The world of Dragon Age is host to a slew of fantastical characters, voiced by a who’s who of big names in the world of voice acting–with some sci-fi and fantasy celebrities sprinkled in. From Freddie Prinze Jr. voicing the mighty Iron Bull to Kate Mulgrew as the mysterious Flemeth, one cast member landed the job with a very unconventional audition tape.
Claudia Black, who made her mark in sci-fi as Aeryn Sun in Farscape, auditioned for the part of Morrigan in Dragon Age: Origins by sending in a recording of her doing a beat poetry version of Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back.” Dragon Age creator David Gaider said that the character went through several concepts, but couldn’t deny Black the opportunity and listened.
“I lost my goddamn mind,” Gaider said on his Bluesky account. “Yes, I still have the recording. No, you cannot have it.”
Gaider continued with bringing Black on board and adjusting the character to fit her voice. “Naturally, we jumped on that immediately. As I recall, this was met with resistance from higher up–they had this image of Morrigan as young, like 18 years old (no idea where this came from), and complained that Claudia sounded ‘too old.’ [Voice director] Caroline [Livingstone} and I were determined, so we pushed ahead. We had to agree to get Claudia to sound ‘younger,’ which I was dubious about. The first two sessions we asked her to pitch her voice up and it was awful.”
When both Livingstone and Gaider were working with Black to get her to focus on “sounding right,” they told her to use her natural voice. It worked. “We loved her performance so much we had the feeling that the team would love it too and forget their nonsense,” Gaider added. “They did.”
The character of Morrigan was a touchstone for Gaider and opened up the door for Black to continue her video game voice work in big game franchises like Uncharted and Destiny. She reprises the role once again in Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
“[Morrigan] is the heart of [Dragon Age: Origin]. Way beyond her initial inspirations. Some said ‘she’s just an ice queen’ like some I’d written (Viconia, Bastila, etc.) but such categories are very reductive, I find. She had a voice I could instantly slip into, every time, without fail.”
