Maggie Robertson ’13 Finds an Acting Niche in the Video Game Industry
Her performance as Lady Dimitrescu in “Resident Evil Village” opened up a world of opportunity.By: Meghan Kita Thursday, October 12, 2023 02:38 PM
Lady Dimitrescu and Maggie Robertson ’13Listen to a more extensive interview on the alumni podcast 2400 Chew
In the leadup to the May 2021 release of the video game Resident Evil Village, one of its characters went viral among gamers: Lady Dimitrescu, a 9-foot-6-inch castle-dwelling vampiric matriarch. Maggie Robertson ’13 listened to her gamer friends rave about the character for months. When the game came out, she could finally tell them: “That’s me.”
“I was still under [a non-disclosure agreement], so I was watching my character kind of pop off and become this cultural sensation,” says Robertson, who was a theatre major with minors in English and music at Muhlenberg. “I was watching this whole thing happen from the dark corners of my room, and unable to tell anyone that it was me, unable to talk about it.”
By the time she could talk about it, she was scanning the internet to see if the Lady D in the complete game lived up to the early hype — and she did. Players loved the character, an “older, curvy, mature woman. She is unapologetically herself. She doesn't suffer fools,” as Robertson describes her.
“I like to say that Lady D changed my life in every way. It really did create a career for me overnight the second the game came out.”
Robertson had no idea what she was getting into when she booked the role. It was shortly after she moved to Los Angeles after graduating from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) with a master’s in classical acting. The casting call was looking for someone tall (and she’s 6 feet). Months after the initial audition and callback, she learned she got the part and what it was — a performance-capture role for Resident Evil Village.
“I didn’t even know that I was doing performance capture when I was auditioning,” she says. “I often characterize my time in ‘the volume’ — that's what they call the space that you film performance capture in — as kind of a lightning bolt moment. The second I got into the volume, I felt immediately that this is what I needed to be doing … You're essentially working in the round and in a black box experience where you don't have sets. You don't have hair, makeup, costume pieces, anything to help you tell this story outside of yourself, your body, your physicality and your access to your own imagination.”
Now, the majority of her work is performance capture and voiceover work, much of it for video games. Her most recent role was as Orin the Red in the Dungeons & Dragons-inspired game Baldur's Gate 3, which came out in August. Robertson feels grateful to have found a niche in the video game space, where almost everyone working on a project is also a gamer and a fan.
“I like to say that Lady D changed my life in every way,” she says. “It really did create a career for me overnight the second the game came out … People in the industry know who I am, just from that one role.”
Why I Chose Muhlenberg — Maggie Robertson ’13
“Muhlenberg was the place where I fell in love with the craft of acting. The professors really encouraged us to get involved in the creative process and find inspiration across multiple disciplines. It’s also where I was first introduced to the beauty of Shakespeare — something that ultimately influenced my decision to pursue a master’s degree in classical acting at LAMDA. My Shakespearean training still heavily influences everything I do as an actor today.”
