Voice of Widowmaker, Chloé Hollings, reflects on Comic Con Delhi and cultural influences

So far Comic Con Delhi has been nothing but welcoming and warm to me, very helpful. Everyone is super kind but that's something that I've just noticed in India. People are very, very, very kind to me here. And I guess the thing that excites me most is just getting to meet all of my Indian fans. I don't believe any of the Overwatch crew has ever come to India, so it's just lovely to be able to meet the people who have been playing the game for almost 10 years now.

I think it's shaped my art and my personality in the sense that I was born in France and then I moved to Australia when I was four, which meant that I was forced to adapt very fast and it became a skill, I guess, to adapt to a new environment, to kind of understand people. And all my work as an actor and as a writer, but mainly as an actor, is based on observing people and imitating them and understanding them. And so, yeah, that double culture, knowing how different things happen in different cultures has definitely expanded the way I think about human beings.

My first reaction was just that I was very happy that I got a job, because as an actor you just want to be able to work and keep doing what you love.

And to be honest, I didn't really know anything about the video game world and I didn't really know what Blizzard was. I kind of knew about World of Warcraft from people around me who had played the game, but I had never played that game. And I remember when I did the audition and the people in the studio, they were so excited for me. They were like, oh my God, you're going to work with Blizzard, you're going to work with Blizzard. And I was like, oh, okay, that's cool. But I had no idea that the game was going to be as big as it was. Actually, no one thought it was going to be as big as it was initially. And I also had no idea that it was going to change my life the way it did, because it did change my entire life.

And look at me, I'm in India right now thanks to this gig, this game that I got 10 years ago. It's incredible.

Widowmaker is a tricky one, because obviously when you're an actor, you want to connect with the characters that you play. And you don't want to judge them. And in her case, it's both easy and difficult. It seems difficult, because obviously she's a sniper, a killer, a killing machine. And I am not.

But there are two things that help me with Widowmaker. The first one is her backstory. And that's something that I love about Overwatch, is that every character has a very deep backstory. And so I actually know that she wasn't always this way. Life made her this way. And the events in her life, she was kidnapped and brainwashed. She was worked on to become the killer that she is. And so that gives me a lot of empathy for her.

But there are other things too. What I love about playing Widowmaker and what I share with her is that she actually takes a lot of pleasure in what she does. Now, it might sound completely, you know, crazy to say that and insane and a little psychotic, and it completely is. But again, it's acting. It's playing. So I get to do it for my job and not in real life. And I think that's healthy.

I love when I play Widowmaker, just thinking just how much pleasure she gets out of succeeding at her job. And when I connect to that, I really do feel close to her.

The process isn't that different for me in the sense that I like to understand people. I like to understand human beings. And so I always start from the very basis of things. I just look at the script and I try to get as much information about the person I'm playing as I can. And that is the same whether or not I'm on camera or behind a mic or anything. I'm very fact-based and imagination-based.

Of course, if I'm on camera, I have to think of what my face looks like, what I'm doing with my eyes. And when I'm hidden, because I'm doing voice, the most important thing is that all those feelings that you typically see on a person's face when you're watching a movie, all those feelings have to flow through the voice. And so it actually becomes much more physical.

If you put a camera in the booth, you would see me, like, moving a lot and, you know, doing all these movements just to get the feelings across through the voice. So that's just a difference in the way it happens. But at the basis of it, I just want to create believable human beings.

I take every job as seriously as the last or as the next. When I do commercial work, the hardest thing to do is actually to understand what the client wants.

Because unlike a character like Widowmaker that I've been playing for 10 years now, or a movie which has lots and lots of lines and script, when you do an advert, generally you have one line or two lines, and you have to get a very deep and often complex message across because, a 20-second commercial actually has to convince someone. Let's say in the case of a car, a 20-second commercial has to convince a person to buy a $20,000 car. So it has to be very efficient.

I just try to understand what the client wants, which isn't easy, It's hard to express all the things that need to transpire in that very short film. And that's what's actually the most fun to me in that area.

I took singing lessons for 10 years. Classical like the operatic kind of singing. I think that really strengthened all the muscles in my throat, and I know how to use my diaphragm, and so I don't really do anything anymore to maintain my voice.

I just make sure that, I'm not yelling too much. I eat well, I sleep well, things like that. It's more like preservation as opposed to maintaining.

I think one misconception people have around voice acting is that it's all about voice and not about acting. And often when people who want to become voice actors ask me if I have any tips or any recommendations, my first recommendation is to take acting classes. Because knowing how to do a little voice and a bigger voice and having a range is important, but it will only work if the acting is convincing.

Voice acting is acting.

I would like to do a lot more feature film animation.

I've never got to do, a long movie, like a Pixar movie or a Disney movie with a character, and I think that would be so much fun.