Meet the Samurai Leading Your Next Favorite Video Game

Welcome to Renegades, Gold House’s editorial series spotlighting Asian Pacific leaders and creatives who are carving their own paths and defying stereotypes along the way. This week’s Renegade is voice actor Erika Ishii!

Erika Ishii is known for bringing characters to life in video games, animation, and live performances. Beyond her on-screen work, she’s a popular personality in the world of tabletop role-playing games, often appearing in livestreamed storytelling shows. She is also an outspoken advocate for diversity and representation in entertainment.

Check out her upcoming game GHOST OF YOTEI, set to launch tomorrow, October 2!

We ask all our Renegades: what did you want to be when you were growing up, and how does that compare to where you are now?

As a kid, I had a myriad of eclectic interests and, at one point or another, wanted to pursue all of them as vocations. Ballerina, Egyptologist, Shakespearean actor, marine biologist, nuclear scientist, fencer, violinist, herbologist, pirate, mermaid. To my delight, in my career as an actor and internet jester, I’m able to delve into many fascinating fields and have portrayed many different occupations!

You had an early start in the industry with a role on Full House back in 1992. Looking back, how did that early experience on such an iconic show influence your perspective on performance—or even your sense of identity as an actor growing up in Hollywood?

I was incredibly fortunate to have parents in the industry. I like to say that as below-the-line workers, they didn’t have the kind of connections that would get me in the door, but their familiarity with the industry meant they knew which doors to knock on. They were endlessly supportive, driving through LA traffic for auditions and long days on set, encouraging without ever putting pressure on me. But acting was just one of many things I did as a child. I understood it was work, but it was also a kind of “play” where I shouldn’t take myself too seriously.

Geek & Sundry set the stage early for table-top role-playing games (TTRPG)* actual play, and served as a hub for the online nerd community. How did being a host there shape your path toward storytelling in series like Critical Role, Dimension 20, and Worlds Beyond Number?

*Tabletop role-playing games are collaborative storytelling games, like Dungeons & Dragons, where players create characters, imagine adventures, and use dice to shape the story.

It’s been a strange and meandering path from playing games on a livestream to here. Both my acting and tabletop careers grew out of the ragtag producing and hosting I did on that and my own Twitch channels in those years. Certainly, on some level, practicing the lofty Craft™ of performance and improvisation for 6 hours a day, 6 days a week, was helpful for my art. But the reality is that hustling hard to create Content™ meant I was also constantly doing the less-glamorous business of creating my brand, meeting and getting to collaborate with people I admired in the video game industry, community management, building an audience and online presence, and developing a very particular set of skills for two jobs that were not quite yet on actors’ radars. I got into geek entertainment because I loved it and was passionate about it. And now I find myself on the other side, getting to create the stories I used to be a professional fan of.

TTRPGs often blur the line between performance and personal vulnerability. Can you share a moment in actual play where you felt empowered or even exposed while in character?

This is something I joke about with my dear friends, masters of the craft Brennan Lee Mulligan and Aabria Iyengar. Because we’re improvising the writing for our characters on the fly, during the course of our games, one of us will often articulate some profound insight into a flaw of one of the others’ characters. Except it’ll accidentally turn out to be an unexamined personal trait that we, the performer, brought to the story. They call it “being sniped through the duplex door.”

And one time, Brennan told my character,

“You realize you’re a creature of the deep end of the pool, and you are constantly starting deep conversations in a way that, to lots of people, will be really distressing. [...] There is no part of the universe you don’t feel interested in looking at. And that, suddenly, you realize is an immense gift. It’s a superpower. You’re tough, and your heart is strong, and there’s lots and lots of people who will never want to join you there.”

And I had to sit with that bullet in me and pretend it was just my character that was reeling from the personal revelation of an improviser too insightful for his own good.

Your voice acting has been featured in notable video games like Fallout 76, Apex Legends, and Stray Gods (just to name a few). What draws you to a character when you’re first presented with a new role?

I don’t often get to choose my characters, so often what draws me to the character is that I have booked an audition and someone has agreed to pay me to act! But truthfully, during the audition, I went through a process to find myself in the character, and it aligned with casting’s vision. On some occasions, I’ve been able to collaborate with a team, and the character evolves to include more of me as they develop. But more often, it’s about finding a way to fall in love with the character because game performances are mostly about helping a whole team’s vision come to life. That includes artists, game designers, animators, riggers, and sometimes localization translators that need to have dialogue match timing to within tenths of a second.

You made your off-Broadway debut last December as a featured player in Dungeons & Dragons: The Twenty-Sided Tavern. Was there a particular performance or audience interaction that reinforced why this hybrid of gaming and theater is such a powerful medium for storytelling?

It’s impossible to pull just one example from those performances! Every single show is different, but each has moments of improvised dialogue, jokes, or story beats so perfect that it’s hard to believe they weren’t written in advance. There is a loose structure to the show, but the outcome is decided by audience decisions and the whims of a 20-sided die. Whenever a die is rolled and lands on a “natural 20” or “natural 1,” the audience goes WILD in a way I’ve never seen in any live stage performance. I think audiences connect so strongly with the show because they get to be a part of crafting a truly surprising narrative, which I think is something everyone is craving right now: the chance to be part of building a thrilling adventure that is spontaneous and unpredictable.

You’re a fierce collaborator, showcasing your incredible friendships on-screen and even starting your own actual-play series in Worlds Beyond Numbers with Aabria Iyengar, Lou Wilson, and Brennan Lee Mulligan. How has friendship and collaboration shaped your journey?

Many people unfamiliar with tabletop games are understandably daunted by the rules and math. But at its heart, the game is just there to guide the elements of chance and what we do is collaborative storytelling. And I have the privilege of collaborating with true once-in-a generation talents.

It’s important to note that in voiceover, on-camera comedy with Dropout, and in tabletop, I have had the fortune to have come up with a cohort of some dear friends. Over the last TWO DECADES (wow), I have found the most talented and good-hearted people in LA. Many of us started in midnight shows at the Upright Citizens Brigade theater, cosplaying at conventions, doing sketch comedy in the back of a comic store for almost no audience, playing board games on livestreams in my living room, making indie video games in storage rooms. And it’s been the thrill of a lifetime to now regularly announce huge AAA multi-million dollar projects, Emmy considerations, and sold-out stadium shows with these luminaries 10-20 years later. Started at the bottom …

Congratulations on your lead role of Atsu in the upcoming game Ghost of Yōtei! While a standalone new entry in the Ghost franchise, Yōtei continues a tradition of rich storytelling established by Ghost of Tsushima. With facial capture and voice-acting in mind, what was your approach to grounding Atsu’s voice in a world with so much weight and cultural depth?

I was a huge fan of Ghost of Tsushima, and so from the jump, I guessed what the code-named audition was for and had an immediate touchstone for the gravity of the narrative, characters, and backdrop of the world. Additionally, I’m a huge Samurai and Western film fan, as were my mother and father before me. I believe my deep familiarity with the cinematic language of Kurosawa and Leone were monumental in my booking the role and informing the way we helped find Atsu’s character and movement. In the end, I hope this can be my love letter to the films my parents raised me on.

You’ve been incredibly candid about your journey as a queer, genderfluid performer in gaming and entertainment, going so far as to embrace the title of “bisexual gargoyle” on shows like Game Changer. What advice would you give to the queer Asian community who are discovering themselves and finding their pride?

A personal philosophy I have discovered that works for me is that if you are able, be yourself, joyfully and unapologetically. Your identity and pride grow from that. Find out who you are, never let a label be the whole summation of you. It’s not about being the perfect example of an identity, or “presenting” the right way, or in my case, sitting on chairs weird. It can be challenging, but when balancing on a chair or being open and honest about who you are, all you can do is try your best until you learn more and can do even better. I’ve found when you are open and happy with who you are, it attracts people who like you for being you. And it can encourage others around you to do the same.

Looking ahead, is there a specific genre or project that you’re looking forward to exploring next?

I have so many exciting projects coming up with my podcast. The beauty of Worlds Beyond Number is that each of us takes a turn building a new world for the others to run amuck in!

On the subject of collaboration, there is something so exciting to me about a long-running ensemble TV project. Lately I’ve been on a kick with Shoresy and Ted Lasso (my first time watching! No spoilers!) I’d like to be a part of something like that, where you see really well-written characters grow together over long arcs through a lot of heartbreak and love and wholesome hilarity. It doesn’t have to be a sports show like my examples, of course, but I’m willing to learn to play baseball or professional tag if that helps move the needle.

Lightning Round

• Morning Routine: Hand-whisked ceremonial matcha, a workout if time permits, saying hello to my snake Kitsune, realizing I’m late, running to my car with a bagel in my mouth like a rom-com character, forgetting to eat the bagel, driving to work listening to a playlist I built to get into character.
• Favorite Video Game: Right now, I’m playing Astro Bot and Blue Prince, but my favorite of all time is still probably The Last of Us*, as it forced introspection about the role of a video game hero and also inspired my VO career. Return of the Obra DInn is also probably way up there. *Note from Gold House: Read our interview with Asad Qizilbash, Head of PlayStation Productions!
• Favorite TTRPG Playable Character (PC): It’s always the one that I’ve just played. But Ame, The Witch of the Worlds Heart from Worlds Beyond Number will always be special to me as she was the first character I built for my own project and a team developed the rules for her from the ground up.
• Comfort Food: Okonomiyaki?! My mom’s chili or jook. Meat pies or dumplings. Anything from 7-11 when visiting Japan. I love food.
• Favorite Hairstyle: (Do people have favorite hairstyles on other people? If so, anything my friend Jiavani does is iconic.) On me? My side shave has become a signature of my look, so much so that I brought my barber on an episode of Game Changer.
• Best Advice You’ve Received: Paraphrasing Aabria Iyengar, paraphrasing Jurnee Smollett: “Don’t accept criticism from anyone who isn’t in your field at your level or higher”.