The Person Behind the Voice: Interview with Jason Kelley

I had an opportunity to sit down and have a chat with the one and only voice Jason Kelley. Jason has been in the film industry working mostly on tv shows he recently made a break into the video game industry as a voice actor for Doomslayer and now Colt from Deathloop.

Check out the full interview here:

In the interview, Jason talked about his initial foray into acting which happened when he was just in the third grade as the Mouse King in Nutcracker. He mentioned how it was the only Nutcracker to not have a Mouse King as stage fright overwhelmed him. But thanks to his teacher who gave him a boost of encouragement, he was able to overcome this and provided one of his best performances of his life.

One lesson he learned from this experience that he would never forget is that he has experienced the best and the worst that he could do all in a day. He kept this lesson with him to remind himself that it can never be that bad or it can never be that great and that you just need to find a happy medium to live with. He realized that we all have our bad days or good days and that we just need to have a good time with what your craft is.

He also talked about how he got the role in Deathloop and the inspiration behind the character. His inspiration came from three actors that he looked up to which was Will Smith, Samuel L. Jackson and Jim Brown. He describes Colt as a combination of Will Smith’s wits, Samuel L. Jackson’s colorful language and Jim Brown’s intense stoicism.

He also talked about the differences between his voice acting work as the DoomSlayer compared to recording for Colt. One interesting thing about his work as DoomSlayer is that he had to gargle some bourbon to get the voice he needed for DoomSlayer. He also had to work on recording for both Doom Eternal and Deathloop and had to go back and forth with how different they are from each other. He also didn’t realize how he was recording for Doom Eternal but was so excited when he saw what it was.

At the time of this interview, Jason has not had the chance to play the game yet but Bethesda has given him a PS5 and is eager to play the game. He joked about how if he starts playing and live stream it that people will log into his game to just kill him.

I asked Jason what games he would like to be a part of if given the chance and he mentions how he likes for there to be a Deathloop 2. He also mentions that he loves fantasy games and how he’d like to be a part of one some day. He said that if there’s ever a game with a James Bond theme or a game that sounds like Uncharted that he’d definitely want to be a part of it.

As a closing to the interview, Jason tells us that one of his favorite PlayStation games is Tiger Woods PGA Tour and that it made him a better golfer. He also mentioned that he loved Devil May Cry that he even went on and bought the next two games in the series.

If you want to follow Jason Kelley on social media you can check him out on Twitter and Instagram.

Jason Kelley has just been nominated as The Best Performer of the Year in the Golden Joystick Awards 2021. If you loved his performance like I did, make sure to vote for him by going here: https://www.gamesradar.com/goldenjoystickawards/

We recently reviewed the game and I was impressed by its unique gameplay and the great characters with Colt and Julianna. Check out our review here.

Deathloop is now out on PlayStation 5 for $59.99. You can buy it from the PlayStation Store right now.