Skip to main content

Patricia Summersett, the voice of Zelda, talks voice acting’s pitfalls and perks

The woman who voices Princess Zelda didn’t know she was auditioning for the role. Patricia Summersett had just moved to Los Angeles, and she used contacts built from years as a voice actress to land the audition for an unknown video game. The script was “bleached,” meaning it included no details about the story or character. She tried out for two generic parts: Princess and warrior woman.

For the princess, she was asked to do a voice “in the fantasy world, anything from mid-Atlantic realms of English, to the world of the U.K.,” Summersett told Digital Trends. The actor is from upper Michigan, but her take on Zelda is angelic, royal, and airy. She only learned what role she was trying to snag when she arrived for the first recording session and signed a non-disclosure agreement.

“It was the best thing I could ever hear, and the most terrifying,” Summersett said. “You just hope you do a good job and make it to the end. It could be huge, and I could fall flat on my face.”

The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild review
Patricia Summersett voices Zelda in ‘Breath of the Wild’ Nintendo

The role would bring Summersett accolades and death threats, becoming her most prominent to date, but it was only the latest work in a voice acting career that spans decades. Summersett started her career in entertainment on the ice rink at the age of 6. From there, it was musical theater in Quebec in high school, and then a degree in theater. She learned that voice acting was a viable career pursuit and started searching job boards at her school for gigs. Her first job was a beer commercial for radio, but in the gaming industry, she started with indie titles.

“Most often it’s stealthy strong female warriors I audition for, having a low earthy voice,” she said. “But some other roles, let’s say, over the last two years, to name a sliver: Warrior animals, so many robots, excited children, queens, elves, princesses, singing llamas, scientists, Barbie parrots, evil blood-lusting monsters, desperate good-hearted mothers, pragmatic scientists, people who scream, and any and all strange characters one would find in numerous iterations of post-apocalyptic landscapes.”

To stand out from the crowd, she made semi-professional demos with a sound engineer, writing her own dialogue, which got her noticed by a gaming company. Her big “a-ha” moment came after many smaller gigs. A director was looking for someone to voice Angelina Jolie’s character in the video game adaptation of Beowulf.

She got the gig, and suddenly found herself on a new level — accepted into the Canadian union of film and TV. Summersett thought her take on Jolie sounded lusty, but the attention put her on the radar of larger projects. She also continued her education, earning a master’s degree in classical acting.

Patricia Summersett / Andreanne Gauthier

Summersett is serious about her craft. For Zelda, she dove into the universe, learning all she could about the character. It wasn’t her first time immersing her self in an established franchise. She voiced Hope Jensen in Assassin’s Creed Rogue, and was excited to work with well-known actors in the voice acting field. She also voiced another Assassin’s Creed character, Galina Voronina. Recently, the actor revealed that she voices a character Star Wars: Squadrons.

Playing Zelda allowed her to enter the top tier of actors in the field, but she still had to deal with issues that women too often face in entertainment. She dealt with condescending behavior and “the assumption that because I’m a woman, I can’t do certain things.” She also felt objectified at times, and other times felt like she was dealing with a toxic work environment, although she declined to name specific projects.

Still, she feels the industry is changing for the better. The last “three or four years” have seen advances in awareness, such as intimacy coordinators on sets, who make sure actors are protected during intimate scenes. According to the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, an intimacy coordinator is “an advocate, a liaison between actors and production, and a movement coach and/or choreographer in regards to nudity and simulated sex and other intimate and hyper-exposed scenes.”

Interested in getting into voice acting? Summersett said it took her about seven years to establish herself in the field. The opportunities for women are growing, she said. But it’s important to know your value as an artist and not be afraid to push yourself. Working toward leadership and directing positions is also a good way to be able to chart one’s own path.

For Summersett, working in the videogame field has been a highlight in a career that includes music and TV acting. But it always comes down to the work.

“One of the challenges of being a voice actor,” she said, “is that you’re only as good as your last project. The hustling never stops.”

Jon Silman
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom players are terrorizing its cutest characters
A Korok walks in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

In The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, players are given unlimited freedom to solve puzzles in any way they want. Shrine puzzles, for instance, usually have a developer-intended solution that can be entirely bypassed with clever thinking. However, players are already drunk with power as they find inventive ways to tackle problems ... and that's bad news for Hyrule's Korok population.

As was the case in Breath of the Wild, Koroks are cute little creatures that act as a primary collectible in Tears of the Kingdom. Link must solve small puzzles out in the world to reveal them and get a Korok seed in exchange, which is then used to upgrade his gear slots. In a recurring puzzle, Link finds a Korok who wants to be reunited with a friend off in the distance -- but it can't move due to its gigantic backpack. It's up to Link to move the Korok in any way he can think of.

Read more
Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s Like Likes are absolutely horrifying
A Like Like appears in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is full of enemies for Link to strike down. Naturally, a lot of returning favorites from Breath of the Wild return, like Moblins and Lynels. But there are a lot of new monsters too, from Zonai robots to fearsome Gleeoks (which return from Link’s very first adventure).

There’s one new creature that steals the show, though. And by “steals the show,” I mean haunts my nightmares. Meet Tears of the Kingdom’s absolutely horrifying Like Likes.

Read more
Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom doubles down on breakable weapons — and I’m thrilled
Link fights a Construct with a fused weapon in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

After years of barely knowing anything about it, Nintendo has finally blown the lid off of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. The company dropped a 10-minute deep dive into the open-world game today that focuses on some of its new features. The list includes a Recall ability that rewinds time and an Ascend skill that teleports Link through ceilings.

The talk of the town, though, is the new Fuse system, which doubles down on Breath of the Wild's most controversial system. The gameplay clip confirms that weapons can once again break in the sequel, as Link quickly smashes a stick by smacking it against an enemy a few times. In classic infomercial fashion, though, series producer Eiji Aonuma picks up another stick and seamlessly fuses it with a rock to create a more durable hammer.

Read more