a middle-aged woman who has lived a fulfilling yet often traumatic life. Much of Returnal’s narrative seeks to delve into these moments, painting a fuller picture of her character that the player is often left to piece together with their own devices. Housemarque broke new ground with this one, and Perry’s performance is able to sell a woman who is broken, conflicted and utterly lost.
Given the emotional conviction of her character and Returnal not combining motion capture with voice performances like so many other triple-A titles of today, Perry was often left to sell these characters all of her own with the help of directors and members of the development team. It’s a difficult task, so I brought up a concept taught to me by friend of the site Cissy Jones which is how voice actors utilize the ‘theater of the mind’ when performing.
“That’s so well put, a theater of the mind, I think I’ll have to steal that,” Perry says with a laugh. “It is exactly that. You just have to fill in all the blanks and really recruit your imagination into the process. It can make it super exciting but also super fatiguing because there’s no set, no costume, there’s no fellow actors to work with. There’s nothing except what’s going on [in the booth] and what people are telling you about what you’re seeing in the environment around you. So I think since I started acting in games my imagination has blossomed because I use it a lot.”