Original subtitle: 'Bayonetta's former English VA alleges she was only offered $4,000 to reprise the role'
Hoo boy, this is a big story that has angered a lot of people, so I'll try my best to be succinct.
On the 15th of October, 2022, voice actress Hellena Taylor (famous for providing the voice for Bayonetta) posted a series of videos explaining why she did not reprise the role for Bayonetta 3. (Archive here.) In the videos, she accuses Platinum Games of not offering her enough money to play the character for the entire game: an alleged 'final offer' of $4,000 USD. As a result, she has demanded that fans of Bayonetta boycott the game and donate their money to charity instead. You can watch the full video below (reuploaded by someone else).
The fallout, as you would've guessed, was tremendous. And Hideki Kamiya is handling it about as well as you expect. He was blocking people so quickly and frequently that Twitter actually locked him out of his account for 'unusual activity'.
Here's what he's been saying in response to the Internet dogpiling him:
Sad and deplorable about the attitude of untruth. That's what all I can tell now. By the way, BEWARE OF MY RULES.
俺ツイッターマスターだから公式クライアントの使い方よく知らなくてTweetdeck使っててそっちだと@で来るツイート色々見れたんだけど今昆虫たちが押し寄せてきてるので公式クライアント使用に切り替えた...ら, I hardly see any @tweets. I've lost track of them, so please understand that I may not be able to reply for a while...
つーかそもそも公式クライアントだと@ツイートがほとんど届かないのなぜだろう...俺が使い方分かってないだけ...? （I'm not sure I'll be able to read your reply, so please leave it alone...)
But with the official client, there are few steps before blocking, so it's super comfortable... I wish Tweetdeck and Feather would learn from this...
(Please be careful, because blocking is super comfortable and you'll end up blocking irrelevant things too...)
I'll block a lot of things I don't understand because it's too easy to block...
I see... so this is an official way to do this...
I should block all the quoted retweets too... I can't stand reading them...
I warned you...
俺ツイッターマスターだから公式クライアントの使い方よく知らなくてTweetdeck使っててそっちだと@で来るツイート色々見れたんだけど今昆虫たちが押し寄せてきてるので公式クライアント使用に切り替えた...ら, I hardly see any @tweets. I've lost track of them, so please understand that I may not be able to reply for a while...
つーかそもそも公式クライアントだと@ツイートがほとんど届かないのなぜだろう...俺が使い方分かってないだけ...? （I'm not sure I'll be able to read your reply, so please leave it alone...)
But with the official client, there are few steps before blocking, so it's super comfortable... I wish Tweetdeck and Feather would learn from this...
(Please be careful, because blocking is super comfortable and you'll end up blocking irrelevant things too...)
I'll block a lot of things I don't understand because it's too easy to block...
I see... so this is an official way to do this...
I should block all the quoted retweets too... I can't stand reading them...
I warned you...
When Platinum was interviewed by Game Informer about Taylor being replaced, they used the phrase 'overlapping circumstances'. I and several other people assumed this meant Taylor had prior engagements (i.e. she had a schedule conflict with another acting gig). But with this new context provided by Taylor, it's possible they meant to say 'various factors'. So either A) there's been a translation error; or B) Platinum just straight-up lied to us in a typical, indirect fashion the Japanese are famous for.
So this is where we are as I type this. Before I get into the nitty-gritty, I should say here that yes, I do believe $4,000 is ridiculous and way too low for a character like Bayonetta. At the same time however, I can separate that opinion from the rest of my thoughts. My goal here is to get ahead of the curve and offer some food for thought.
Is Bayonetta as successful as Taylor claims it is? Maybe. You have to remember the franchise was being shopped around for a while, until Nintendo bought the rights for the second game. A wildly successful franchise shouldn't have so much trouble finding a publisher. It's easy to see the number $450,000,000 and think, 'Wow, there's so much money just sitting there!'. And sure, you can make the argument that corporate suits receive way too big of a cut in sales (compared to the people who actually created the game [programmers, etc.]). But that's also a broader problem in creative industries as a whole, not just voice acting.
I'm also wondering what Taylor considers a 'living wage'. Does she just mean a higher pay-out (which is fine), or does she mean royalties (i.e. a percentage of continuous income after the fact)? Because if it's the latter, I'm afraid she has no leg to stand on. She claims Jennifer Hale (her replacement) does not have the 'right' to Bayonetta's voice (or to even sign merchandise!). 'I created that voice,' she stated. Well, the problem is, neither does she. Hellena Taylor does not own the character of Bayonetta - Nintendo, Sega and Platinum do. Nor does she own the concept of a sensual British accent. Actors earn royalties when their likeness is used in a product, usually a movie where their faces are on screen. As far as I know, there is no legal precedent on paying royalties for vocal performances, and likely there never will be. (And good luck trying to argue that in the Japanese legal system...)
Will her boycott work? No. The game has already been dubbed and it's almost release day. Even in the best-case scenario for Taylor, Nintendo will absolutely not delay the game to put her back in (see: their refusal to delay a Pokémon game for even one more year). Unless you have an audience of like ten people, boycotts will simply be ignored by companies in favour of their own interests. I can count on one hand how many times a boycott worked.
But let's tackle the elephant in the room, as this is the deciding factor over who's in the right. Hellena Taylor is a member of SAG-AFTRA, a voice actor union that tried (and failed) to negotiate higher wages (including royalty payments for each role), and requires all their talents to be fully vaccinated in order to work. I don't exactly have a favourable opinion of them. But here's the kicker: Jennifer Hale is also a member of SAG-AFTRA, and much more prolific. We can conclude that being a union member had no influence in this story (and if Taylor isn't a member, then she needs to remove SAG-AFTRA from her Twitter bio). So here are my questions:
- Was Jennifer Hale more expensive to hire than Hellena Taylor?
- What was the final offer that Hale took? Did she agree to $4,000?
- Did Hale and Taylor negotiate for more money?
- Was Taylor's offer truly final? Or was it the initial asking price?
- What was Taylor paid for Bayonetta 1 and 2?
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