10 Years of Being Max Caulfield

0:00Music Music It feels like the Life is Strange series is probably coming to an end. Now, as with anything these days, the end is probably just an extended wait before you bring back that thing that ended and do it all over again, but it kind of feels like Life is Strange might be truly coming to an end, which means we might be at the end of stories of Max Callfield, Chloe Price, arguably maybe we shouldn't be telling more stories about these two characters, but the original game, I found it very moving, I found it very interesting,

1:06I covered it at Kataku when the original series came out and it went from this quirky surprise to a genuine cultural phenomenon. And I have been following the series ever since as just a personal fan as a journalist, as a critic. And so when I saw kind of unexpectedly that Life is Strange reunion is going to bring back these characters with some supernatural shenanigans because of course, it's Life is Strange, who cares? Who cares? Who cares? Well, I care. I reached out to Square Enix, I originally wanted to talk to some folks who worked on the game about what it means to bring this game to an end and was told there would be no developers available. Decknight has gone through an enormous amount of layoffs in between Life is Strange double exposure and then Life is Strange reunion. But as a really wonderful sort of consolation prize, it feels terrible to even put it that way because I was delighted by at least this being an alternative, was that I got to talk to Hannah Tell, who is the voice of Max Callfield,

2:07who has been with this series since the beginning. This series has changed developers and has changed performers based on the characters in the world and the state of things. But Hannah Tell has been there since the start. Has been there as Max is a defining part of Life is Strange as is anything else. And so to have an opportunity to spend some time on the phone with Emson Max with Hannah was surreal and interesting and moving. And we had a really great conversation about their journey with Max from start to what is probably the finish. I hope you enjoy the conversation. Here is my time chatting with Hannah Tell the actor behind Max Callfield in Life is Strange. I think there's really like no better place to start than kind of just talking through that Life is Strange, the character of Max Callfield has been a part of your life for more than a decade. And what does it feel like to start saying goodbye? I mean, I guess

3:10video and all storytelling maybe, you know, there are ways every character, every story can come back. I feel like that happens a lot these days. But what does it feel like for you as a part of this story to start saying goodbye to this character? Well, it's incredibly emotional and poignant and bittersweet. I've been associated with this character for the majority of my career and playing her 10 years ago was incredibly formative for me and playing her again as I am today has been life changing as well. So it feels really full circle to get to do this one last time. And to share that connection that I have with the character and with the relationship between Max and Chloe, I share that with not only the actors that I've worked with, but also all of the players

4:14and anybody who's watched a playthrough and that's been moved by their story. And I feel so privileged and honored to get to be a part of that shared connection. And it's really meaningful to me. You know, a decade is a long time in a person's life as well. It's a long time for you as a person where you have professionally, personally, I, how do you feel? You've changed over these 10 years as you look back not just about playing Max, but just about where you're at, you know, in your life. Oh, definitely. But I've also, I also feel the same as I did when I was 13. So I still feel like a child and I'm just trying to figure out my way through the world and understand what the best choices are just like Max's and I'm kind of posing as an adult in a professional setting and trying as are we all manage my neurosis just like Max is doing. And I want to say that playing Max, again,

5:22as an adult has really caused me to grow in so many ways that I do not think would have happened had I not come back and played the part. Originally, when they brought me back to play Max, I was under the impression that she was still very much plagued by her anxiety and her insecurities and self-doubt. But this new version of Max had really stepped into her power as a successful photographer and had taken on this position of influence and power over young artists at an illustrious university. And there was not really a place for her to feel backwards and shy when she's trying to interact with her colleagues and her students. And I really related to that because my anxiety and neurosis and nervousness had plagued me and it made other people anxious and nervous. And I realized that there comes a time when you have to figure out a way

6:29to grow through that and to work through that and not necessarily mask it. But in the process of doing things afraid, you come to realize that you're capable and that it's okay to be a more professional put together strong opinion and assertive version of yourself. That's okay. And you deserve to take up that space. So Max learning that made me learn that. And as an actor, it expanded me and as a person as well. You know, when we meet Max on the first game, she's an anxious, nervous teenager. We meet Max later on in the series. Maybe still nervous and anxious, but in different ways. But as a young adult and, you know, that difference in time, difference in confidence, difference in understanding yourself sounds like it was reflected in yourself as well. Did that change the kind of performance you brought to Max where it's like, hey, I understand

7:30myself a little bit better. I understand what I want. I can track with Max and where the journey that she has gone on as well. Did you find that ended up influencing how you performed the character? It was all happening in real time. And when I found out that they wanted Max to be more confident, I was concerned, can I even do this? Because it felt like she had matured and grown into herself in a way that I hadn't and couldn't understand. And I'm actually a little bit older than Max. So it's just a little, it was very, you know, much figuring out things as they were happening, figuring out how to retain the core qualities of what makes Max Max. And for me, that was her empathetic nature, her strong desire to do what's morally right. She cares so much about other people and doing what's right. She overthings and agonizes. And I think that's where

8:34her rewind power stems from is from overanalyzing and ruminating so hard. And so I just kept that and focused on, you know, what it would be like to have her have to work through that anxiety and present herself in a professional way. And doing that taught me how to do it myself. And I will say that there was a lot of just doing it afraid. And I felt like that worked for the character because she's also in a new circumstance trying to build a new life for herself in in double exposure and in reunion. She's escaping so much trauma and trying to find normalcy when she's highly abnormal. And so I just focused on her desire to be okay with herself. And whatever

9:36she has to do to make that happen is is what she's going to have to do. You know, I think when people talk about, you know, video games and storytelling, especially in the last 10 years, life is strange is sort of comes top of mind as a game that does a really wonderful job of merging player agency. And just like what makes a video game a video game, what makes a video game story unique? Have video games always been something you've been interested in? Excited video game stories? Or is that something that happened as you found yourself in the midst of, you know, several different video game projects starting with murdered soul suspects that eventually life is strange? Well, I definitely was really enamored with video games growing up. But it was just, you know, the Sims and snowboard kids on N64 or do you call racing? Not going off of the you get a snowboard kids reference in and like so I love that. I I was more of a PlayStation. So like cool borders was one of the ones that I was very into on the

10:37original PlayStation. But snowboard kids, I distinctly remember the box art at my like local video store because it was always so cool. That's where I rented it. The local video store I would I love to go I got an Nintendo 64 for Christmas. And it was my world. And I would go to the video store and rent all kinds of stuff. And so the and the Sims, you know, took over my life so much that I have to be I can't even have it anymore. But yeah, I never saw that as a potential career path for me at all because I'd never seen a game like life is strange where it's a choose your own adventure with all this branching dialogue and narrative cinematic element. I thought, you know, it was going to be just, you know, fighting. And and then even when I originally got murdered soul suspect, I had no familiarity with games of that kind of depth and complexity. I think that when I played in 64, I liked the lower resolution of the graphics. And when things would get a little

11:45bit too 3D beyond like, gosh, I can't remember the name of it. But it all 007. Gold and I. Yeah. Yeah. One of the things went a little bit more advanced and golden. It was disorienting for me visually. And I didn't like it. So I had been out of the game for a while with what was popular and happening in storytelling and games. So it was really exciting to get to be a part of both of those games. And yeah, I found it incredibly liberating to do a murdered soul suspect in particular. It was my first mocap job. And the characters were highly stylized and unique and different from one another. But yet they were the same mind. They were like psychic sisters. So it was really fun and freeing. So getting to be involved in that world was awesome. And then of course, coming back is a bit incredible too. Do you do mocap as well with life in

12:48strange or is it strictly VO and a booth? I'm doing mocap for double exposure and reunion. Okay. Full performance capture. But in the original life is strange. I just did the voice. Right. So it was a big adjustment to go from just playing or voice to playing her whole body and mostly her face because the graphics have advanced so much in these later versions of the game. So there's a lot of really nuanced and complex facial expressions that are rendered through the technology now. And so that was interesting to figure out how to do because in the original game, you don't see her face moving with that kind of complexity. So I had to kind of figure out how to make my face work is her face. I was going to say what did you like study the original game? It's like, okay, this is how she smiles. This is how she moves like I wonder, you know, on some level, of course, like

13:50you're going to interpret that. But like on some level, the developers gave some version of it in the original game. And then you're picking up where they left off. Like, what was the creative process for you like, like, here's what I'm going to do with my face and my body to reflect where she came from, but also it's of course it's going to be different because now I'm the person who's being captured. Yeah, well, it was so hard because in the original game, all of her body movements and the way that she carries herself and presents herself is shy and withdrawn and pull herself out. And this version of the character was was needing to be more authoritative and you know, confident. And so that that was a huge challenge for me because my posture was also still of a somewhat more meek orientation. And I just had to make it work.

14:51I just I watched her walking around and studied her body movements and what I could get from her face and then just tried to evolve that into a more stronger and self possessed and brave and I guess comfortable with who she is type of person. So that was a big challenge for me and it was just a lot of trial and error and figuring out what felt right. I have to imagine you're one of the rare performers that has played a character in which you just do the video and have an opportunity to continue playing that character and add the motion capture component to it. What would you describe as the biggest difference in performing when you're strictly doing a voice in a booth and then you're also adding the performance capture part on top

15:56of that. Just as a performer like what is taking me through a little bit of like what's different about trying to embody that character in the two very different physical sort of ways that you go about it. Oh, everything. It's completely drastically different between doing just the voice and having to get all of the emotion out solely through your voice. You're not seeing an image, you're not seeing your facial expression. So your vocal performance needs to hold enough emotional dynamic to make it seem authentic and enough. So when you're doing motion capture, it's very difficult because not only are you trying to give an emotionally authentic performance, you're having to remember and keep track of many different running technical things that are happening all at once. Not just the suit on your body that's tight, heavy, hot, painful at times on

17:02the head. Not just that, but where you are in the volume, which is the set that we used for making the game, you need to be aware of hitting your marks and making sure that when you do hit your marks and do any kind of choreographed action that you have that you're doing it in a really precise and technically sound way that's going to make things easier, not harder on the animators later down the line. So you have to think about the budget and how much what you're trying to do with your body is going to cost because sometimes if you're trying to do more intricate movements with your hands and your body and face, it can cause animators to have to spend hours and hours and hours. So you have to be aware of a lot of different hats. It almost sounds like there's a

18:06bit of a minimalism happening in the performance and what you're trying to convey is much emotion as possible with the minimal amount of movement knowing that whatever you do is then hand it off to another team to realize in the game itself, which seems like a sometimes tricky, sometimes maybe interesting challenge to try and cut the balance between those two things. Yeah, definitely. It's definitely a lot of multitasking. In addition to just keeping track of what you're doing with your body, then you have to bring in the idea of props and props and motion capture are a whole new element of, uh, to troubleshoot. I'm waving a book around. Yeah, or, you know, as the playable, being a playable character in motion capture is much different from being a supporting character in motion capture because you have to have, you have so many intricate little pieces that you have

19:10to put together to tell the story from start to finish. You know, even just down from putting your hand on a knob and turning it and opening a drawer or going through doors or going up and down stairs or everything has to be just right and has to look right and you have to adjust your body to make it look as normal and normal for a video game character. Like, can you, are you able to are there folks like sort of on set with you providing feedback and like, hey, we need this the naturalistic, but also the camera is going to be here for the player. And so we need to find a middle ground between it looking normal and it being what we wanted to look like in the video game. So the player can see what's in the drawer properly or what exactly that's exactly what the kind of questions that are being figured out on the spot and troubleshoot it with. And, you know, you just have to be able to keep a lot of different trains running on different

20:13tracks at the same time in your head at once. Was there a moment, um, especially early on, you know, I was covering the game at the gaming website Kataku at the time and so I was writing a lot about life is strange as it came out. I was very personally taken like despite not being a young anxious teenager myself was very taken in by by the game and was covering it about a lot writing it about a lot. And so I was sort of there as like I was watching it become this sort of cultural phenomenon like much bigger than anyone could have expected as it was happening for you was there a particular moment where you realized, oh, this wasn't just a video game I was in like this is becoming something bigger. Do you remember any sort of moment where that crystallized to you that, oh, this wasn't just a job like this is becoming something a lot bigger than I expected. Yes, I feel like I go through a little bit of that every day still to this day. Um, it's it was such a huge surprise that it went the direction that it went and became, you

21:24know, this touchstone for so many people and essentially a cultural phenomenon because it's inspired so many other people to create fan art and fan fiction and now a tv series and other games and um so it really is like this portal for more creativity and imagination and um that has just blown me away and I really feel touched and honored by the people who feel moved by the performance and by Max's story and um that is just an incredible feeling as an actor and as a person to have played a part in helping someone figure out more about themselves or how they feel about the world and there's so much of life is strange that's about actions having consequences

22:30thinking about your decisions and how they affect others and the fact that a lot of people took that away with them from the game and made them see their own life in a different way is just profound and I'm so blown away by it all. What did your family and friends make of the project especially once it started blowing up and you were becoming more like known as a result of it people are interested in not just Max but like Hannah the person the person behind the voice like like what was your what did your family and friends make of everything as it was taking off. Oh well um it was shocking. It was shocking and um I certainly didn't know how best to handle it and um had confidence issues so I was incredibly grateful for any kind of recognition

23:33and kindness and um towards my acting career because it's such a hard hard road and it's so full of rejection and um uncertainty and so um I just felt uh so blessed that that the performance was good and that that the game was celebrated and that it's still happening today I I can't get over it and it never gets old or um or I never get used to it I'm continually in awe of the fact that this was me playing this role in this series so um it's just a huge honor for me. You know I think you know they're obviously very good games but I think part of what was the

24:39magic of life is strange was these characters it's like the game and the characters working together produce something bigger than those individual components. Why do you think Max resonated with people so broadly like what is it that you think about this character that spoke to so many people's lived experiences that you know like I said like I saw a lot of myself in the experiences of the game despite it being a sci-fi story involving two young girls navigating high school not a lot there necessarily for me and yet I found myself very moved and taken by the story and the characters. Why do you why do you think it ended up being and Max ended up being so universally appealing? I think that her vulnerability is really relatable for people and her sense of curiosity and keen observation and her sense of humor which is often self-deprecating

25:51I think that that was an interesting formula for a character that is not a likely video game hero and you know there there were a lot of aspects to Max in the original game where she was borderline debilitated by her shyness and self-doubt and going along with her on that journey during the episodes one to five and as she discovers her power reckons with it and ultimately becomes in control of it to you know her own detriment. She grows and becomes a version of herself that she never thought possible and I think that that's a really beautiful journey for people to

26:56relate to and to see themselves in and her relationship with Chloe was it's so messy and loyal and deep and complicated and nuanced and we see how much it means to her and how formative it is for her and I think that people see their own relationships in that bond and in that dynamic and they see themselves in Max being you know totally swept off of their feet by this incredible character of Chloe who is you know so singular and charming and influential for Max and I think we've all had people like that in our lives who have changed our lives and who have made a huge impact on us and I think that yeah living out Max and Chloe's relationship was really therapeutic

28:03for some people in a way. With the new game reunion you're doing motion capture what's were there moments where you actually got to perform with opposite Chloe in a scene obviously when you're in the vio booth it's often rare to be opposite the you know actors who are playing out a scene together with motion capture I'm wondering if where their moments were like for the first time it's like oh right I'm bouncing off this other person who I have a in the in the world in my own experience like a long relationship with but this technology is sort of the first time where we're in a room actually bouncing that relationship and it's kind of shared history both you as a performer and then like in in terms of the games like in game relationship itself what was that experience like oh it was it was awesome well originally we had in the original game when I did you know very cinematic narrative sequences with Chloe Ashley and I were in the same room recording

29:09facing each other so not not everything but the majority of the most impactful scenes that we had together we were in the room playing off one another however for reunion when I'm doing a voice over it's all in her monologue for just Max by herself thinking to herself commenting on her environment in her feelings and you know what she's going about at that moment in time and then everything else is with other characters so it's just like filming a TV show or a regular you know film or something everything is played out on the set and and between me as Max and all of the other characters and when when we went on set together Rihanna and I who's playing Chloe in reunion we felt an instant history and connection

30:14because she had a deep deep love for her role of Chloe that she played when she was 18 and it was very formative for her and just as it matters so much to her to play Chloe it also matters so much to me to play Max and the weight of that when we came together on set knowing that there was all of this collective history between these characters and history between the fans and the characters and this sacred bond that we had to uphold and we took it you know extremely seriously and with utmost care and love and we could definitely instantly feel that there was the strong spark there and we were doing something important and touching upon a hollow ground. As a performer you know part of what's unique about life is strange is that there is that choose your own adventure aspect to where scenes can go differently story lines can go differently

31:16I just wonder for you you know I'm sure for every scene you're trying to give it your all and embody what should be happened but like oftentimes in a television show or movie like the scenes may be shot you know out of sequence necessary it's not necessarily the first scene is shot the last scene is shot in that order but there's like a concrete arc it's like the character is going to go on this journey and I know what that journey is but then when with life is strange it's like well there's many journeys this character could go on and it depends on what the player wants to do and I wonder how you inhabit embodying like those different versions of Max as a performer knowing that it's sort of up to the player to decide you know different tones or dialogue choices and things of that nature and how that affects or complicates you know you as a performer. Well it's definitely complicated to keep all the branching dialogue aspects straight and to you know make sure that you know exactly what is happening for this particular timeline of events and that was very complex in reunion because you have the choice

32:26at the beginning of the game to select if you chose to save Arcadia Bay or save Chloe and then there's an additional choice from there did you choose to have a relationship with her romantically or just a friendship and so we have all these different variables we have to act out every single path with as much authenticity and honor as as the next because when a player makes this choice they want to feel that Max is committed to this choice of their version of Max so I can't go into it judging what she's doing I can't you know give more of a stronger performance on the lines that I would choose rather than I have to put put aside my own judgment and what I think is right for the character and just focus on making Max as committed as possible in that choice and so so that was sometimes challenging but I just remember that everybody's just trying to do it makes sense

33:32to them in the moment and navigating life as an adult in the complicated world so sometimes she's going to do something that I don't agree with or players might not agree with in totality so she's only human and she's doing the best she can like just practically speaking are when you're you know filming a scene or motion capturing a scene are you know and let's say there could be three variations on like what the player does like are you doing all those three variations and then moving on to the next like how exactly to from the like a production standpoint do you what is sort of the order of how you handle the fact that there's so much so much different choice and variation that can happen on the players part well when we're going through scene by scene we just have all the different options we just do it over and over again with every little choice that you can make and everybody just has to stay on the same page and know what we're

34:37doing everybody has to be really alert and able to multitask and also just the amount of dialogue that has to be memorized and that has to you have to just to go through one scene there's so many different options that it takes a really long time to shoot all of it so you have lots of pages of dialogue to memorize for a single shoot day and a lot of times the different dialogue options require drastically different emotional perspectives and so you have to just do a lot of mental gymnastics and it's very heady I was going to say that seems like I feel like you could be doing the line you know read and it's like well I did okay I did an emphasis here on that but that's actually how she felt in the previous choice okay I've got to toss that out and like then put

35:42the weight somewhere else that just seems it seems like a lot and very unique to you know performing in a game like this yes yes you know as we near towards some of some of the end of this conversation and towards the end you know at least as far as we know of the road of you playing the role of Max like what was your last day on set or was in a vio booth like when was there a sense of finality with the character at least and so far as the performance part sort of like your contribution before it's handed over to the developers or the audience when they play it where was the final sort of cut or equivalent or it's like oh right okay I guess this is it yeah wow um well that moment was kind of spread out over several weeks and months um to to make reunion I was traveling back and forth between New York and Denver several times a

36:46month and it was so much traveling which was which was a challenge for me to manage as a nervous traveler and I had to really go into a strong headspace of focusing on my faith to get through um going back and forth from from New York to Denver like that and my time in Denver was extremely concentrated where we were you know doing long shoot days many many days in a row without a day off or a day to like get accustomed to the elevation or just the the the jet lag and um so it was a extremely difficult filming process for me to get through stamina wise and um I

37:47was at the end very rundown and I was not fully able to understand that it was over and I feel like I was kind of just in survival mode and um I still don't understand that it's over and um it's so uh profound of a situation to be in in the first place um to even get to play a character to get to play a character once and then again and then again and again and um it's just so rare and a beautiful experience for me and I'm just trying to focus on how grateful I am that this ever even happened and um you know I just like I just and blown away that god brought me to this point and um yeah I just want to soak it all in and um really allow myself to experience the game coming out

38:58I think when double exposure came out I wasn't able to really participate fully in in that because I was so concerned with not letting any negativity affect my performance on reunion and we went right in to making reunion after double exposure so for reunion as this comes out and this is my last time playing max I just want to say for it all and um soak it in and uh maintain an attitude of gratitude because this totally changed my life well and that's what I wanted to ask as we closed this out it was like you know now you know you're closing a a chapter in your life with with life is strange and with max with Chloe in this whole universe like where does acting where does performance like where does that fit in Hannah's life these days I know at some point you went back to school but now you're in you know lives in you know now you're in in New York I where does

39:59all this fit in where do you think it fits in in the future like what was your kind of take away from this very unique experience and how do you feel like that's going to factor or not factor into what you want to do with the rest of your career and your life and you know you're your time on the stage so to speak oh well thanks for asking that question um I think that uh after the original life is strange game I experienced a series of disappointments in my acting career that drove me to turn more to music and uh through through music and focusing on developing myself as a musician making recordings and putting those out I ended up going back to school and uh to study music and from there got drawn into the idea of learning about the brain and the mind and ended up getting an education in undergrad for neuroscience at USC and luckily I finished that

41:03right before I went to move to Denver to make double exposure so I got it to graduate and I didn't have to interrupt anything congratulations thank you but I was so overwhelmingly grateful to life is strange for bringing me back to acting um because I've been an actress since I was seven it's been my lifelong dream and goal to be a successful actress and um it was very sad and painful for me to walk away from that dream and um try to become someone outside of the arts uh it was hard for me and I'm really grateful to be back in acting although it's incredibly uncertain and difficult to navigate um from a professional standpoint um but yeah I'm just going to focus on uh auditioning for whatever comes my way and um I'd love to do more comedic roles I think that

42:06playing a lot of fraught characters has been um a bit of a a bit of a weight on my shoulders and I'd like to explore um the more uh lighthearted aspects of acting I can imagine if you were an anxious person by nature then being asked to perform an anxious person feels like you never get the escape of being a character you're just a different version of yourself yeah definitely um so I'm I'm I'm right now just auditioning and playing music and um working on uh just making a life as a as an artist in New York City I just got engaged and congratulations again that's wonderful thank you thank you so much and I have four incredible cats that keep me very busy so I just uh just focusing on being grateful for this beautiful little life that I have none of which are the four cats even though I was warned up front hey just like I

43:11said there might be two kids that run through the door depending if they don't respect the door rule you gave me a warning there may be one of four cats that come through the podcast and like that hasn't happened so it's like the kids respect the rule your cats at least by chance did not come through and so uh you know we're sleeping and were were they awake they would they would have they would have they would have walked right in front of the camera um yes they'd be here pitching they're extremely needy cats sure they need to be entertained at all times just a child their board they want mommy to come in there and make things fun for them so well you know beyond you know the opportunity to play the new life is strange uh beyond looking to whatever acting rules you might have in the future if people are interested in your music or what else you have going on where would you point people towards if they want to learn you know learn I guess listen uh to to more what you have going on as an artist oh thank you yeah um all my music's on

44:12all the major music platforms like Spotify um I guess it's called Apple Music you know I don't know um it's all up there and uh you can find it there and um I'd love for people to listen and get cozy and um going a little journey with the soundscapes that I've made based on the uh inner workings of my own mind and um yeah I'm I'm honored that people want to hear um what I've come up with as a songwriter it's really special to me so um yeah it's it's a big big uh pleasure when people want to listen well definitely go and check that out if you're interested in learning more of what Hannah is up to outside of the world of video games but Hannah this has been a true delight I'm very grateful for your time grateful for your performance as Max over the years it's been a series that's been near and dear to my heart uh since since the

45:15beginning and so it'll be bittersweet uh whenever this when people are listening to this I'll be in the midst of you know experiencing that that game uh myself and I'm I'm very much looking forward to it and I'm very appreciative that you took some time to to chat with us today oh well it was my it was my absolute pleasure and uh it was a really great experience chatting with you so thank you and thank you for supporting the game thanks ohm for listening the sub-soldiers produced by Chia Contreras and our thanks to Tumelo for the remap radio theme you can follow more of Tumelo's work at Tumelo.net to support everything we do by heading to remapradio.com uh please write and review the podcast if you have a moment it would be a delight it would be helpful I would thank you so much for doing that uh we'll be back uh very soon remap radio if you're listening to this although at the end come meet us at the western lobby bar in Boston at PAX East we'll be there on Saturday at five o'clock until we go to dinner uh but until uh next time uh fuck capitalism go home