Resident Evil Requiem: Angela Sant’Albano Breaks Down Why Grace Is Unique To The Franchise

Resident Evil Requiem is a deeply compelling experience, which is largely due to the game’s lead character, Grace. Contrasted against her co-star Leon S. Kennedy, Grace is a relative rookie in the face of biological horrors that define most of the series, presenting a much more grounded and realistic response to the creatures, killers, and twists of the game’s horrifying narrative. It was a deceptively tricky task for an actor, especially when one takes into account the challenges of also incorporating facial capture in the process.

Despite the challenge, Angela Sant’Albano relished the experience. After plenty of memorable turns in shows like Industry, Resident Evil Requiem represents a major shift for the actor, becoming her first video game assignment. During an interview with ComicBook.com, Angela Sant’Albano reflected on how Grace stands out from other lead characters in the Resident Evil franchise, adapting to the ways Resident Evil Requiem used cutting-edge tech and classical techniques to convey narrative, and which franchise mainstays she wants to team up with next.

How Angela Sant’Albano Fit Grace Into Resident Evil

“It’s such an honor to join this franchise,” Angela Sant’Albano explained, breaking down what she sees as some of the most enticing elements of the Resident Evil franchise as an actor. “It has such an incredible cultural impact, and it has a really long history of strong women. So I was very excited to join it, but also create a character that’s very new and entirely her own.” Grace’s fresh perspective offers players a chance to see the horrors of Resident Evil from a new angle. Without the years of experience facing off with the undead creatures or monstrosities created by Umbrella, Grace offers a more grounded and emotional perspective on the setting.

“I think with any character, truth is the foundation,” Sant’Albano explained. “The beauty of Grace is that she is an FBI analyst; she has had a little bit of combat training — but it’s by no means her strength. She’s quite introverted and a bit timid, and I sort of imagined if you were a regular civilian thrust into this terrifying world, what would your reaction be? We all want to imagine ourselves as the hero, but at the end of the day, you would have moments where you would be absolutely terrified and want to hide in a corner and just scream.“

“Grace also has beautiful moments where she is very courageous — she has to stand up to her fears and face them. Our incredible performance-capture director Kate Saxon always reminded me that the tone of Grace’s section is horror. That’s the creeping around, the slow tone. Whenever we were filming, we would always try to remember to slow it down and really live in that world. I think it contrasts beautifully with Leon’s more action-packed story.”

In-universe, Grace is introduced as the daughter of Alyssa Ashcroft, one of the multiple playable characters featured in 2003’s Resident Evil Outbreak. Played by Sarah Carver and Wendee Lee in the Outbreak games and Jane Perry in the new title, Alyssa returns in Resident Evil Requiem as a crucial part of Grace’s backstory. Sant’Albano revealed that in the build-up to playing Grace, she checked out lots of gameplay footage from Outbreak to get an idea of who Alyssa was as a character and how it would inform her own approach to Grace.

“I worked a little bit with Jane Perry, who’s absolutely wonderful. We bonded like mother and daughter very early on. I adore her. I watched gameplay and read a lot about Alyssa’s history, because I think a big thing for Grace is that she goes through something quite dramatic and traumatic. She witnessed her mother’s death, and she’s living with PTSD over it. Her mother’s research into Raccoon City becomes something that Grace is equally obsessed with. The mystery surrounding her mother’s death is something that’s a touchstone for her, and I think it’s a big part of why she wanted to work for the FBI in the first place.”

While Angela Sant’Albano largely avoided delving too deeply into spoilers or her expectations for Grace’s future in the franchise, she did reveal that she has a wish list of other characters she’d love to interact with in future games. “Grace is just so different to the other women in the series. I was watching a lot of their gameplay and reading a lot about their stories, and I didn’t want to ever copy anyone. It was really nice to have Grace be her own, but I think Jill Valentine and Claire Redfield are icons, and I’d love to see them interact.“

Bringing Resident Evil To Life

On top of voicing Grace Ashcroft, Angela Sant’Albano also provided the performance capture for the character. This gave her a greater amount of authorial intent in the performance and depiction of the character, which was one of the big appeals of joining Resident Evil Requiem for Sant’Albano. “I had never done something like this before. This is my first game! I remember on my first day, I had this helmet on, and it was very tight. The light is in my eyes, I’m wearing gloves, and there’s Velcro everywhere. I was a little bit wrong, and Kate Saxon turned to me and told me to think of it as doing theater in the round. You have that kind of freedom, but you also get the intimacy of film and TV because the camera is right on your head. I was obviously thinking about the voice of Grace, but it was so much more than that. It felt like doing theater, and I just loved that. I just felt very free, because we were working with amazing studios that made all the kits disappear, so that we could just live in the truth and the world.“

“Capcom cared so much about the performance. I felt very lucky to have a team that, if I asked to try out a scene another time, they were like, ‘Of course! Try again.’ They really cared about the performance. There’s so much going on, it would be easy to let that stuff fall by the side, but everyone with Capcom, with Imaginary Studios, with Kate, they were all really focused on the scene work. It was a real collaboration… I remember calling my family and saying that I felt like a child again. It’s more imaginative than you have to be on stage, because usually you’ve got your costume and you’re on set and it’s all built up for you. This was so different. But Capcom was so good at saying this is exactly what we were looking at. They made it feel so real.”

Looking back on Grace and what surprised her the most during the development and production of Resident Evil Requiem, Angela Sant’Albano noted that when she first read the scenes for Grace and spoke with Capcom about the part, “I was really focused on the introverted elements. They wanted her to be different from previous female leads. What surprised me about the character was how she grew. I only got to see the very beginning at first. She is very resilient, despite dropping things and being — I don’t want to say she’s scatterbrained, because I actually think she really zones in on things and becomes obsessed with them. When you first meet Grace, she’s quite uncomfortable around other people. She prefers to be alone. But as the game progresses, that changes. She builds connections with other people, and that surprised me about her.

Resident Evil Requiem is now available.