You may not be familiar with the name, but you’re certainly familiar with the voice. Yuri Lowenthal has voiced your favorites characters from cartoons, anime, video games, and more, notably Sasuke Uchiha from Naruto, Ben Tennyson from Ben Ten, and Keigo Asano from Bleach. However, you likely know of him as Peter Parker/Spider-Man from the Insomniac games. AIPT recently got the chance to speak with the thespian about Spider-Man, Mortal Kombat, and more.
AIPT: Let’s start at the beginning of your Spider-Man journey. What drew you to the role of Peter Parker/Spider-Man?
Yuri Lowenthal: I grew up reading Spider-Man and reading comic books. So, really, you would have had to drag me away with wild dogs to not been drawn to this character. Yet, at the same time, I was nervous about taking on such a huge role. It’s not like I hadn’t dabbled a little bit with Spider-Man in video games before, but this seemed like such a huge undertaking, and the story Insomniac wanted to tell was so big. I couldn’t help but be a little nervous with, if you’ll allow me, the responsibility of taking on that mantle of Spider-Man. It was nerve-wracking, but ultimately you’d be hard-pressed to make me give this up. I’ll go down fighting.
AIPT: Thinking back to that demo at E3 2017, it’s crazy – we had no idea what we were in for.
Lowenthal: You and me both.
AIPT: What is your favorite part of the recording process for Spider-Man?
Lowenthal: You know, it is a process – it takes a long time to make a game like this. And my part in it is, arguably, a very small part of the whole. But, I think I would have to say my favorite part is getting to shoot the cinematics on the P-Cap (performance capture) stage. I’m never more happy acting than when I’m acting with other actors at the same time, opposite them, reacting off what they’re doing – and we don’t always get to do that in voice acting. Often we’re solo in front of a microphone and, hopefully, the director’s giving you enough context for everything, but you’re not in the moment talking to another actor. That’s why, when we’d film the cinematics, we were all on a stage together like doing a play. I think that’s why you get those emotional moments – because it’s two actors opposite each other.
If I were good in that last Doc Ock scene in the first game, it’s because Bill Salyers was opposite me being better. It’s because Nancy Linari, Aunt May, was there and I was looking at her when we were talking.
Here’s the thing – most voice actors worth their salt can make it feel like they’re talking to someone else, through imagination and all sorts of things, even if they’re not and they’re just solo in the booth. But there is another level that happens when you’re opposite another actor and it’s all happening in the moment, I think.
AIPT: And that’s what makes recording games so special, right? Even though you have this crazy suit on with all these tennis balls, you’re still acting, performing.
Lowenthal: Exactly! When I first started doing this, there wasn’t a lot of that, and, even if you were hired as the voice actor, they wouldn’t necessarily even think of considering you for the motion capture part of it. It’s really come a long way and feels full circle. I started in theater and now I get to bring these characters to life in the same way I would have in the beginning on stage.
AIPT: So you mentioned that emotional final scene [from the first game, Marvel’s Spider-Man], and I’d like to pick up from that in terms of the sequel’s story. Can you tell me a little bit about how Octavius’s betrayal, Aunt May’s unfortunate passing, and the overall events of the first game have affected Peter by the time we meet him in the sequel?
Lowenthal: Obviously, that betrayal and that loss carries through Peter into the next game. Luckily we don’t pick up with Peter the day after all that happens – we get a little time. But he’s dealing with a lot of things at the beginning of the second game. He’s dealing with his maturing relationship with MJ in the wake of Aunt May’s death. Some of this game, you’re literally sifting through Aunt May’s house.
AIPT: Oh no.
Lowenthal: I know! If you thought you were going to get away free and clear in this next game, no trauma, I’m sorry to say that you’re wrong.
AIPT: It’s not Spider-Man if it’s not dramatic.
Lowenthal: Exactly! If Peter were happy and nothing were wrong in his life, he wouldn’t be Peter Parker. And [in the sequel], you see his maturing relationship with MIles. He had sort of taken on this mentor role with Miles. Is Peter doing that at this point entirely for Miles or trying to find a way to escape?
You know, Peter escapes the horrible things in his life in many ways. He goes off and does Spider–Man stuff, he cracks jokes, and he uses his smile to cover things up. Is he using MIles as a way to run from [his trauma]? It gets complicated further by the reintroduction of Harry, who we were sort of teased in the first game. We were told they were great friends and if you’re read the comic books or been paying attention the last 50 years, you know Peter and Harry are great friends, but we have not had time [in the Insomniac games] to really establish that and feel our way into it.
I think Insomniac did a great job in this new game of creating moments for us to sit with them and – no spoilers here – you’re treated to some flashbacks with Harry and Pete when they were younger. I didn’t realize what they were doing at the time, but it feels really brilliant now. What they’re done is created some time for us to spend with Harry and Pete so you do feel what their relationship means and why they’re friends so that when the story progresses, it hits harder.
AIPT: So, continuing the thread of Peter in this next game, obviously so many fans are so excited for the black suit, the symbiote suit, and how it affects him. Can you tell me how early on you knew Peter was eventually going to have the black suit?
YL: I didn’t know any of it in the first game. It wasn’t until I got the outline from [Narrative Director] Jon Paquette…for the second game, not until after we had already done DLC for the first game. There was a break and he said they’d been turning over some story ideas and they thought this was it. Now, the outline I got changed a lot from the time they sent it to me to the time that we finished the game.
But an integral part of that story [from the beginning] was Pete’s relationship with the symbiote, and, on one hand, I was excited because every actor will tell you they love playing villains – it’s so much fun. But I was unaware and caught off guard by the toll it would take on me to make Peter mean. Pete is not mean. Pete is a lot of things, but he’s not mean. He’s not selfish or irresponsible, but the symbiote makes him into all of those things. It starts off sort of slow, but it ramps up, and I found myself exhausted by the end of those recording sessions when we had to take Peter to that territory because it’s so antithetical to who he is. Forcing him into that box was surprisingly hard. If you just said, “Hey, this is a bad guy,” I’d jump in and be excited, but making a good guy into a bad guy took a lot more work than I thought.
AIPT: Especially the consummate good guy.
YL: Right! Exactly. The symbiote starts to give him all the power and erodes all the responsibility. It takes a person who puts everyone else before him – his friends, his family, every single person in New York City – before his needs and his wants, and the symbiote is like, “No. We come first. Guess what? Let’s go out and have some fun.”
It was a big deal for [Insomniac] to not just flip a switch on Peter. It was a gradual change, and in the beginning, it’s honestly all upside. Pete’s got more powers and he thinks, “This is going to make me a better Spider-Man. This is the greatest thing that happened.
AIPT: Poor Pete.
Lowenthal: Right! We all saw the betrayal coming with Octavius in the first game, and it made it actually worse that we could see what was coming. It’s a similar thing here where you all know what’s coming – but Pete doesn’t. And that’s the beauty of it.
AIPT: And you kind of get hints of that in the gameplay reveal trailer they released a short while back. He tears up my neighborhood, Astoria, Queens.
Lowenthal: Which is hard on him, because he’s a Queens boy.
AIPT: He brushes off that civilian and is terse with Miles. What I liked about it is that the camera stays with Miles and you get his reaction to Peter’s behavior. Could you talk a little bit about how Pete’s changes and the way the symbiote is changing him affects that relationship with Miles?
Lowenthal: It affects it in such an amazing way story-wise for this next game because Pete has been the compass for Miles, and the mentor to Miles, and Miles relies on that. In a way, the change that comes over Peter helps Miles grow up a lot faster
By the end of the Miles Morales game, he’s coming into his own. It’s questionable whether or not he really needs Pete’s tutelage at all… [Miles has] looked at Pete as sort of a mentor, and now he needs to guide Peter. When Pete starts to lose his way, what is Miles’s responsibility? What can Miles do? How does Miles rise to become what Pete was to him, but for Pete – and on a larger scale? Miles may have been inexperienced, but Peter is out of control.
AIPT: You mentioned Mary-Jane earlier. I really enjoyed the way Insomniac portrayed their relationship in the first game. Where does that pick up in the sequel, and how do these changes with Peter affect their relationship?
Lowenthal: Peter’s dealing with a lot of loss, obviously, and it’s a challenge to their relationship, and they’re moving forward while it’s complicated by having to navigate [Peter’s trauma]. Now, Pete’s got this house. I don’t know – two people could live in it. Maybe one of them is more ready for that than the other? Is it still Aunt May’s house, or is it Pete’s house now? What does Pete want now? Can they ever truly be together? It’s great watching both of them grow. I enjoy spending time with them as a couple, and hope people also will in the new game.
AIPT: So we’ve covered Pete, Miles, MJ – now let’s discuss the villains of the series because I think Insomniac has just excelled with them. Who’s been your favorite villain your Spider-Man has gone up against?
Lowenthal: It’s hard to beat the relationship, and the betrayal, he had with Octaius in the first game. But [the villains] are no less complicated in the new game, and I don’t want to give too much away. There are villains you’re expecting in this new one, but I would argue there might be about as many villains you still don’t know are in the game at this point. I’m excited for people to be caught off guard.
I think that applies to a lot of stuff in this game – there are things you’re expecting and are going to get, and there’s a whole bunch you just wouldn’t see coming. I mean, Venom – come on, man! Everybody wants to see Venom, and Venom is, arguably, over the last 25 years of Spider-Man, the biggest villain.
Because Insomniac does what they do so well, I’m curious to see how people react to this Venom. It’s going to deliver a lot of the Venom stuff people are hoping for, and hopefully will have just enough difference so you’re still on your toes the whole time.
AIPT: So you were in another one of my favorite games recently portraying Spider-Man – Midnight Suns.
Lowenthal: Didn’t that come out great? Full disclosure: I haven’t played it, but I was surprised by how great the scripts were. It was so much fun to record, and it was so funny and so very Peter Parker.
Interacting with all the other characters, for someone who’s read comic books for as long as I have – to get to interact with all those characters, get to hear the world Chthon, the funny interactions between all of them – it was a delight to work on all of that. And that Spider-Man, he’s still me, but there was a challenge to make him not Insomniac’s Spider-Man because they’re from different worlds. How could we bring what I love doing with Spider-Man, but make him different? That was super fun, and allowed me to play in a different area a little bit.
AIPT: How were you able to make the Midnight Suns Spider-Man unique versus the Insomniac Spider-Man?
Lowenthal: It always starts with the writing. People sometimes ask how I change up characters because of my dirty little secret which, if you pay attention long enough, is that my voice is mostly the same for most characters I play. I’m not one of those chameleon actors who you can’t recognize – “That was Yuri? I can’t believe it!”
But I have found that, when the writing is different, the character immediately becomes different. When the world is different, that exerts a change on the character as well. I’ve started to worry a little less about what brand new thing I could come up with to distinguish this character from all others I’ve played before, and that applies to [the Midnight Suns Spider-Man] versus the Insomniac Spider-Man. And it started with the writing, the story they were telling, the world they were playing, the characters Pete was surrounded by, and the timeline. Whereas Insomniac’s Spider-Man is a little older, a little more experienced, this Pete is still a younger Pete. He didn’t just get bitten by the radioactive spider the day before but he’s still that younger Pete with relationships with his own Aunt May and MJ that we discover.
AIPT: You’re also in another of 2023’s huge games – Mortal Kombat 1. What drew you to join the Mortal Kombat franchise?
Lowenthal: I never was a big Mortal Kombat player, but everyone knows Mortal Kombat. I’ve been around long enough to have pumped a lot of quarters into arcade cabinets, so of course I’ve played Mortal Kombat back in the day. It’s in pop culture so deeply, and I’ve seen the amazing movies, but I have not been following it as a game in recent years.
I embarrassed myself actually when I first went in. I said, “Tell me about this new character, Smoke?” Of course, Dominic Cianciolo, who wrote and directed the voice sessions, was like, “Stop right there! We haven’t seen him in a few games, but Smoke is not a new character.” So I had to get schooled a little bit, but it’s not my first time playing a ninja, so at least I had a background there. It was super fun. How could you not want to be involved in this franchise that is so popular and has been around so long?
AIPT: I assume you play MK1 as Smoke?
Lowenthal: I did, I had to. But, as a second choice, I probably would have played Johnny Cage. Andrew Bowen [voice of Johnny Cage] is a friend of mine, and his work is genius. It was super fun, but I was terrible at it.
AIPT: So I was watching Paprika recently and instantly recognized your voice when your character came on screen.
Lowenthal: Doctor Tokita! [The film] is so beautiful.
AIPT: It’s such a great movie! In that vein, what’s a role from earlier in your career that you maybe haven’t had the chance to talk much about, but you’re still really proud of and would welcome the opportunity to discuss?
Lowenthal: There are plenty of projects I’ve worked on that I wish would have gotten their due, not the least of which being the game I did with Insomniac before Spider-Man, Sunset Overdrive. I thought [it] was going to be massive, but, for whatever reason – the timing, the console, whatever it was – it just didn’t hit. It always broke my heart because it was so much fun and so funny. It was sort of a precursor to the traversal and other mechanics in Spider-Man.
There was a game that came out a couple years ago, and it’s more the type of game I play these days – Call of the Sea. It was sort of a Lovecraftian story and puzzle-based game that was very un-Lovecraft. It was very colorful and took a different turn on [the Lovecraft mythos], which I think a lot of people don’t do to their peril…Call of the Sea has a beautiful story, and it was super fun. It found an audience, but people didn’t really talk about it. If you play it, you get to hear me sing. It was super fun, but I’m not a confident singer, so it was different for me. It has a beautiful story. It’s quiet and lovely, and I had a blast.
AIPT: And to close us out, we’ll go back to the beginning, the reason we’re talking. With Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 almost here [editor’s note – it launches today!], what are you most excited for players to experience when they boot up the game for the first time?
Lowenthal: Having their expectations exceeded.
I just want people to experience what we’ve been working on for so long now. I want them to get what they tuned in for, and to just be completely knocked over by what they did not see coming.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is out now for the PlayStation 5. Stay tuned to AIPT for all things Spider-Man!
Join the AIPT Patreon
Want to take our relationship to the next level? Become a patron today to gain access to exclusive perks, such as:
- ❌ Remove all ads on the website
- 💬 Join our Discord community, where we chat about the latest news and releases from everything we cover on AIPT
- 📗 Access to our monthly book club
- 📦 Get a physical trade paperback shipped to you every month
- 💥 And more!
