Nolan North confirms participation in SAG-AFTRA strike, is “surprised” at issues

Nolan North has confirmed he’s standing with the SAG-AFTRA voice actors strike and has talked to Kotaku about how he was "surprised" he hadn’t run into several of these issues himself.

In the interview with Kotaku, North said that he read all of the articles from actors when strike action was being discussed and was surprised that he hadn’t come across the problems, but then spoke to another actor who was amazed he hadn’t had the problems.

Nolan North has been working in video games for nearly 20 years now, on a variety of projects and was quick to point out in the interview with Kotaku that he was speaking solely about his own experiences and not those of anyone else. He went on to explain that he’d rarely had any issues with vocal stress, an area that seems to be the most played up aspect of the strike, although the video game coalition negotiating with SAG-AFTRA claim they reached an agreement on.

Another key concern was transparency, with North explaining that he didn’t know he’d done work on Valve’s Portal 2, until a fan praising the role got out his phone and showed North voicing the space cores during the game’s final moments.

North mentioned that not knowing the franchise or game you’re working with can be tough for agents looking to negotiate, but says this doesn’t effect him much either:“I’ve done this for a long time and I have my quotes,” North said to Kotaku, “I have a quote to do motion capture, I have a quote to do a game, and sometimes they’ll say ‘We can’t match your quotes but we can offer this, would you like to do it?’ and then it’s on me and my agent to make a decision.”

“They’ve always had non-disclosure agreements so I don’t think it’s a problem to tell people what the project is.” North also said, mentioning that there’s no real risk to telling actors what they are working on.

You can read the entire interview on Kotaku, and it’s recommended reading — there’s good information on the strike there for people who are unaware of it,

It is worth nothing that North is one of the handful of actors that are top of the pile of voice acting. Nolan North is perhaps the most successful video game voice actor, or at least in a tie with fellow actor and Uncharted 4 co-star Troy Baker, so his experiences may differ from those of other actors, something that he himself has suggested might be the case.