Felicia Day Interview

With the first installment of the Dragon Age: Redemption web series and a major appearance in Dragon Age II: Mark of the Assassin behind her, the L.A. Times sat down to chat with popular “geek” actress Felicia Day about her original decision to create The Guild, how she wound up working with BioWare, and more.

Codex, your character in “The Guild,” is a bit of a shy flower. For “Dragon Age: Redemption” you’ve written yourself as an elf assassin.

FD: I saw all these superhero movies and I knew I would never be that; I could be the waitress that gets killed in one of those superhero movies. And so when the opportunity came to create a character for a world where I could wield daggers, I couldn’t pass it up.

How did it feel?

FD: It felt great. It was a monumental opportunity, but it was definitely taking “The Guild” and raising it ten-thousandfold. I mean, I wrote a $10-million movie on the page, and they were, like, “Well, you should not write a fight sequence for 14 people on a Web series budget, when you have no trailers.” I called in every favor from every person I could to make it more than what I had resource-wise.

You were approached to make the series?

FD: I had been approached by a lot of people to do another Web series; it was almost intimidating how many people wanted me to do a project with them, and so I kind of put them all off. Because to me it’s all about, “Does it feel right?” Whenever I get out of my own way and make decisions based on my gut feeling I always do well. And when Electronic Arts [makers of Dragon Age] called, that was the first call in years that was really like, “Oh!” They asked, “What would you like to do?” and I said, “What properties do you have?” And when Dragon Age came up I was, like, “Yes!” Because when am I ever going to be able to be in a medieval world as an actor? Probably never. So I’ll help create it myself.

This will be the first time that a video game property is a Web series; and the elf is an actual playable character. So my character will be a DLC [downloadable content] piece; if people own Dragon Age II, they’ll be able to purchase an extension pack and play with my character. It’s full motion capture with me, full facial capture, full vocal acting. It’s pretty much the coolest thing I could ever imagine: Not only am I in a game, but it’s as a character I created.