Lady Dimitrescu actor wasn’t a gamer before Resident Evil Village, so she “pulled a lot of Shakespeare stuff” into her vampire mommy role

Maggie Robertson had half of the Resident Evil Village fanbase quaking in their boots (and the other half salivating over a murderous 9-foot 7-inch vampire) in her role as Lady Dimitrescu, the 2021 horror sequel’s main baddie. But Robertson was actually pretty new to games in general, so she used some of her Shakespeare experience to flesh out her character.

Speaking to EW as part of the Pixel Pack, a collective of video game actors organized by Astarion’s Neil Newbon, Robertson explains that she hadn’t grown up playing games and wasn’t too familiar with the industry’s nuts and bolts before stealing the show in Capcom’s blockbuster. On IMDB, her only other game credits before Resident Evil Village were small voiced roles in Smite and Rogue Company.

So, she leaned on some classic work experience to really bite into players without even having to show her fangs. “Having a Shakespeare background, I pulled a lot of Shakespeare stuff into this,” Robertson explains. “There was something very Shakespearean in the way that she utilizes language. It’s not just the claws, it’s not just her transforming into a beast at the end that does damage. It’s her words. She really uses the power of her words to hurt.”

Having not embedded herself with games much, the virality and fame that came with Lady D also surprised Robertson, who said she had “no concept at that time of what being in a video game could offer me in my career, in my life.” The entire experience was instead “very surreal” for Robertson. “It really truly changed my life in every possible way.”

Resident Evil and Witcher 3 mocap director says video game industry layoffs have made it so “nothing is guaranteed,” but AI won’t be replacing real actors “anytime soon”