Hitman's voice cast on playing outsiders, absurd humour, and IO's future with Bond

“They’re outsiders,” says Jane Perry. “Maybe this is what draws the characters together, the sense of being not entirely comfortable in the skin that they’re in or in the world that they find themselves in.”

Perry is discussing the relationship between Hitman’s Agent 47, voiced by David Bateson, and his handler Diana Burnwood, who she voices. But she could also be talking about the actors themselves.

For both actors, auditioning for these roles was a serendipitous moment. Bateson had recently moved from London to Denmark, while Perry had moved from Canada to London: two actors living away from their native countries.

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“In some ways, it is about saying yes to these things that happen in your life, because you just don’t know where they’re going to end up,” says Perry. “And here I am, all these years later – and same with you David – playing these amazing characters, because we followed a whim and a fancy.”

Says Bateson: “It’s interesting in a game like this, where both of us are of another citizenship, finding ourselves in another country and actually, unbeknownst to us, perfectly cast for Hitman characters.

“I think personally, that has drawn us together, the characters together and also as we’ve got to know each other, that [feeling of] outsiders looking in.”

Perry adds: “They’re not your average people. And so maybe that’s interesting, this parallel between us, being outsiders in the country that we have chosen to live in, it sort of lends itself to that in some way.”

Perry and Bateson have great rapport, which is perhaps surprising when they only met in person for the first time last October due to Covid restrictions despite working together on the Hitman games for a decade.

“I had the sense of David as this kind of famous person who lives elsewhere that I didn’t really know that much about, he was sort of shrouded in mystery to me,” says Perry. “And that worked okay for me, because Hitman himself is a little bit like that.”