VŌC Interview With D.C. Douglas

---

The VŌC Podcast, hosted by Slovakian actor and voice actor Ronald Hamrák, is a fan-driven interview show covering everything from voice acting and game development to life behind the microphone. Since launching in 2020, Ronald has built a reputation for candid, enthusiastic conversations with some of the biggest names in gaming and entertainment — including the cast of Team Fortress 2, Resident Evil, Left 4 Dead, and beyond. In this episode, Ronald sits down with D.C. Douglas — the acclaimed American actor and voice artist best known as the chilling Albert Wesker across ten Resident Evil games, Legion in the Mass Effect trilogy, and Yoshikage Kira in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure — for a wide-ranging conversation about acting, voice-over, and a career spanning nearly four decades in film, television, theater, and interactive entertainment.

---

D.C.: Yeah, I think it’s technically nine. The tenth one was never released because it was not a full game. It was a weird thing. The 10th one’s a long story.

D.C.: Oh, uh, accidentally — only because I was forced to by other people. I came to Los Angeles to be an on-camera actor and I’ve had a career doing that, but not the kind of career I wanted and certainly not the kind of career that can support you year over year. When I first moved here, I auditioned for several acting schools. This is back in the 80s when you’d look up the yellow pages to find the schools and then make an appointment by telephone. So I came down to LA and auditioned for several schools, but one of them was this Barbara Gil Dramatic Academy, I think how she was billed in the yellow pages. But it turned out it was just this lovely lady in her probably 50s or 60s who was a voiceover artist. I came in to perform my theatrical monologues — I said, “Would you like to see the monologues?” and she’s like, “Oh, okay.” So I went and did the first monologue and she’s like, “That was very good. You know, I’m not an acting coach per se. I’m a voiceover coach.” And then she explained what voiceover was. Said I had a great voice, said I should do voiceover. And I thought, “Eh, okay, whatever.” Left. I ended up finding an acting school but it didn’t start for six months. So I thought, well, she was really inexpensive per hour — maybe I’ll give that a shot. I was going to take a mime class at that point. I was just so excited to finally be pursuing my dream. So I took that class for six months and it helped me so much with what I would end up doing in my acting workshop.

But from there — so that was my introduction to voiceover. She said I should pursue a career. I was like, “Yeah, okay, whatever.” But then years later I was at a non-union voiceover agency because I was still trying to get union, and she said, “You have a great voice. You should do voiceover.” And she’d send me on these voiceover auditions for like 1-900 lines, which anybody who’s old enough will remember. They turned into sex lines, but there were originally 1-900 lines for anything — call up this line and chat with other people around the United States. So it was what a chat room would be on the internet, but before there was an internet. I would do voiceovers for some of those and that led me to take an animation class because I heard that was good. Through that class I met some people who had a connection to a recording studio and then we ended up doing Walla. So I learned about what Walla was in films and I did Walla work for a while. That led to other stuff. I started doing promos and trailers because I’m the one who had the low voice of the group. Anyway, so my whole 90s was essentially sprinkled with these little gigs that I would do for voiceover, but I didn’t think of it as a way of supporting myself. The on-camera never fully took off. I mean, I’m grateful for what work I’ve had as an on-camera actor, but around the time I was 38, my survival gig was editing actor demo reels. And I decided I don’t want to turn 40 and still be one of those guys in Hollywood doing other actors’ reels. If you met the other people who did it at the time, it was very depressing — the smoke-filled rooms with old equipment and pictures of when they used to be kind of thing. It was like, I don’t want to be that guy.

And it just so happened I met Laura Kaine, who was in a voiceover workout group that I somehow stumbled into. We met for lunch. She was telling me she was doing promo work from her home rig. So I learned how to start a home rig and all of that. I thought, I’ll make the jump. I will quit the survival gig and I’m going to start doing this — because I was doing these little union gigs a lot more, to where I was hardly ever there to edit actor reels anyway. So I quit the job and had my home studio at that point, started advertising on the website. If you looked up “voice over” in 2002 on Google, I was the number one entry.

D.C.: This is before they got smart with the algorithms. And so for that first year, I’ve got all these clients. All of a sudden I had a home business going. I was making two times what I was making as a survival guy. And then that kind of began. I ended up getting another good agent who got me out for good union work. Within a year I had a CBS promo gig for daytime TV. And within three years I booked a national campaign with GEICO for two years running, which ended up leading me to buy a house at one point — which I’m now back in an apartment having sold the house. But anyway, yeah, so that was my journey.

And I still kind of — even though voiceover was making me survive — I still kind of pooh-poohed the whole thing. I told you I was a talker. I kind of pooh-poohed voiceover still, until I was on a cartoon — Transformers Rescue Bots. And Jason Marsden, who’s a phenomenal actor and human being — at one point he just called me out and said, “You need to stop this.” He goes, “You’re an actor. Whether you’re doing voiceover or on camera, it’s all acting. It’s your acting career and you need to show respect.” And he was right. So yeah,

D.C.: Yeah, I’ve done a fair amount of those. [laughter]

D.C.: Uh oh. Well, okay — there are a couple things here. One was — out of the blue I got an inquiry to be in a low-budget film in Philadelphia and it turned out they were Resident Evil fans. They had two character roles. One is a news reporter — you shoot for a day and you’re out. The other is one of the leads, a serial killer. And I’m like, of course the serial killer. I think they thought I was like, you know, I make too much money and won’t want to spend more than a day on an indie. And I’m like, I’ll move in.

So they said, “Fantastic. You’ll be the killer.” And as I read the script, I’m like, “Well, you guys are Resident Evil fans. He’s a serial killer. Why don’t I —” I messaged him at one point. I go, “I know he’s different than Albert Wesker, but since you guys are fans, would you like it if I dyed my hair blonde?” And he was like, “Oh my God, would you do that?” And I go, “Absolutely.” So I ended up — I had about a year — I worked out a lot so I could have a fairly sculpted body for it. Super tanned. Like before I left, I got one of those Hollywood tans where they actually draw on you to make the chest and all that. And dyed my hair blonde. Went there. Freaking amazing time. Anyway, that was the first one that was like an homage to Albert Wesker and the fandom.

And then I thought, well, hey, I should feed into this, right? So I had done several films with Asylum — who you know from Sharknado and whatnot. I’m in Sharknado, too, by the way. Anyway, I went to them and pitched the idea of doing a zombie film, and we would parallel it with a lot of Resident Evil stuff so it would have a lot of Easter eggs and be kind of a fan service film. And they kind of went for it. There was a writer-director guy that I’d worked with on another film for them called Alpha House that was a really fun comedy. So he was going to be directing it as well. We went through the writing process for a year, which was a nightmare — once they realized how many fingers they wanted to have in the writing of the script, they blew the whole budget up. But it was still a parallel art Resident Evil and all that. Very excited. It’s called Isle of the Dead, and I was playing Colonel Aiden Wexler — not doing the Wesker voice — and it was going to be like Apocalypse Now or Journey to the Heart of Darkness. Basically this guy who’d been on the island of all these zombies and had become this kind of enigmatic figure.

But two weeks before filming, the director had to drop out because his wife was giving birth — they’d postponed production so long. So they had another director come in who didn’t know Resident Evil, didn’t care about Resident Evil, just wanted to get the movie done. He stripped all the Resident Evil stuff out of the script and then said, “I want you in a suit and tie.” And I’m like, “I’ve been on the island for 10 years. The tie would have disintegrated by now.” And of course I wasn’t a producer — I was just the guy who pitched the idea and was getting one of the lead roles. So I had to work with it. I changed the character up. Now I’m like this neurotic guy who is still pretending it’s business as usual. Not at all like a Wesker character. But we still had fun for the most part on that. It was just a little heartbreaking because we had such a whole other vision in mind for it.

And of course they cast my daughter, who was like six years younger than me [laughter] and had an accent never explained in the script, because she was a diva wrestler — that’s why she was cast. I think her name is Maurice Minzen. Lovely lady. Beautiful, kickass, all of that. And then they also cast, of all people, Joey Lawrence in it. And anybody who knows Joey Lawrence — he calls his followers angels. And now he’s in a zombie movie. I’m like, I don’t think his followers are going to see this movie. Anyway, so that whole story is just kind of wacky. Those were the two homages to Resident Evil fans that I was part of.

And a side thing of that is that while I pitched that film, they said, “We should have you in Z Nation.” So I did a couple of episodes on Z Nation as well, which was a zombie show on Sci-Fi. So that was fun. That was a great death.

D.C.: I got killed by a flare being punctured into my skull — and it was lit. [laughter]

D.C.: Lately it has. Now I’m finally — I’ve actually got two films coming out that I’m really proud of that have nothing to do with zombies. So yeah.

D.C.: And my only game. [laughter]

D.C.: Of course, ’cause you did your homework. Yes.

D.C.: Yeah. Well, it’s interesting when you get a game. When I got Mass Effect, I was relieved because no one had done the voice for the Geth or Legion. I got to create the voice, which is a very simple voice obviously, but still — it was my imprint from the get-go. With Resident Evil, at that point you already had three other voice actors for the character. Specifically — Pablo Kun was in the very first one. But then they had Richard Wah do one or two, and then Jessup did one, and then Richard Wah did one. And the way this all works is ultimately it’s really about logistics. So they were in Los Angeles, they had Peter Jessup. They moved to Canada for the next production because Capcom itself does not produce these things — they hire different production companies to do each game. So they moved to Canada, Richard Wah was doing it. Then they moved back to the US. Peter Jessup was not available and so they auditioned other Weskers. They played Peter Jessup’s performance in the audition room and you had to match his thing — which was a little more of a marbled sound in his voice. And I went and auditioned for that. I hate doing impersonations. I’m horrible at them. But I did the best I could and I booked it. We went and we did it.

Now, mind you — I don’t play video games. I didn’t know anything about Resident Evil at that point. And I didn’t know video game logistics. So it’s just monologue after monologue and I don’t get to read them before we do them. It’s literally sight-reading — your first take is a sight read. If they like it, you move on. And I’m like, could I now that I know what I’m saying, can I do it again please? So I always felt awkward about my performance with that game.

Then RE5 came along and I was definitely going to get the gig doing the voiceover part, but then they were going to say maybe you could do the mocap too and I’d never done mocap. And I was like, yeah, but I’d just bought my house then and I was trying to help the construction guys because I’m a stupid human being and I was lifting —

D.C.: Huge things of concrete — threw my back out. Went to the audition. I said I can walk around and hold a gun but that’s about it. And then of course nobody spoke English, somebody didn’t translate it properly, and the first setup is me doing a roll on the ground. I’m like, “Yeah, no, I’m not doing that.” So obviously Kendall Lai ended up doing that part of Albert Wesker — and a fantastic job as well. So I got to do the face cap for it and the voiceover.

But the first session I go in and I’ve got my Peter Jessup Albert Wesker ready to go. And then they play Richard Wah and — through the translator, it was a lot of telephone in that thing — and Liam O’Brien was directing, from Critical Role fame for those of you who know him, and they get a translation and say they want me to match this, and they play Richard Wah. And I’m like, I have not worked on that one. [laughter] So I had to adapt really fast, and then of course the character changes throughout the game, so as he changes the voice changes too, and it becomes a little more of my imprint. After that I did several other games — call it lazy or call it me just wanting to imprint my own voice — and he kind of changed into my Albert Wesker, which is very similar to Wah’s I think ultimately. So,

D.C.: And now — we’re what — let’s say 2006 was the first one. So we’re 20 years away. 20 years later, I’m doing cameos as Wesker and I’m like, I have to go seven minutes. Seven minutes is all I can spare, which is my young voice. I don’t talk up here anymore. I talk down here. Seven minutes, which is like — whoa, that Wesker’s different. Well, I got old, man. So,

D.C.: Oh, because you know, a lot of the other games were just little things here or there. The Marvel vs. Capcoms were fun because it’s a more exaggerated Wesker — just more catchphrases and things like that, like “found you” and things like that. So that one was kind of fun and was like a super fast session. I went in and was out within like 45 minutes. But everyone still quotes that game to me. It’s funny — there’ll be Wesker fans who are Marvel vs. Capcom fans that’ll come to me at conventions, and then there’s the regular RE fans who don’t really know Marvel vs. Capcom. I find that kind of fascinating.

Now the last game that I did — oh wait, actually. Sadly — the thing that I love about the Wesker in Umbrella Corps is that there’s a monologue they cut from the game. I don’t know if it was supposed to be an Easter egg or if there was going to be a full scene, but the whole monologue is: “Rumors of my demise are greatly exaggerated.” And he goes into this whole thing and I’m asking the guys at the time, is he coming back? Is he coming back? And they’re like, we don’t know. Well, I guess everybody knows now that he’s sort of back as a clone. So Umbrella Corps, that one kind of stands out in my mind. But the last one was TEEP and that only stands out in my mind because I’m like, “What the hell is this? It’s a card game, but it’s online.” I don’t understand it. And I have a line where I’m like, “Five minutes is all you’ll have left.” And I go, “Hey guys, can we change it to seven?” Just to be consistent. And they’re like, “No, it’s five.” I’m like, “Okay.” [laughter]

D.C.: No, no, no, no. I’m not in those. So what — we’re at six actors now who’ve done Wesker.

D.C.: And I believe Craig Bernitoski is the new voice of Albert Wesker.

D.C.: Here’s the thing. The character is from Ohio, so he was never British. It was just an affect he was putting on. And it was more of a kind of Mid-Atlantic. It was never fully there — it was only on certain words. And that was — I always forget if it was Wah’s doing or Jessup’s doing. One of them threw it in. I think Wah did it because he was thinking David Bowie at the time. But as far as the new stuff goes — I mean, I don’t play the games, so I see the cut scenes and — they’ve made Wesker far more macho now, haven’t they? Craig’s got a macho, beautiful voice. So I think it’s pretty cool. Yeah.

D.C.: Yeah, that’s what I think too. I’m a little bummed because I would have loved to have done the RE5 remake, just because I always felt my performance was a little sporadic and nutty in RE5 — because my instincts when we first started the session was to be a little more filmic. And they’re like, “No, no, no.” First off, the lines are not that filmic, and secondly they kept pushing me through the whole recording process to go bigger on stuff. So it’s a little against my instincts. But you know, people are quoting lines all these years later, so who am I to argue with that? When I went over to Mass Effect and they said everything is very cinematic, very real, very grounded — I was like, so that was nice. Like it’s so rare. Thank goodness now video games are doing more of that. Most of the games I’ve done recently I’m still playing kind of wacky characters — in Outriders and Borderlands. So anyway,

D.C.: Yeah.

D.C.: I thought that game was going to be big. I was so bummed when — it was Killer Clowns from Outer Space. Great freaking story though. So I actually recorded all of it out of my home studio. It was for a mocap character — in the game you’re running from alien clowns and whatnot, and then you find this certain underground place with all these tapes, which I guess help you navigate the game. But they’re all from this character who is basically an Alex Jones type. And his name was Wesker. It was hysterical and it was so fun to perform because his monologues are way out there. It was a great gig. And I was in the session and I said, “Hey guys, I got to tell you — this is really weird. This is like the second character I’ve ever played with the name Wesker. I just didn’t think that was a common name at all.” And the producer said, “Well, the writer is a big fan of this character from Resident Evil.” And I’m like, “Are you f***ing me?” And I said, “Well, you hired the guy who played Albert Wesker in all these games.” And they’re like, “Are you f***ing me?” And the writer completely flipped out. It was just one of those really fun moments where yeah, it all came together. I just wish the game had done a little better.

D.C.: I think those — what do they call those — where the survival of the game is dependent on how many people get online to play it and stay online consistently over the weeks and months? What do they call it? Is that like an MMO or a —

D.C.: I don’t think so. It’s kind of like — you log on and there’s people all around the world playing it, but if you log on and nobody’s playing it’s hard to find a partner. Then the game kind of dies. And I think that’s kind of what happened with it.

D.C.: Yeah, I worked with Lani — I actually did meet her in person. I went down to San Diego for a session once and met her. She’s out of San Diego, but she comes up to LA a lot to work. But yeah, so I met her way back at the beginning of my video game stuff. My first video game I think was 2002 or something for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And then I met her like within a year of that. Then she had me on these other games — there was a character called Black Testament, can’t remember the name of the game — but yeah, she got me on some JRPGs. That’s how I met her. Every now and then it’ll be like four years and all of a sudden out of the blue I’ll hear from her. It’s kind of cool.

D.C.: The only one I will say is — because the thing is, everybody comes to me with their favorite lines which have become everyone’s favorite line. So like with “seven minutes,” that’s like popular with everybody. I start all my cameos with “ah, found you.” But that’s not my favorite line. My favorite line would be “you will give me an egg” or “I require an egg.”

The reason I like those is because RE5 was like four or five sessions spread over a year. And at the end of the last session, we kind of knew it was the last session. That’s when I found out my character died — again, they don’t give you a script ahead of time, you’re learning it as it’s happening. And I’m like, oh, my character’s dead. And then Liam’s like, “Okay, this isn’t the script. Let’s just record a couple wild lines. DC, say ‘you will give me an egg.'” And I’m like, “Yeah, funny, Liam. Nah.” And he’s like, “No, no, say the line.” “You will give me an egg.” He’s like, “Now — I require an egg.” I’m like, “Come on, Liam.” I had no idea what eggs were. And he didn’t explain it to me. He said, “We just need the lines.” But he wouldn’t tell me what an egg was until years later in the pandemic. I was streaming during the pandemic because I had nothing else to do, and I’m playing the game and I’m like, “Oh. That’s what eggs are.”

D.C.: Oh, there’s another — you just reminded me of another Wesker thing that got cut, in Revelations 2. Mary Elizabeth McGlynn plays Alex Wesker. And it was just a little stuff that I did — most of those games were little stuff — but on that one they recorded a whole scene between us where we’re in hell and we’re battling. We’re bitching to each other like brother and sister having a verbal fight while we’re in hell. And I’m like, this has got to be like an Easter egg scene you can unlock. No one’s ever heard it. It was recorded and never used. That’s too bad.

D.C.: Well, keep in mind — unless you do mocap on a game, it’s very rare that you meet other actors on a game. If you do a mocap game, you meet the other actors. So like I did Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, and I got to meet all the actors I was in scenes with — it was like doing a movie. Theater in the round in a close-up. It was just great. But for all those regular voiceover games, you only meet people at conventions afterward.

And it’s kind of funny — the first time I met — so back in 2010, I got in trouble with the Tea Party, which is essentially the precursor to what Trumpsters are now. I went through hell. I was on Fox News as breaking news for a week, all of that. And I spun it in a way that really worked out well for me, but I still went through the ringer. And then I got an invite from Liam to go to a party at Ali Hillis’s that the two of them were throwing. And I walked into that party and for the first time in my life I was meeting all these other voice actors — and I knew them and they knew me — and it was really weird. It’s like, I’m meeting you, but we know each other. And it was such a wonderful experience because I had been through hell, and now all of a sudden I’m in this community and I’m like, I am in a community. I wasn’t alone out there handling this thing by myself. There was a community, and everybody was talking about that thing that had happened as well. So it was really neat.

It’s a bizarre profession. There’ll be many a time I’ll go to a convention and I’ll meet people that know me or I know them, and it’s like that — almost parasocial. Even within our community, if we don’t know each other there’s a parasocial thing going on — like we think we know them because we hear them in the game that we’re in together. So like, all my scenes were with so-and-so who I never met, but I sort of know them. It’s kind of crazy.

D.C.: I used to do a lot of fan service stuff. Yeah. I enjoy doing that. So yeah.

D.C.: So what’s funny is — I haven’t done it since Dead by Daylight. That was — I mean, I haven’t done Wesker since TEEP. Actually there was another test gig that we did, didn’t quite work out at all — and I think that was 2020. So 2020 was the last time I’d done any kind of Wesker. That gig in 2020 didn’t even have spoken lines. It was literally a movement thing they were testing at this mocap studio. We worked for two days doing one scene, repetitive movement. Weird as hell. Paid so well though.

Anyway, they moved on. Dead by Daylight had Connor Fogerty. And then they moved production back to Canada — they have Craig doing the RE4 remake. So I’m like, I’ve moved on with my life. I’ve been in other games. It’s just Resident Evil has such a fervent fan base. Then Requiem just comes out and all of a sudden I start getting Cameo orders and I’m like, I’m not in that game. Why am I getting Cameo orders? And it kept going and it took off. Like I literally have 15 cameos to do tomorrow and I’m like — why? I’m not — listen, it’s nice. It’s wild. So I’m getting a lot of love right now for a game that I’m not in. I’m appreciative of it. Absolutely.

D.C.: Well, thank goodness they’re not asking me to do new stuff. They’re asking for the old RE5 lines, that kind of thing. Oh yeah — there was one person who reached out to me after the RE4 remake and said, “Could you do all of the lines that they did but as your Wesker?” And I’m like, yeah, but you pay me triple scale and we could talk — otherwise, no. [laughter]

And also, how disrespectful to the other actors. So, you know — yes, change. Embrace the change, is what I’ll say. That is really one of my mottos. Embrace the change.

D.C.: Oh, well — if we’re going to Vogue, do it right.