Princess Peach and Toad's Veteran Voice Actor Says Nintendo Told Her She'd Been Replaced on Switch 2 Launch Day As Mario Kart World Released Without Her in It - IGN
Princess Peach and Toad's Veteran Voice Actor Says Nintendo Told Her She'd Been Replaced on Switch 2 Launch Day As Mario Kart World Released Without Her in It - IGN
Voice actor Samantha Kelly discovered her 18-year tenure as Super Mario characters Princess Peach and Toad was over on the day that Mario Kart World was released — without her in it.
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Huh.
I mean, she certainly knew before then, given the game has been in development for ages. Pretty sure three days before launch she may have figured. That just makes it weirder that she pointedly mentioned Nintendo told her "yesterday". I guess maybe she meant they told her it's not a one-off thing and they'll go with someone else moving forward?
It sure seems the movie(s) are the new North Star for this. I noticed MK World's Donkey Kong also sounds noticeably more... Rogen-esque.
When she found out and when Nintendo bothered to tell her is an appreciable distinction.
This is true, but she doesn't sound particularly angry and I wonder what type of relationship you have with them and how you communicate. Nintendo is weird, because a bunch of these legacy actors have been doing just tiny soundbytes for these games, it's not a fully voiced thing, so it's hard to guess what sort of ongoing relationship they have with Nintendo in the first place.
I feel like Mario Kart is a bit ambiguous, there's always the potential they could just re-use voice work from a previous entry rather than bringing all the actors in to go "Whoa! Ha-ha-ha. Luigi number one!" I don't know if they still do this, but in the N64 era a lot of the same samples were used for Mario Kart, Mario Party, maybe other stuff, so the actors wouldn't have been involved after the original recording sessions.
Or she did her sessions and they didn't use it.
I feel like she'd have said that if that was the case, since it would be unusual.
They do mix and match sometimes, but I can't imagine she would have been waiting for a call up until the day the game launches. It may be some awkward wording or some NDA/negotiation stuff that just resolved. I don't know, and I'm not gonna jump to conclusions. Somebody may want to ask her instead of just reporting on a tweet, though.
But if they were just re-using old recordings of her as Peach saying "Yeah!", there's every chance she wouldn't get a call for that at all. Not getting a call back for the new Mario Kart doesn't immediately mean "I'm not Peach any more," until the game comes out and it becomes clear they haven't used archive recordings and somebody else is Peach in it.
On the day before launch, she was basically Schrodinger's Peach: "I haven't recorded any new lines for this one, so I'm either in this game via archive recordings or I've been replaced." She doesn't need a phone call for either of those to be true.
I don't think it works that way. They have recorded new stuff for pretty much everything since the N64 days, and she voiced Toad, too.
Companies neglecting to tell existing voice talent with years of experience playing specific characters that they're being replaced is actually fairly common. With how clearly Nintendo DGAF about anyone lately it's not surprising at all. They may not have planned to tell her at all officially and someone took it upon themselves when they found out shortly before launch.
Many/Most companies view voice talent as completely expendable and replaceable. For camera talent, you have the person's image as well, but with voice talent, in most cases people won't notice the actor being replaced. Especially since vocal impersonation is so common.
Lots of stretches there. Voice talent is more replaceable than on-camera talent, but not "completely expendable".
I'm calling that a good thing. Having a working relationship with an actor is a thing, and I fully support good working conditions for VAs, but not being held to actors being the go/no-go talent for a whole project at all times is a noticeable improvement over the film industry, as far as I'm concerned.
Plus it's such an anglocentric world, where English-speaking actors are the only ones that get work and a leg to stand on when it comes to negotiation. That entire business is VERY weird in gaming and it has a lot more nuance than a lot of people, particularly in the English-speaking world will give it credit for.