Breakout stars aren't usually 'a thing' in video games. Far too much work goes unrecognised, and some even goes completely uncredited, for a star to emerge from out of nowhere. The only names we tend to associate with any given video game would be the auteur directors like Hideo Kojima, or the established actors like Troy Baker or Laura Bailey. For most games, we don't associate any individual human being with them at all, which is probably why most gamers lack any real knowledge about crunch, workplace mismanagement, and industry burnout. While movies are made by movie stars, video games just fall into our laps. If ever video games has had a breakout star though, Maggie Robertson was it.
Robertson shot to fame after playing Lady Dimitrescu in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Resident Evil Village, a character whose popularity exploded right from the first trailer and has continued to endure even as the game has faded from the public conversation. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:I interviewed Robertson as Village laun🐻ched, and she explained the sensation of being swept up in fandom for the first time. Dimitrescu was Robertson's first video game role, and her first gig of any kind after she moved to LA to pursue acting as a career. Almost a year on, she's picked up major wins for her role as the Big Lady, including 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Best Performance at The Game Awards. I ꦑcaught up with her again before🍨 the BAFTAs, where she was nominated for Best Supporting Performance.
"It all still feels very surreal," she says. "I'm nominated for a BAFTA Award for my very first video game experience, the very first video game I ever worked on, has led me here and it's really surreal. Very much feels like the stars aligning, and I was just in the right place at the right time. It's lovely."
The last time I spoke to Robertson, Lady Dimitrescu was still on the ascent, and she had not unearthed the full scope of the Lady D fandom. I even got to introduce her to the Lady Dimitrescu body towels, and she told me she'd be researching the weirder merch available. This time, I checked in on how that research had gone. "Actually now the weirdest thing is less about merch but more about tattoos, what people are choosing to get permanently tattooed on their bodies," she laughs. "And also now it's weirdly turned from Lady D Now on to me, Maggie the person, like I doodle something on somebody's print and that ends up on the body.
"It's very bizarre, especially for me having come from nothing into all of a sudden stepping into the spotlight in a really big way. That's definitely been an adjustment. And I don't think I could have handled it in the way that I did with any other fan base and any other community, [Resident Evil fans] been really generous and welcoming and made me feel really at ease with it all. But that being said, yeah, it's very strange. You know, I drew a piece of poop on somebody's print and I think that ended up on their body. You know, these are choices."
Though Robertson eventually lost to Psychonauts 2's Kimberly Brooks (ౠread my backstage interview with Brooks after her win here), Robertson made it clear before the show that she didn't view herself in competition with the other nominees, but saw the BAFTAs as an opportunity to celebrate their work as a whole. "When you're in the performance capture suit, there's no such thing as vanity or pride, you have to leave it at the door," she says. "So I think that that cultivates a brand of people that are in fact quite humble and willing to make a fool of themselves and willing to play and imagine and take risks and just be creative together. When you are engaged in an act of creation, it's also an intense ability you have to really be willing to share yourself with others. I think that's a really special gift and I never take it for granted when I'm acting on a show interacting with anyone. It's very unique and very genuine, so maybe that's a part of it."
