EXCLUSIVE Courtenay Taylor Interview At Dragoncon 2015

Dragoncon, one of the biggest gatherings of nerddom in the U.S., was going on last weekend. During this madness, GameSided had an opportunity to sit down with voice over actress Courtenay Taylor for an exclusive one-on-one interview. While Courtenay Taylor’s name may not ring a bell, odds are you’ve heard her voice on multiple occasions, be it as Juhani from Star Wars: Knights of The Old Republic, Jack from the Mass Effect series or even as Starla from the Regular Show cartoon just to name a few of the literally dozens of roles she’s had in addition to the occasional film of TV role. And Courtenay Taylor’s voice is about to get even more familiar to a larger audience as the female protagonist of the upcoming Fallout 4.

On her experience recording for Fallout 4:

"I think there’s 13,000 lines in the game for the player voice. But I know we did more, because you edit, throw lines out and continue to write as we went along. One of the great things about this game is that they brought us in so early in the process as far as the voice acting section of it goes. A lot of times we’ll come in at the very end, and everything’s sort of set in stone. But we worked with the writers, they were always on the phone with us and throughout the process they started to write more to our strengths as actors. So there was some trial and error and I think hopefully people will be happy with the voice protagonist aspect of the game. It will bring a new dimension they haven’t had before as a player."

How she got started as a voice actress:

"I used to manage a boxing/kickboxing gym. I also went to the American Conservatory Theater School in San Francisco, and I was applying for a masters program in New York and I went to my audition and the guy said “you have a terrible voice”, because I was yelling at people to do push-ups a lot. He said he would not consider my application unless I went to a doctor about my vocal chord nodes. I went back to my speech teacher, and she said “I think you have a cool voice, you should look into voice over.” I didn’t know what that was, so she sent me to a class and the minute I got into the class I was like, “Oh yeah, this is the thing!” And I continued to take classes and booking a few commercials and then a few years into it I started doing games."

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Courtenay Taylor also talked a little about playing Jack in the Mass Effect series, saying it was a role she was really well suited for and felt “quite lucky” because, “Jack is amazing.” She said she hasn’t really kept up with news on the new Mass Effect game, Mass Effect: Andromeda and as of yet hasn’t been contacted by Bioware about doing anything for it, but voice actors are brought in at man different stages of development, so that could change.

Courtenay Taylor’s voice will also be heard as the voice of the female protagonist in the upcoming Firefly Online game:

"I think it was originally supposed to be out around now, but they (Developer Spark Plugg Games) realized what an undertaking it was and wanted to make sure they did it right. You don’t mess with the Browncoats. So, you want to make sure whatever you are putting out there is perfect. Or as close to perfect as you can get, because perfect doesn’t exist. So they decided to go back, dig a little deeper and take more time with it, which I totally respect. I appreciate the fact that they were like, “We gonna do more with this and expand on it.” I think it’s going to be really amazing."

Courtenay Taylor did also say her dream role would be “kickass Disney Princess.” So get on that, Disney! You can next hear Courtney Taylor’s awesome voice in Fallout 4 as the female protagonist, due out November 10th for Xbox One, PS4 & PC.

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