Gideon Emery returned to MCM London Comic Con this weekend for the first time in a few years. Despite trying to pace himself for the intensity of the event, he warned those of us in the press room that his voice was already worn out, probably from the two-hour meet-and-greet he’d just done with his many dedicated fans.

The request Gideon most frequently gets is to repeat his favourite phrase from the parts he’s played, but he said it’s one of the most difficult questions for him because when he finishes a project “it’s gone” from his mind and he’s “onto the next one – not in terms of the experience, but the script is forgotten, and sometimes I feel like I’m letting people down because I can’t remember”.

As an actor with quite a portfolio in both voice acting and TV, he expressed how he used to get frustrated with always getting cast as villains in TV. He doesn’t want to be pigeon-holed, he wants to show and experience a range of characters. However, while his TV career tends to be sinister, he often gets cast as ambiguously heroic figures in video games, such as Balthier in Final Fantasy XII and Fenris in Dragon Age II. He hopes that at some point casting directors might realise “Ah, if he can be this type of character just with his voice, maybe he can be like that outside of voice acting…”

Speaking of Balthier and Fenris, Gideon went on the say that a number of directors have told him to, “think of Balthier’s voice and think of Fenris’s voice and make something in between,” – an odd request, he feels, since both voices are practically his normal, everyday voice. This is partly why Balthier is one of his favourite characters: as well as being his first major role, the part didn’t require adjustments in terms of accent and tone.

He confessed a love of dubbing projects, which not all voice actors enjoy because of how difficult it can be to lip-sync English phrases with Japanese mouth movements. “I guess that’s maybe from doing ADR, or camera work of my own, but it’s kind of fun for me to try and match a phrase with mouth flaps.”

With a kind last word to those of us gathered around the table, the session was over all too soon, and Gideon was swept away to recover his voice and no doubt prepare for Saturday’s panels and MyM stand signings with Alix Wilton Regan, who plays the lady Inquisitor from Dragon Age: Inquistion.