This article features spoilers for Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree.

Faelduum is a tough place to make your mark as an Inquisitor, and a disembodied voice in your ear tempting you to stray from the path probably doesn't help matters. Will you follow the voice of the mysterious witch spirit Mandragora and betray your oath?

We sat down with Aysha Selim, the voice of Mandragora, and discussed the world of voice acting, playing the witch herself, and Aysha’s iconic Overwatch character.

Q: If you were going to enter Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree as the player, what do you think you'd feel about Mandragora herself? Do you think you'd be suspicious, immediately take her side, or would you betray her?

A: I'd be very suspicious. So it’d be like a long, long game of trusting. There's going to be a temptation of joining her or not joining her, and it's going to take a while.

Q: When you were recording the voice lines where Mandragora speaks directly into the player’s mind, how did you imagine her? Was she inside their brain? Was she on their shoulder like a little devil?

A: I try to imagine the setting and how I would be in it. No, she's not like an angel or a devil. She's very much present.

Q: Were there any lines or moments in the script for Mandragora that were fun to record or that particularly resonated with you?

A: I think one of the lines that they used for the trailer. These lines were quite spooky, and I was happy that my lines were used in the trailer.

Q: We've already talked about Mandragora’s alignment, but when you were recording, were you switching between “sounding evil” and “sounding good”? 

A: I never thought that she's 100% evil because she’s an old soul, so there's going to be some element of that. I never considered her 100% evil. Never.

Q: How collaborative was the process of recording for Mandragora? Did you get to decide if she should sound more evil or good?

A: I rely more on the director because they know the stuff better, or they have the bigger picture. So, I might feel like I need to do it this way, but they know where it fits in the context. I remember once with Ana, they were like “you need to be desperate”. So I go “no, no, no, Ana is never desperate”. This is when you've been recording the character for several years, but if it's something new, like Mandragora, you have to rely on the people working on it because it's still very new.

Q: Have you seen any positive changes in the voice acting industry over the last few years?

A: The technology of what you can do, like with ProTools. I used to work for Disney for like 20 years, and I was in charge of the Arabic dubbing. I remember once they said, for singing especially, they said, “give me an attitude and ProTools is going to take care of the rest”. It's like “don't focus on things like a perfect pitch, a perfect note” and “okay, give me an attitude. Don't be dead flat”.

Q: When it comes to delivering those intense emotions, do you find yourself drawing from personal experiences, or is it more of a technical skill that you've developed over time?

A: I was doing Ana in Overwatch, and there was this trailer, and she's reading a letter to her daughter. And at that precise moment, my niece's daughter was having a brain operation, and then I took a break, and I saw that she woke up, and the first thing she asked for in sign language was “I want to eat”. So I started crying and then went into recording immediately. I can do it emotionally much better now.

Q: What is your opinion on AI being used more prevalently in voice work?

A: I believe you cannot replace the human element. It's impossible to replace it, and I think some languages are luckier than others; for instance, in Arabic (because, you know, I'm Egyptian). In modern standard Arabic, you have case endings, and if (while recording and especially in dubbing) you're going to cut off a word or add a word, it's going to change the case ending. So far, AI has not mastered this.

Q: What's the hardest type of voice work? Is it the soft whispering or the big shouts?

A: It's the big shouts. Sometimes you have a sound director who knows it's going to crack your voice, so he keeps your shouts till the very end because otherwise I'm going to lose my voice! 

Q: When you hit record, do you already have the direction that you want to take the voice in your head?

A: I wait for the director to give me the direction, and then I give like three takes. Of course, while the director is explaining, I keep contemplating how to portray that.

Q: Do you have a dream role?

A: Not really, no. I'd like to do more games. You know, my voice is not like a versatile one. When I do a cameo with Ana's voice, it's my voice. I don't change voices. I change delivery, maybe, but not voices. Some voices are easier to change, but I'm always going to have this huskiness in my voice. 

Q:  What do you do after a long recording session? Not just to preserve your voice, but also to unwind.

A: It's just like you get out of it, and it's not really a routine. It's like you're in it, and then okay, let's get out of it. It is literally like stepping in and out of a character. Especially with Mandragora, which was a very intense role. I like the fact that there's a part of evil in it. I love evil roles. They're so much more fun to do. I was so tired of being the savior and the hero, like “no, give me something hard to work with!”

Credit: Blizzard Entertainment 

Q: What is it like to see people resonate with Ana’s character so strongly? 

A: To be quite honest, when I started recording Ana, I had no idea what it was about. When I went to Blizzcon in 2017, a year after recording Ana, that was like “oh my god”, that's a totally different world to me. You get a limousine at the airport with a star on it, and then you arrive there, there is a personal assistant and a bodyguard, and it's like, is this for real? And then for three days people are all over the convention dressed up like characters, standing and queuing for four hours just to get an autograph, and it was like “this is real”. When you have interviews, you see how, in some way for some people, it has helped them, it has given them strength, hope, and stuff like that.
But at the same time, there's always a part of me like “guys, this is not the real world. Don't stay so much in front of a screen, like, please play, but also go out in the fresh air and talk to actual people.” At first, I was surprised that a character could help so much. I'm glad something comes out of these hours they spend in front of the screen.

Q: What advice would you give an aspiring voice actor?

A: Work on your voice. Take workshops and really work on it, and work on your acting because some people are like, "Oh, it's just voice acting." No, no, no, no. This is where you can prove yourself because there's no makeup, there's no lights, there's no costumes, there's no one to support you there like fellow actors. So take it seriously. It's really something to take seriously.

Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree is available for PC via Steam, the Epic Games Store[store.epicgames.com], and

https://GOG.com, PlayStation 5[store.playstation.com], and Xbox Series X|S[www.xbox.com]. 

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