Life Advice From The God Of Thunder

He might have the voice of a Norse God, but Travis Willingham is such a versatile actor that over the last two decades he has played many of the characters that have shaped current popular culture. His work features in over 150 different video games and animation titles and ranges from Superman in Lego Batman, to Knuckles in Sonic the Hedgehog, Voltron in Transformers to his work as Thor in Marvel Animation and video games and much, much more. In fact, his credit list is enough to make even the most cynical middle-aged man reach for his controller or sponge hammer and imagine a parallel universe.

Speaking of parallel universes, when Travis isn’t voicing a superhero, he is also a part of the Critical Role series which sees a group of his buddies and fellow professional voice actors play Dungeons & Dragons in front of millions of viewers each episode. We talk to Travis about taking D&D out of the basement and into the spotlight, the intersection of interactive and cinematic storytelling and the new Marvel’s Avengers video game.

I’ve been watching Critical Role and I had no idea that there are millions of people watching you play Dungeons and Dragons. If you go back to the nineties, could you have imagined that that would be the case?

No, absolutely not. In the nineties, I didn’t know what D&D was. I think I had only heard of it a couple times. I didn’t even play my first D&D game until 2012, 2013.

Even while casually playing then, with us playing every few months, would I have ever in my wildest dreams thought that it would have spawned what it has.

When you’re watching, the characters really come to life. Does it feel like the world is catching up to all of your interests and people are starting to become really engaged in, say gaming as a cinematic storytelling vehicle? Is there starting to be a crossover?

I think so. I think what interactive gaming did, particularly in the past 10 to 15 years, is the development of cinematic storylines, narrative storytelling. It’s one thing to play through a level, but when you hit a cinematic that drops you into cinema-level acting, I think it raises the stakes from a dramatic standpoint, but it also can help you digest a storyline that takes more than 90 minutes, two hours.

You’re playing 10 to 15 or 20 hours to beat the game and that’s just an insanely large amount of canonical storyline and content to digest. For D&D to come along and say, there are no rules, there are no boundaries. There may be a linear storyline that maybe the Dragon Master knows about, but you can open a sandbox – a term that comes from interactive gaming – go wherever you want, do whatever you want, talk to whoever you want, in any order that you want to, and you can go about it in any way that you choose.

To me, that feels like a direct result of gaming. I think about it from a very video game standpoint. I know that I can say anything I want to a character, but it’ll either get me what I want or it’ll get me killed, or punched or thrown out of a building, or whatever. I approach D&D from the perspective of, what is an interesting or clever way to do this, what are my tactical options as you approached the situation, but also, what makes for a really good story?

What would be crazy here? What’s the thing that has a low percentage chance of succeeding, but if it does, it’ll be an amazing story. And if it fails, s**t, that might even be a better story. That’s the sort of stuff that I love in D&D.

You have spoken about it as if it was a metaphor for life; playing it too safe and taking risks, going out there. Is there something there that we can apply to our life in general, particularly at a time like this?

It’s interesting because I think the idea of that ability to explore and take risks has innate value in a controlled setting.

This is just my experience, but I see so many people that I play with, or have played similar video games, they talk about the style of play or how they hoard items versus just being reckless and taking chances. I feel like you learn something about yourself and your risk tolerance, which is something that I don’t think a lot of people put stock in.

If you are a crazy video gamer, but in life you don’t take a lot of chances or you don’t put yourself out there or you don’t go after the ‘do something everyday that scares you’ type mentality, I would just ask why? If you love playing that way because it gives you great joy while you’re gaming, wouldn’t you want to incorporate that into your life in some way?

It’s those comparisons that I think shine a little bit of a light on something that maybe you wouldn’t really think about otherwise. I think there’s a little bit of an application, but again, as long as it doesn’t blow up your whole world.

If you go back to when you first moved out to LA, do you think about that like a Sliding Doors moment?

All the time. Particularly in a place like Los Angeles, where it is a Sliding Doors moment and those doors move by several per minute. That might sound like a cliche, but there are so many instances where I think about if I had done A versus B, if I had decided to work on this project instead of that project, if I hadn’t gone on this trip and been home for this.

Those things happen so often and I have been able to look back and see the moments where I played it safe and totally missed out on a project that could have been something big. It might’ve been nothing, but I’ll never know.

For me, the lack of knowing, not terrible regrets, but just the lack of knowing what the outcome of a different choice could have been is one of the things that just gets at me more than anything else. So I try to game out most of my decisions as thoroughly as I can and sometimes realise that really the only way to achieve a goal that may be low percentage, is to take a risk and jump at it.

Sometimes it’s not worth it and sometimes it is. I think there’s a little bit of that that I’ve gleaned from being out here. I think we all have, if you’ve been in places like New York, LA, London, it’s make a choice and move on, make a choice to move on and make a choice and move on.

I have to say though, your early days in LA seemed God awful. What the hell keeps you going through that?

Drive and belief towards an end goal. Until you are sure that you’re not going to succeed at that goal, then it’s still a possibility. While it was cumbersome and weird and full of amazing stories, the crap times are also what makes those amazing stories. While it sucked and things were weird and it was hard and in the moment you’re like, ‘Oh God, is anything going to work? Or am I wasting my time?’

If it doesn’t work out, even if I hadn’t had the career that I’ve been able to enjoy so far and if I wasn’t finding myself where I am now, I was still earnestly pursuing the thing that I really, really wanted to try, which is really all that you can ask for in life.

As long as you can try for the thing that you want in life, until you come up with something different that you want to go after, or you have achieved the answer of ‘no, it’s not going to happen’ by one reason or another, then I think you should be pursuing that thing.

That’s what life is all about, we get one shot at it. I think a lot of people put a lot of stock in what people around them think and, at the end of the day, you’re really only going out against yourself. So as long as you’re happy with what you’re doing, I think that that’s worth everything.

When I’ve seen some of the gameplay from the Avengers, there seems to be this real irreverence and humour coming through. There’s a little bit of you in there. Am I reading into it too much? Or is it you in there?

No, you’re not reading too much into it at all. The first time I played Thor was in 2011, so I’m coming up just under a decade of playing the character and certainly any character or personality that you spend this much time with, you learn more and more about them as you go along.

Especially when you’re trying to inhabit a character that has decades worth of material to pull from, comic books and movies and different iterations, different performances, different flavours; it really becomes about what clicks for you when you hear it. What did you like when you saw it? What were some of the things that you want to pull from, or take inspiration from? And what other things can you leave behind or that you want to try new for yourself?

When I was a kid, I loved Marvel comics. I think Thor was probably the character that appealed to me the least. He was just this Norse Adonis that spoke in a very classically stilted way. I didn’t really understand what he was saying, I didn’t really understand what made him relatable or vulnerable as a character.

And then as I came to play him, and as the movies in the MCU came out, you find out that he is terribly vulnerable, terribly insecure. He has the weight of several realms on his shoulders, the expectations of a kingdom and of a father and of multiple people. He doesn’t know what the answer is to the problems that he faces all the time.

For me, the thing that is really redeeming about him is that he is fallible, he makes mistakes. He makes the wrong choices and has to learn how to pick himself up and how to learn from those things and present a stronger face the next time around. That to me is always more endearing to see in a character that has so much might, has so much power.

When you can highlight the things and the fears and cracks in the veneer that we all struggle with; feelings of worth, responsibility, regrets. Especially in this game, there’s a tragic event that happens and takes the lives of many mortals that he is charged with being responsible for, but also one of his team members. He feels like he’s let Captain America down and he’s felt like he’s let the team down. He should have been able to foresee this, he’s strong enough. How could this happen?

He has to choose how he lets that event affect him and how he’s going to move forward. He’s a little harder on himself than he needs to be. He lays his hammer down for a while and spends some time with the people that he’s been charged with protecting. In the end, he figures out that it’s going to take more than just his mantle, his name and what people expect of him. It’s going to take the support of his friends and of new team members that have new perspective and new energy, to write the wrongs and to learn from it and become better.

It’s not always about being the strongest and having force on force. It’s about taking it on the chin, learning from that and then coming back in a way that makes you more formidable. That which does not kill you makes you stronger.

Do you think our heroes are starting to evolve a little bit? Are they becoming more human?

I think so. I think we’re better for it in certain regards. When you do the classic, Superman versus Batman comparison; one is untouchable and can do just about anything and the other one is human, is flawed, has had nothing but loss. Even though he’s financially well off, against all odds, he betters himself to become this force that the world has to reckon with.

I think some characters, for instance, Captain America, who has a very similar appeal to Superman; values, morals, he is incorruptible, he is not privy to show a weakness or doubt, he is steadfast, altruistic, constantly patriotic, pushing for the greater good, all of those things.

I feel like that is needed because you have to set a baseline for the moral compass of a team, or at least a character. Once that’s established, you can show how he reacts to loss when he loses a friend like Bucky Barnes. How does that affect him? How does he deal with that loss? How does he move on from that loss? What is the responsibility of a team and how he addresses certain worldwide threats? How does he take that in stride, especially when it doesn’t go his way?

I think you have to have some characters that are inevitably super because it’s in the name, but you have to also be able to see them fail. And then also, what was the process that they thereby learned from that failure? If you don’t have that, then you don’t really have the story.

It’s not the same as a knight going out to slay a dragon and he kills the dragon and rescues the princess. Yeah, there’s a story there and it’s okay, but what happens if he fails a few times? Does he pack it up and go home? It’s much more interesting to hear the ins and outs of the guy that has to try a few times, fails and then succeeds. That to me is what makes characters really more relatable and it also allows you to invest in that character, where the weaknesses are.

In a situation like this, where there is a team dynamic going on, are you sometimes surprised at where the character will go, bouncing off other people?

Yeah and sometimes I’m surprised in the most unlikely situations or moments. Particularly if you’ve read the script in advance, you have an idea of what happens in your head, but of course, as soon as you get it on its feet and you’re hearing lines delivered from another actor, it is of course is going to change not only the scene, but how you perform the rest of the scene; where that energy is going, what they’re bringing to it. It stays fluid like that, most scenes do.

It goes through several iterations and you can choose from any number of results as we move through takes and the process. But when you really know a character, and I think most people that are fans of pop culture really know Iron Man, really know Thor, really know Captain American. And for me, for Thor, having played him for a few years, there were certain true and undeniable things that are constant with him.

For instance, the very first scene, when Thor meets Kamala Khan, she’s walking through a gift shop that’s been emptied out and Thor lands late as an attendee to A-Day and walks in, and it’s just Kamala Khan and this DemiGod that she idolizes, and there’s an interaction there. I remember Sandra Saad just putting me on my heels.

It was an interesting parallel between the real world and the scene, because between Nolan North and Laura Bailey and Troy Baker and myself and Jeff Schine, who has a great resume in video games and other projects, we’ve all been at this rodeo before and for Sandra, this was a really big role and a first new project for her.

So she came with enthusiasm and excitement and stars in her eyes and full of questions and energy. Here we were in this scene where Kamala Khan comes upon Thor and same thing, same energy and all the questions and just awe-struck and it’s a much bigger deal to her than it is to him.

So it was a surprising energy and back and forth and one that I enjoyed between our characters very much, because there are a lot of tough, rough fighter warrior personalities in the Avengers and then Kamala comes in with her backpack and her new view of things and just livens up the whole thing, makes it new and fresh and interesting. It almost puts a character like Thor on his heels.

You’ve talked about developing a character almost like throwing clay at something and forming it. Does any of that splash back sometimes? Do you see a character trait and want to be more like it?

Yes, of course. The more you work in any art form, whether it’s film, TV, theatre, video games, a writer laboring over a script, putting ideas down on paper and watching characters interact; you’re going to learn something. Every single time.

For me, the parallel that I have really found in myself with Thor is how he relates to his sense of worth. It’s a theme with Thor that has been very present for decades. “If he be worthy, you shall possess the power of Thor.” It’s on the hammer. When he lets Cap down in the game; ‘am I not worthy? Have I let all of these people down?’

It’s just fascinating to me, in the years that I’ve been playing him, I’ve become a new father, my career has taken all these turns, our stuff in Critical Role has just absolutely taken off and it’s been amazing. But at the same time, I question, am I capable enough? Am I worthy enough of these things?

It just really struck a chord with me, Thor’s journey and how he views himself in relation to all of these challenges, but also into all of these responsibilities and if he is worthy or up to the task.

For me, that will probably forever anchor him near to my heart, but it was worthy enough for me to put a tattoo on my arm for Thor. I’ll always carry a piece of him on me. I feel like I’ll always understand him just a little better than some, maybe.

That’s really interesting because people will look at your career and be in awe of what you’ve achieved, but that is reality. We’re always striving, we always do question ourselves.

I think there are a lot of voices out there that like to tout unquestioned drive and assuredness. There’s a place for that.

But it’s bulls**t though, right?

It can be. For some people, it might not be. For me, it is. For me, it would be fake. For me, it is far more honest and far more transparent to just acknowledge what the truth is. I think it does everybody a bit more good and is certainly a lot less bulls**t, to admit when you’re wrong and to admit when you have doubt.

I think a lot of people would learn from people in power or people in positions of leadership or people with great responsibility, if they understood that, ‘Hey, I made this decision, it might not be right, but it’s the decision that I’ve made.’

That always seems to go for me a lot further than just putting up a steel wall and not having any sort of visibility into what the thought process was, who are you as a person? Why did you come to this decision?

You’ve spoken about the early days of being not so self-assured, being slightly self-conscious. Do you think that there’s a superpower in that, that makes you more empathetic? That humility makes you better?

A hundred percent. I think empathy is one of the greatest emotions and abilities that a human being can have. If you can put yourself in someone else’s shoes, whether it’s someone on the other side of an argument, whether it is someone in a different situation than yours, a different background, a different belief, a different identity, religion; it just helps to bring us all together.

At the end of the day, it’s just the human race, that’s it. Different colours, different creeds, different orientations, different beliefs, but we’re still the same inside and out. If you’re able to see through another person’s eyes, I think you’re better for it.

I also think it makes you contagious in that way. I think you’re able to give that ability to anyone that you come in contact with. Even if they are not capable of reciprocating, that same empathy, I think when you come across it or you are faced with someone that shows you empathy, you recognise it and maybe remember that going forward.

Has fatherhood changed the way that you will approach a role?

Yes. You know the answer is yes. When Avengers: Endgame came out and Tony Stark did the ‘I love you 3000’ at the end, I had to put my hand in my mouth because I was crying so loudly that my wife, Laura, looked over at me and asked, ‘Are you okay?’ And whether it’s that or Pixar movies or whatever it is, my emotional availability and vulnerability has tripled, if not more.

I feel like having a kid, and this is a good thing, in some way took my heart and took it outside of my body and gave it a pair of legs and it now runs around saying mama and dada. That also means that the most vulnerable part of me is out there and something bad can happen to it.

In previous years where I might’ve have been a father in a role or even when families are threatened by a situation, my perspective on that has shifted dramatically.

I’ll go back and watch movies that I’ve seen before and something happens with a kid and I think I was probably just a cold, heartless bastard before that, but when you’re a parent and you’ve gone through nine months of pregnancy and shared the miracle of childbirth with your partner and the sleepless nights, the investment that you’ve put in, then it just changes everything. So yeah, fatherhood changed me so much in terms of my acting.

You can spend 30 hours immersed in this gaming world and it’s a whole different level of engagement. Where do you see that going?

It’s weird because there are so many different opinions on the topic. There are people that think video games are too long. 30 hours, 60 hours is too much. Kids have short attention spans, they can’t do that. For other people, 60 hours is not enough. They could go for 120 hours.

For me, computers keep getting faster, computer memory keeps getting smaller. In 10 years, if VR applications upgrade and the tech doesn’t make you nauseous and you figure out some way to make sure you don’t smash into your desk or couch, I think you could see AAA level titles in a VR setting that you might in some way be able to participate in a branching narrative of a narrative-driven storyline, that doesn’t entirely remove you from anyone else in your house, which VR kind of does.

At the bottom line, I think the capability of storytelling and games, especially where you can choose the outcome of how the story goes, is the future. There are so many games where cinematics and narratives have been taken out of it, but to me, having a customisable story that has weight and investment and rich character stories with a long character path; those games are experiences, more than they are games to me.

I will always remember playing the first game of Last of Us, it wrecked me at multiple points. I was like, ‘What is this game? It’s not a game, it’s not a movie, it’s an experience.’ This second one changed the way that I thought about a myriad of things. I feel like I’m a pretty open and pliable person. It took me and made me a ragdoll or a puppet at every turn.

Games that can really affect you and challenge the way that you think, like a good conversation should over a drink with a friend, those have immeasurable value and measurable worth. I hope those continue.