Andrew Wincott has an impressive theatrical career building his resumé, playing several notable roles such as Rochester in Jane Eyre, Count Vronsky in Anna Karenina, Malvolio in Twelfth Night, and more. For over two decades he has recorded radio drama and book readings for the BBC, created voices for numerous video games, and recorded hundreds of audiobooks, and is currently receiving high praise for his work on Baldur’s Gate 3 as the enigmatic devil Raphael.
Nerds & Beyond had the chance to speak with Andrew about his work on Baldur’s Gate 3 as Raphael and Haarlep, his first experience working with motion capture, and dive into his brain about his love of traveling and the wilderness.
Note: This interview has been edited for clarity.
Nerds & Beyond: First, BAFTA Games Awards nominations have been announced – Baldur’s Gate 3 has 10 and one of those is for your performance as Raphael. Upmost congratulations.
Andrew Wincott: It’s nice to be one of them, but there we go. That’s this game. It’s just amazing, really, the success of this game and it’s delightful for me to be a part of it.
Nerds & Beyond: It seems to catch even more traction because the more people talk about it, the more people who initially weren’t planning on playing it decide to give it a chance, and it spreads. I hope to see that for a long time coming.
Andrew Wincott: So, you think it’s snowball?
Nerds & Beyond: I do. It’s been in the forefront of everyone’s mind when it comes to gaming since August, when the fall game released. But since then, at least from my perspective, it seems more people give the game a chance and fall in love the more nominations and awards it receives.
It’s got to be fantastic to be part of the game and see the passion ignite and grow tenfold as time goes on.
Andrew Wincott: For me, it’s been extraordinary. The way that people reach out to me on the internet is incredible. The game inspires people – it inspires creativity. People send me all sorts of artwork, and even in some instances they write speeches. Someone sent me a speech where they captured Raphael quite perfectly in the way he phrases things, the way he speaks. It’s just amazing.
Nerds & Beyond: The creativity in this fandom specifically is just as mind blowing as the game itself, almost. How did you get involved in working on Baldur’s Gate 3?
Andrew Wincott: Well, I was invited to send a tape in, a self tape sample, I guess going back about five years now. A series of characters were in the email breakdown, so I must have tried one or two. It had to be a video because they wanted to see how you move as well as articulate the lines. And somehow I got selected from that, but I didn’t know what kind of game, how big it was, what was required. I think I understood it was motion capture, which was an entirely new experience for me.
A lot of people know this story, but my first session was on a wet drizzly Monday morning in Croydon at Pit Stop Studios, and I had just gotten into the velcro motion capture gear, the light receptors were put on, we were running tests and checking that everything was working … and there was a fire alarm. I found myself on High Street in Croydon in the drizzle on a wet Monday morning, dressed in my charming Velcro suit – which must have seemed odd to come, but nobody really stopped. So that was my introduction to really working on the game.
And somehow I got selected from, from that. I don’t think it was, I think it was, I didn’t think it was anything more, much more than that, but I didn’t know what it, what kind of a game, how big it was, what was required. I think I understood it was motion capture, which is an entirely new experience.
Nerds & Beyond: You mentioned this was your first motion capture experience – as it daunting before then, and does being in that situation as an introduction help dissolve that a bit?
Andrew Wincott: As with any job, and I think especially with theater, you turn up with some trepidation and anxiety on the first day because generally you have a read through, everybody is present the cast, the director, the designers, virtually every aspect of production is there. It was like any first experience for me. I was just sort of approaching it as one foot in front of the other.
But it was unusual to be in a costume of sorts, but at the same time understanding this wasn’t the costume. But it didn’t take long until you settle in. You jump in and try to stay afloat and see what works and what doesn’t and gradually find a way of finding a voice, finding a sense of movement for the character. So it was a, it was an exploratory process but it didn’t take very long to make that adjustment.
Nerds & Beyond: I know when you were working on this, you had avatars on a screen in front of you to show you the movements that you were doing as you were doing them. What did that look like for your roles?
Andrew Wincott: The avatar was not in costume. He was like a Power Ranger, for me, and I think you’re invited to choose a color. So I choose ice blue – something relaxing, something soothing. So there he is, and he’s quite fetching, I think.
But you try not to look at him because you’ve got the script in front of you and you have to stay focused on that, and take the performance out into the space and angle it slightly. I remember after some direction I started thinking, “Well, this is a bit like theatre.” So it’s as if you’re relating to someone else in the room, but you have to connect with what’s in front of you, the audience or the camera … and also the script is there.
But figuring out and remembering where your focus has to start and finish. It’s finding the rules, establishing the parameters, what you can do, what you can’t do and trying to stay in character and keep the movement, keep it flowing, find certain movements that work. Sometimes you have to start from a base pose and finish in another to help the programming. I imagine there was one occasion where one of the engineers showed me what Raphael looks like in costume, which is quite entertaining. “He looks like this ’cause he’s the devil.” Suddenly he’s got wings, and as I moved my shoulders, the wings moved, and then I turned and I went, “Oh, look, he’s got a tail.”
Nerds & Beyond: I’m glad you brought up the tail and the wing specifically, because I had those characteristics on my list of things to bring up. In regards to the physicality of Raphael and Haarlep, they’ve got the horns, they’ve got the wings, they’ve got the tail – how does that inform your movement decisions?
Andrew Wincott: Well, I remember one session in particular where I don’t know if it was because of the wings particularly, or indeed the tail, but the way I was moving I felt was, slightly lizard-like, lightly sinuous. I think I remarked on this because not only do we have voice directors, but we have movement directors and this particular movement director was online from Vancouver – which is extraordinary. In the depths of winter I’m talking to someone in Vancouver who’s telling me how to move like a devil. So he said, “Okay, well, let’s go with that.” So he encouraged that and we worked on it and built it up.
We were encouraged to follow those ideas, follow those instincts. So much of acting is to keep discovering or rediscovering that it’s so much about instinct a lot in games. I mean, Baldur’s Gate 3 perhaps there’s a continuity because we’ve been working on it for so long. But, very often you just get thrown in and you make very quick, instinctive decisions. But so much of acting is about that. I could have gone away and researched being a devil. But in balance probably that was not advisable.
So I just relied on my knowledge and what connections Raphael made for me. He’s a fallen angel, so perhaps he’s like Lucifer in Paradise Lost, or for me he was like a Jacobean revenge antihero. Ambitious, overreaching, flawed, superficially charming, but with a danger and a darkness underneath. So those are the things that that I was looking for.
Nerds & Beyond: Superficially charming is a great description for him, I think. He’s quite easy to feel comfortable around. He is so lovely when he’s talking to you, but when you start to break down that dialogue, you start to go, “Oh wait, there’s there are some layers here that I need to really be paying attention to.”
When we talk about those layers, in particular I adore the moments where you can linger back and hear him rehearsing his lines before you approach. Moments like that definitely add to the complexity – and to the humanity – of the character.
Andrew Wincott: There’s a theatricality to Raphael. He was so much fun to play because he was playful and ironic, teasing as if he’s playing with the player, teasing the player, inviting them to trust him. But yeah, very appropriately.
Nerds & Beyond: You mentioned Milton’s Paradise Lost as a source of previous knowledge that informed Raphael, you’ve got your theatrical career which lends to his theatricality, and I also know you’re quite a well-traveled person. We’ve also mentioned that acting is instinctual, and so many of our instincts are constructed on what we already know. So, what did you already know that you felt was helpful going into this role?
Andrew Wincott: Not so much what I know, but I think what I felt and felt was was right. Theatrically you have to think what’s right, and that’s how I responded to the part – that it was as though I was playing a part in the theatre. Working in motion capture felt like returning to the theatre. I think other actors have said this as well, but for me that’s certainly how it felt.
It’s difficult to research someone like Raphael, but the tradition I sense from the kind of language he uses, there’s a sort of 17th century quality, and it’s costumed in that way as well. So that was my feeling, my instinct, how I read the part, and then responding to his language because he’s a got very particular way of expressing himself, which isn’t certainly contemporary, but it is timeless. There’s a sophistication to him, and a charm. That was my way of finding the humanity, because there is that side as well.
Nerds & Beyond: Speaking of theatricality, did you always know that you would be performing one of the most iconic video game songs ever with Raphael’s Final Act?
Andrew Wincott: I did not. I was asked if I was okay with it, but not from the beginning. I actually think we did it quite close to the end. So, we had a session, Borislav [Slavov] and I worked on it. And, well, you see the theatricality of Raphael there. He suddenly launches into full musical mode, which is very entertaining, and Borislav encouraged me to, to find that. Obviously we had to get the song right, and the timing right. But then he said, “Okay, now, forget all that. Now, we’re gonna go for the performance. We do it one more time. Go for it. Just go for it! We’re almost ready to go on stage!”
So it had this excitement, but we didn’t have long to work on it. They sent me the guide track, I was given the lyrics but they weren’t on the guide track. So we worked on it. We had a session on it.
Nerds & Beyond: Just one?
Andrew Wincott: We did it in one session. We ran through it, we rehearsed it a few times, the guys were recording it, the engineers were just taking it bit by bit. So you must have had, I don’t know, maybe four or five full takes and then the very last one where we just went for the performance. And that’s what Borislav was saying with, “Go for the performance,” because this is Raphael, this is not just about singing the song perfectly, this is about inhabiting and giving the song the character of Raphael.
Nerds & Beyond: The amount of people that had the sudden realization Raphael is a Bard the moment he started singing brings me pure joy. How did your impression of Raphael evolve as you worked on him?
Andrew Wincott: I just went moment to moment really. I wasn’t in many consecutive sessions. There might have been some that were close together, but I would be called in for a particular session and not know where the story was going. You just take each session as it comes. The thing is you can’t know what the whole arc of the story is, you’re just playing your part, your scene, your moments in it, your interactions.
It was interesting getting Haarlep’s scenes and not knowing how they fit into the story.
Nerds & Beyond: I like that you mentioned Haarlep because, of course, I wanted to bring them up as well. The very nature of Haarlep is that they look and sound like Raphael, but are still differentiated through voice and movements. What was the approach to that particular character?
Andrew Wincott: Well, I was told that that Raphael likes to make love with himself, so naturally you have to go, “What on earth do you mean by that?” And then understanding that this is a version of Raphael. Another iteration of Haarlep is a female form. I had to find something that was close to Raphael but not him and to go for equality.
So I went for this rather, well, theatrical again, but a camp, almost effeminate sense of theatricality about Haarlep, rather sort of in insinuating and lubricious. That was my word for them really. He’s up for anything. But just to, again, embrace the moment and see where it went to find.
We tried to find what seemed to work in studio. It was just trying different things. So as people say yes, he is like Raphael, but he’s not like Raphael. Well, that’s the, the tricky part. I was going for a heightened exaggerated camp campier version of Raphael.
Nerds & Beyond: You used a really great word to describe Haarlep – lubricious – if you had to encompass Raphael in one word, what would it be?
Andrew Wincott: I don’t think one word can do it actually. I want to use about three words with Raphael, because there’s the playful side, the ironic side, but there’s also the dangerous side. And I don’t know how you can find one word for all of that. Is there a word that encompasses those qualities? I don’t know.
He’s a contradiction – a complex mixture of contradictory characteristics. I think contradiction is a great one, but that’s human, isn’t it? That’s so human. The dark side – we have different sides to our personalities, our nature, and Raphael is no exception. They’re the fun parts to play when you’ve got that complexity, as you’ve referred to. So to be able to hint to the dark side, but at the same time being playful and ironic and maybe switch on a sixpence, and those are the great parts to play.
You’ve got this goodness or this this charm or this seductive quality, which seems to be good, but that’s what he’s using. That’s how he’s manipulating. And then you’ve got the ambition and the darkness underneath that.
Nerds & Beyond: It’s impossible to talk about Raphael and not discuss poetry since it’s so deeply engrained into the character. We’ve touched on Paradise Lost a couple of times, are there other works you’d relate to him?
Andrew Wincott: The poem I come back to is Paradise Lost, of course, that’s because of Lucifer. And because I think I’m right in saying Milton originally conceived what became the epic poem as a play. So then you see that as part of that Jacobean tradition that comes just after Shakespeare – [John] Webster, [John] Ford, all those wonderful Jacobean plays that I loved playing when I was at university.
For example, when I was playing in ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore in Magdalen College, experiences like that. I suppose Giovanni in that has similar characteristics – he’s ambitious and he’s prepared to transgress. He has an incestuous relationship with his sister and ends up tearing her heart out. He kills her because he considers she’s betrayed him and tears her heart out and then emerges, appears in Act Five with the heart on a dagger. There’s a story I could tell you about when I did this on the last night of the performance.
Nerds & Beyond: I’d love to hear it if you want to share.
Andrew Wincott: Well, a lot of my friends have probably heard it. If I’ve told this story, forgive me.
We used a real heart for the performance, a real sheep’s heart which got a little bit high the week went on. It was October and I remember a fly buzzing around and landing on my hand at one point, obviously after that smelled something. But I had to get the heart in a spotlight in a particular light, so I had to stand in a particular position. But on the last night, we decided to let more and more people in because it was their last opportunity of seeing the play. So we threw the doors open, invited everybody in, everybody sat or leaned or stood or made space wherever they could. So people were sitting cross legged at the front, which meant they were underneath the heart that was dripping blood.
So, when I came on in Act Five, I heard people first of all rushing out of the way, scampering, and then I heard someone opening a program so that you could hear the drops hitting the paper. But still this wasn’t enough, somebody couldn’t move far enough away, so I’m rattling through these speeches for this antihero who thinks he’s perfectly justified to behave as he has done, and I’m mid-speech and a hand comes up and moves my arm away. So I think, “Well, this is outrageous.” And I don’t stop, I just keep going, but I move my arm back and shake the heart, so blood is now flying everywhere amongst that.
Nerds & Beyond: That’s some audacity to reach up and touch an actor mid-performance.
Andrew Wincott: Yeah, that’s very brave to reach up and touch someone like that. Interfering with an actor is a no. But this person was quite agitated and they came up to me at the end of the show and looked pretty severe and I thought, “Oh, this isn’t gonna be good. This isn’t praise.” And she said, “If that blood doesn’t come off my husband’s trousers, you’ll be getting a bill. Thank you very much.”
Nerds & Beyond: She waited the rest of the rest of the performance to tell you that.
Andrew Wincott: She was saving it up. Anyway, sure enough, the college did get a bill apparently.
Nerds & Beyond: This actually might end up being the biggest question of the day, which is a personal and professional question – whatever you feel comfortable answering and can share, of course.
What are you looking forward to this year?
Andrew Wincott: More work – more of the same, professionally. I do a lot of audio books, they come along, and the better the writing the more pleasurable and rewarding it is for me. Sometimes the words come off the paper like silk, and you don’t have to work too hard. A writer that knows how to write with economy to set scenes, almost like a screenplay, and the dialogues read like a play. The best descriptive passages are lyrical but they’re never overwritten, the sentences aren’t too long or involved. That’s always something I look for in the writing of a book that lends itself to audio.
A writer called Belinda Bauer writes very well, she writes detective fiction always with a slight supernatural twist. She writes the way I’m describing. So I’m always looking for good audio books or sometimes classic novels.
A couple of years ago I was asked to read [George] Gissing’s New Grub Street and it was an absolute revelation to me. It was amazing. I made my producer cry four times, which I took as a compliment. So good audio books, good plays, good writing is something that I would relish doing more. More games as well.
And personally, well, as you said, I like traveling, so maybe I’ll go back to Spain. Maybe I’ll go to Andalusia again, or maybe to the north. Someone was writing to me the other day about how good the food is in the north, and I’ve always wanted to go to San Sebastian where I’m told it’s impossible to get a bad meal. Some houses might have communal rooms, perhaps a swimming pool or a garden in a block or something, but these guys have communal kitchens. It’s important to the culture.
Nerds & Beyond: Is there somewhere you haven’t been to yet that is still on your bucket list?
Andrew Wincott: Well, how far are we talking?
Nerds & Beyond: As far as you want to get to!
Andrew Wincott: I’d like to get over to the United States. I’d like to visit the canyons, those parts of Arizona and Utah. What is your area?
Nerds & Beyond: I’m in Colorado, so I have beautiful mountains outside of my window but I’m still quite far from the Grand Canyon, about 10 hours. But closer than you certainly.
Andrew Wincott: I’d also love to explore Bryce Canyon, really all of the natural rocky wilderness of the States. I love Montana, those big empty spaces. But then again mountains … I love mountains. In Andalusia you’ve got the Sierra Nevada and I go up into the foothills into the villages. I’ve only scratched the surface but I’m always looking for more.
I also love trains, so another journalist informed me about he Canadian train that goes through the Rockies. Takes about three or four days, which sounded amazing.
Nerds & Beyond: We’ve got that in the Colorado Rockies as well. This one takes you from the Colorado Rockies out to Utah into Moab. Utah is a great state to visit if you want to feel like you’re on another planet without actually being on one.
Andrew Wincott: I love Scotland for that reason. Traveled there quite a bit, and I’ve worked there quite as well. I’ve worked in Perth and Dundee. I’ve done several plays in Perth. The last time I was up there in Dundee I would, whenever I had the opportunity, hire a car and just go over to the West Coast. There’s a quite a famous road trip, the North Coast 500, that takes you through that amazing highland scenery. There’s a particular road that I’ve traveled now four or five times called Bealach na Ba, the Pass of the Cattle in English.
When you come over the top you can see across Isle of Skye from up there and then you wind down towards the Applecross Peninsula, and then you can take the coast road back around. It’s a beautiful road, and I did that one spring, and there’s hardly anything but sheep on that road. But in the summer I’m told you’ve got this swinging hairpin bends as you climb and it gets busy. It’s never been busy when I’ve done it thankfully, but it is really amazing.
The first time I did it, it was almost dusk and the landscape at the top was so … almost barren, desolate. I felt that it was like the moon. There’s something palpably “other” about the landscape, which I loved. That’s probably the closest we’ve got to what you’re describing in Utah.
It’s just beautiful – the air is so crisp and the water looks so clean, but of course it rains. You know, this is the UK. When’s it ever stopped?
Nerds & Beyond: I’m a fan of rain and I never get enough, I actually envy you of your rainfall.
Andrew Wincott: Where you are, where should one visit?
Nerds & Beyond: Goodness, that’s difficult. As far as the mountains and the dunes in Colorado you can’t go wrong. Rocky Mountain National Park, of course, but I recommend visiting National Parks whenever possible because supporting that system is so important.
But really any of the mountain towns in this part of the world you can’t go wrong with visiting. You’ve got some old mines that you can still explore, some of the old trains still run as well. Anyone that’s a fan of the Wild West has plenty to explore here.
Andrew Wincott: There’s a bit of that in Spain in the province of Almería where they filmed the Spaghetti Westerns. It’s a long time since I’ve been there, but I remember the remnants of old fiberglass sets which looked like western towns in this particular valley that looks like Wyoming, I suppose.
Almería is about the driest province of Spain, I think that’s right, and that’s why the movie productions went there. Clint Eastwood picked up these dreadful cheroots at the airport, which is why he’s got a constant scowl as he’s smoking them, so the story goes.
Nerds & Beyond: Is there a destination that you have gone to that? You think everyone should go there?
Andrew Wincott: Well, I don’t want to tell everyone to go there ’cause they’ll spoil it! This is the trouble when you start to recommend places – you want to keep things a little bit secret. But I keep talking about Spain, and there’s got to be a reason I keep coming back there. I’ve traveled there more than anywhere else.
The three great cities – Seville, Granada, and Córdoba – have some extraordinary buildings. The Mezquita-Catedral de Córdoba is phenomenal, the Alhambra in Granada is unbelievable.
And then you’ve got Cádiz right in the corner in the far southwest, and the old town is on a sort of peninsula, so it can’t really grow anymore, but the city has grown a bit along the beach. It’s got a wonderful beach, but the old town is charming and you get that feeling that it hasn’t changed much. There’s a wonderful liberal feel to the the town.
A lot of these Spanish places always have terrific markets that you can go to and buy fresh food and tapas and have a glass of wine. So there’s lots to do in Andalusia. That’s not even mentioning places like Ronda.
There’s another place, Arcos de la Frontera, which is built on a cliff edge – just amazing, these wonderful old whitewashed Spanish towns. It’s the Moorish influence that’s so fascinating that you see in the architecture. Pillars with wonderful geometric patterns on them leading to extraordinary atmospheric buildings. There’s a perfect melding marriage of Christianity and Islam in the area that lends to the architecture. Others might say, “It’s sacrilegious, you can’t have both.” But to me it’s a stunning experience to see the two together.
Nerds & Beyond: Such a lovely answer, and now I have a new place to add to my personal travel list, so thank you. I am due for a visit to Ireland in the next few years, I hope. I need to look over the cliffs and only see the sea and sky – I am very touched when I can look out at the world and not see a touch of humanity in it.
Andrew Wincott: Wow, that is also a brilliant answer. That’s why I like those landscapes that we were talking about earlier – the desert landscapes, the places like Utah. I’d love to go to those places of remote wildernesses. I live in a city, so I suppose I want to get away from that – to get away from people and just be close to nature.
I’m lucky because I grew up really on the edge of the Cotswolds, a particularly beautiful part of the UK. So why do I imagine going to deserts and rocky chasms and canyons? Because they’re something “other,” and it’s that sense of “other” that I love, and not just experiencing the landscapes themselves but the wildlife in it. In Spain sometimes I would look up and see huge birds circling up high and realize they’re eagles, águilas they’re called in Spanish. It’s amazing when you can look up and see eagles soaring above you.
Nerds & Beyond: The wildlife in addition to amazing wildernesses always adds that extra touch. Plenty of opportunity for that here in the States as well, just take your pick.
Andrew Wincott: You have wolves in Yellowstone, right? They were reintroduced.
Nerds & Beyond: Yes, both in Yellowstone and also here in Colorado as well, which is fantastic. They’re very necessary.
Andrew Wincott: There’s something about wolves that I just love.
Nerds & Beyond: Well, they’re just fascinating. The predator populations often are, the mountain lions in the States are also deeply fascinating to learn about.
Andrew Wincott: It’s said that there are feral cats in the UK, but I’ve never seen one. It is an ambition of mine to see one. There have supposedly been sightings particularly in more remote parts of Scotland. It’s said to date back to the time when people kept big cats as exotic pets, it wasn’t unheard of for people to walk down the King’s road with a cheetah on a chain in the ’60s.
But then there was an act rightfully introduced, a wild animals act, so people couldn’t do that anymore. It’s said that some were released into the wild and could possibly breed. Whether these are just mythical sightings I don’t know, but it’s something of a subject that fascinates me.
There are also lynxes in Scotland, do you have those?
Nerds & Beyond: North America has Canadian lynx and bobcats. I think Scottish are slightly larger.
Andrew Wincott: I was in South Africa about seven years ago and I went on a quick trip to Pilanesberg, which is a safari place close to where I was. I went for on a couple of trips out into the park and on one there were a lot of cars parked up on the side of the road, and the driver stopped and he said, “There’s a leopard in that tree.”
And I looked at the tree and I said, “Really?” I looked at this tree, I couldn’t see a leopard. He said, “No, no, keep looking.” So that looks a bit longer – nothing. So it’s starting to feel a bit weird, but he kept urging to keep looking. Eventually the leopard moved and then I saw it. Until the leopard moved though it was indistinguishable from the tree – perfectly camouflaged. Still as a rock or a tree trunk.
Nerds & Beyond: I’m certain both of us could talk about the wonders of nature for the rest of the day, but I won’t hold onto you for that. Thanks so much for your time, it’s been great speaking with you. I wish you all the best in all things, but I’m especially hopeful for great travels for you this year.
Andrew Wincott: Thank you, Hannah. And you as well!
Thank you again, Andrew!
