The original voice actor for Bayonetta, Hellena Taylor, has taken to Twitter to explain why she is not reprising her role as the iconic witch in the much anticipated sequel – Bayonetta 3.
In a three part video, she says that the reason for her not coming back as the iconic witch is not because she did not want to but because she simply was not offered a good amount to do the voice acting for the entire game.
According to Taylor, PlatinumGames offered to pay her a flat rate of $4,000 to reprise her role as Bayonetta. This is after Hellena objected to the initial offer, raising the issue to Hideki Kamiya, Executive Producer and Vice President of PlatinumGames.
“The Bayonetta franchise made an approximated $450 million, and that’s not including merchandise,” Taylor began. “As an actor, I trained for a total of seven and a half years – three years at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art Lambda with voice coach Barbara Berkery, and four and a half years with the legendary Larry Moss in Los Angeles. And what did they think this was worth? What did they offer to pay me? The final offer to do the whole game as a buyout, flat rate, was $4,000 USD“.
In a previous interview, director of Bayonetta 3 Yusuke Miyata explains that the change of voice actors was due to ‘overlapping circumstances’
“Various overlapping circumstances made it difficult for Hellena Taylor to reprise her role. We held auditions to cast the new voice of Bayonetta and offered the role to Jennifer Hale, whom we felt was a good match for the character. I understand the concerns some fans have about the voice change at this point in the series, but Jennifer’s performance was way beyond what we could have imagined. I’m confident that her portrayal of Bayonetta will exceed our fans’ expectations.”
So far, PlatinumGames has yet to make a response to this statement. However, Hideki Kamiya has responded to these allegations with a tweet “Sad and deplorable about the attitude of untruth. That’s what all I can tell now. By the way, BEWARE OF MY RULES.“
Recently, there has been renewed conversation about Voice Actors and their pay in light of several incidents. The English voice actor for Mob in the hit anime Mob Psycho 100 has refused to reprise his role due to Crunchyroll’s unwillingness to discuss using a union SAG-AFTRA contract. Another incident includes Voice Actors from Jujutsu Kaisen 0, Chris Tergliafera (voice of Kiyotaka Ichiji) and Anairis Quiñones (voice of Rika Orimoto) expressing their concerns on Twitter after getting paid $150 for their roles.
While this is disheartening for a lot of gamers and fans of the media, it is also important that the people responsible for giving a voice to these characters get paid a fairly for their work.
Emmen Gaming 