Uncharted 4 Actress Defends Herself In Casting Controversy

Uncharted 4 voice actress Laura Bailey has shared her side in light of the whitewashing controversy surrounding her role in the game.

Laura Bailey was cast as Nadine Ross, a mercenary of South African descent, and head of a private military company called Shoreline. The controversy revolves around Naughty Dog casting Laura, a white actress, as a person of color.

Naughty Dog director Neil Druckmann addressed this issue early on, explaining that the studio went with Laura after making a general casting call. They were aware that their choice could create controversy, but decided to go through with it after seeing how Laura’s performance played out in the game.

However, Laura herself had not yet shared her side of the matter, until today, in a brief message on Twitter. Laura explained how the casting call itself did not specify that Nadine was a person of color, only that she was South African. She passed the casting call after auditioning with several actresses of varying ethnicity.

Laura also explains that it was not until they started filming (Laura did voice acting and performance capture) that she saw production sketches and learned that her character was black. In the end, Laura says she was not sure if it would have been better if Naughty Dog had changed the design to better match her physically or not.

You can read her full statement in the tweet below:

.@adrjeffries I’d like to respond to you here since this is something that’s been on my mind a lot. pic.twitter.com/xK71cfZ1pG

— Laura Bailey (@LauraBaileyVO) February 9, 2016

Uncharted 4 A Thief’s End will launch on March 18, 2016, exclusively on PlayStation 4. You can read our earlier coverage of when Laura Bailey was teased to join the project last November, and the first reveal for her character, Nadine Ross, in last year’s The Game Awards.