Panel Recap: A Q&A With Overwatch’s Lucie Pohl
Image of Mercy via playoverwatch.com by Blizzard; photo of Lucie Pohl taken by Sayed Alamy at GeekGirlCon 2017.
When I play a multiplayer video game, I tend to gravitate towards support roles. I am the medic in Battlefield, the chronomancer in Guild Wars 2—and I’m a Mercy-main in Overwatch.
“Heroes never die!” is a sort of anthem, I think. Fans of the game truly rally behind their favorite characters. One of my good friends wears her D.Va headphones every time she live streams, another can’t stop doodling Pharah. I even chatted with a fellow Overwatch fan for a little while before the panel started, seated right up front. “I’m a Winston main,” she laughed after I exclaimed how pumped I was to see Lucie Pohl, but Mercy is her close second.
Beyond simply being a game, Overwatch is a community (as proven by the lengthy conversation I had with that fan before the panel). It wasn’t surprising that I ran into a plethora of fans and supporters, from young girls to older women, all excited to hear Lucie talk.
Lucie Pohl participated in a few big panels at GeekGirlCon 2017, two of which I covered: The Voice of a Hero panel, which honored other voice actresses like Erica Lutrell, Fryda Wolff, and Kimberly Brooks, and Lucie’s personal Q&A.
Lucie is an actress and comedian, and what she had to say was memorable, enlightening, but exceptionally witty and strong.
Landing THE Role
Lucie claimed that she had a “very common actor journey.”
She was five years old when her family moved to New York City. Later in life, she moved back to Berlin to study acting, but dropped out to be in a TV show—it was something “casual,” she said, “the girlfriend of a guy.” After some time she returned to NYC and started again from scratch. She waited tables while looking for an agent, and then started booking gigs. “It takes at least seven years to find your footing,” Lucie said, at least that’s about what it took her.
When she first started voice acting, she dubbed the voice of Khloe for the German airing of Keeping up with the Kardashians. From there, she did plenty of quirky jobs and roles.
She was blunt, but honest. It took a while to find the right role, until one day when she stumbled into an audition for Overwatch.
So, how did she end up as Mercy? Well, she auditioned for the role and she got it. “I never sat there and thought ‘I want to be in a video game,’” as she had done a lot of theater, film, and TV. Voice acting was more of a side gig at that point, and Mercy was her first ever role in a game.
You need a little bit of luck, and the Mercy audition was her’s.
Becoming Mercy and the Overwatch Community
Much of her time spent working on Overwatch is spent alone in the booth, like a lot of voice acting. “We do get to spend time together at cons,” she said (about the other Overwatch actors). They became this big happy family. It was unusual and unique, compared to any role she had done before. You don’t get to connect with other actors in this field. But her Overwatch family is different. It’s a good, creative group with skill and a ton of work experience. They travel together, learn together. They live all over the world, but make time to see each other when they’re all in town.
Overwatch, much life GeekGirlCon, is a community. Lucie learned this quickly as fans flocked to Angela Ziegler, the Swiss battle-medic.
(right) Lucie Pohl and Andy Munich on the Let’s Play Stage at GeekGirlCon 2017, (left) Lucie Pohl with Gaming Event Coordinator Andy Munich. Photos via Kristine Hassell.
Mercy is an ongoing project. The first session Lucie did lasted about four hours (which is something that’s union regulated, sessions can’t go beyond four hours for the wellbeing of the actor). Her favorite line is one that we know well. The audience cooed with excitement when she proclaimed “Heroes never die!” and then, “I’ll be watching over you.”
From Angelic Descent, Beyond
Unlike her battle-medic counterpart, Lucie curses. A lot. A New Yorker through and through there’s a lot about Lucie that the audience, myself included, didn’t know about. She was a force on the stage, and I loved that.
Beyond acting for the silver screen and voicing one of the most recognizable characters in gaming today, Lucie is really into live comedy and theater. So far she’s written three one-hour (mature) shows, Cry Me A Liver, Apholcalypse Now, and Hi, Hitler.
For her comedy, she’s drawn a lot of inspiration from her childhood between growing up in Germany and New York, and her time getting started in acting. She did a couple of jokes for us on stage during the panel, and let me tell you, she’s funny. Most of the jokes were a little too mature to include here on the blog, but if you have the opportunity to see her live or watch one of her recordings, I’d highly recommend it.
Beyond that, she’s started landing roles in some…bigger pictures. Lucie recently landed a small part in J. K. Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and has auditioned for more. She’s got a pretty extensive resume, and the list keeps growing.
On Acting and Making Your Own Luck
One of the most difficult aspects of living the actor’s life is dealing with rejection, she said. Landing the role of Mercy was a combination of things: preparedness, talent, and quite a bit of luck. She could have never anticipated how significant that role could become for her career, but even beyond her time in Overwatch, working as an actress is challenging.
Recently, she almost landed a role in Good Omens, the mini-series adaptation of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s novel of the same name. It took a while for her to get over it. No matter how much you’ve done or how far you’ve progressed, rejection still hurts, but what’s important is what you do to move forward.
If you want to be an actor or voice actor, start by do other jobs that relate to that role. If you want to voice for games, learn more about making games. If you want to voice for TV and film, learning more about the many aspects of filmmaking. She emphasizes that there’s no one way to get there. The only rule for Lucie is that you really have to want it. “You have to mean the thing,” she grilled. That thing being your dream, not the results or the fame. And you have to be willing to take a lot of rejection along the way.
In regards to voice acting, Lucie says to record yourself. Listen to your voice, and close your eyes and really, really listen. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. You gotta love it, even if it’s hard work.
Start making a bucket list of roles, no matter how out-there they may seem. Lucie says that she really enjoys playing men and voicing weird creatures. It’s fun and different, a true challenge. “What’s your favorite sound?” she asked, “the sound of the ocean, or that sound from ‘Dumb and Dumber’—practice those.”
Write your own stuff, like Lucie writes her own comedy. Start making stuff, and putting it out there for the world to see. If you want to get into voice acting, put something together and get it up on YouTube. If you want to write, blog, if you want to make art, show everyone what you can do. Beyond luck, create your own opportunities and practice what you love. It’s the best advice she can give.
The panel ended with cheers as one of the audience members asked her something we hadn’t really talked about during the panel: actually playing the game. The girl, who looked no older than sixteen, stepped up to the mic and asked Lucie how to deal with aggressive players during a match—especially ones that call her out for being a girl. It’s something we all face from time to time in multiplayer or competitive gaming, myself included. Lucie gave a knowing look, though she admitted she doesn’t have as much time as she’d like to enjoy Overwatch, and then swept one hand through the air like she was swatting away at dust. “Tell them, ‘None of your business. I’m a girl, so what? Can we move past that now and play the game?’” And with that, the panel drew to a close.
Leaving Lucie’s Q&A, I had a newfound appreciation for my Overwatch main. Lucie and Mercy are very different, but also very similar in that they’re both strong and unwavering. Whether she’s screaming battle-cries or words of encouragement, or even bringing an audience to a fit of laughter and tears with jokes about a particularly…misunderstood Halloween costume, Lucie is a force to be reckoned with.
