‘Bayonetta’ Voice Actor Asks For Boycott, Director Deactivates Twitter Account
Hellena Taylor, the original voice for Bayonetta, was offered $4,000 to reprise her role. She’s now asking fans to boycott the game.
For games that have made multiple millions of dollars each, you’d think Nintendo would pay the voice actor for their main character a fair wage. But that doesn’t seem to be the case.
In a series of 3 separate tweets, Taylor explains how she was offered $4,000 to voice the entire Bayonetta 3 game. She considers the offer “an insult”. She’s asking fans of the series to boycott the game and instead donate the money they would have spent to charity instead.
Taylor acknowledges the offer was perfectly legal, if not immoral. And understands that plenty of people will still buy the game regardless. However, she makes a call “if you’re someone who cares about people […], then I urge you to boycott this game.”
At the start of the whole back and forth, Taylor was required to audition for the role again. However, this is not that unusual. It was only after she passed the audition she was offered the $4,000 for the part.
“Bayonetta always stands up for those with less power and stands up for what is right. And in doing this, you stand with her.”
Response From Bayonetta Director
Since then, the director of the Bayonetta series, Hideki Kamiya, responded by saying “Sad and deplorable about the attitude of untruth. That’s what all I can tell now. By the way, BEWARE OF MY RULES.”
The tweet has since been deleted, as has his entire Twitter account.
Issues of paying artists a fair wage are nothing new. However, more attention that is brought to issues like these helps raise awareness of the problem. We will probably never know the entire reasoning behind the low offer, or if there is an element of “untruth” in what Taylor was saying. But deleting your Twitter account after an accusation certainly doesn’t look good overall.
