Bayonetta actor Hellena Taylor claims Platinum offered "insulting" pay for new sequel
Hellena Taylor, the English voice actor for PlatinumGames' Bayonetta and Bayonetta 2, has called for players to boycott the upcoming Bayonetta 3. Over the weekend, Taylor released a series of videos alleging that she was offered low pay to voice the character that she's been playing since 2009.
While video game franchises have recast characters in the past, Taylor actively calling on fans of the franchise to boycott the release of Bayonetta 3 is unusual.
In her videos, Taylor claims that she was offered $4,000 to return and play Bayonetta for the third game, whose trailers hint at multiple versions of the same character appearing in it. That amount of pay, while she acknowledged as being legal, was also "immoral."
"The Bayonetta franchise made approximately $450 million. That’s not including merchandise," said Taylor. "This is an insult to me [and] the amount of time that I took to work on my talent and everything I’ve given to this game and to the fans.”
In Bayonetta 3, the titular character will be voiced by Jennifer Hale, whose career includes Mass Effect and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. Platinum explained to Game Informer earlier in the month that Hale's casting was due to "various overlapping circumstances."
Taylor went on to claim that she wrote to executive director (and PlatinumGames' VP) Hideki Kamiya in an attempt to get better pay, but the fixed price remained. She continued by saying that walking away led to her having anxiety and depression. "Fat cats cream off the top and leave us the crumbs."
In response to Taylor's videos, Kamiya dismissed the allegations on Twitter, calling them "sad and deplorable." Later in the weekend, his Twitter was deactivated, but it appears to be back up at time of writing.
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