.png){kind=small}
Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation Season 3 Interview with Madeleine Morris
By Justin D Williams
Few anime characters have undergone the kind of transformation Rudeus Greyrat has experienced throughout Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation. Audiences have watched him grow from infancy into adolescence and now adulthood, with marriage, fatherhood, loss and responsibility reshaping not only the character, but the performance behind him.
I recently had the opportunity to speak with Madeleine Morris, the English voice of Rudeus, about approaching the character in Season 3, how his voice has evolved alongside him, the grief he continues to carry after losing Paul, and the unusual experience of portraying one character across so many stages of his life.
We also explored what might have happened to Rudeus had his original life continued and which person Morris believes has ultimately taught him the most.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Imaginative Visions: Rudeus has changed tremendously since the beginning of the series. He's now a husband, a father and responsible for so much more. How has that added maturity and responsibility changed your approach to the vocal performance now that he has so much weight on his shoulders?
Madeleine Morris: It has mellowed him out significantly, I think. Especially in Season 2, I was very preoccupied in a lot of my sessions with exactly where I was placing his voice because I'd come off Season 1, where he went from birth to around age 11. Then in Season 2, he was roughly 11 to 15, and after that I knew he was going to have to get even older. I found myself very preoccupied last season with making sure that adolescent voice stayed within a certain dynamic range where I still had somewhere to go.
By and large, the pitch of the voice is pretty much set now. He's not going to get any deeper than this because I physically cannot do it. So now, a lot of the way his voice is maturing is what you find in adults in real life. His tempo slows, he's a little gentler in his speech, and his word choices are a little more deliberate. He's also a little better at code-switching between the different people in his life than he used to be, especially with Eris.
I find that really exciting, and it feels fun now. It was very fun for two seasons to make such deliberate decisions about a character's sound so often, but it's nice now that so much of that just gets to become part of the performance.
Imaginative Visions: There's an underlying theme now that Rudeus is an adult and carrying all of these responsibilities, especially after the tragedy involving his father. How much do you think that grief is still underneath the character, even during his happier moments?
Madeleine Morris: Have you heard the analogy that grief is like a bouncing ball? I think we've seen a few of those moments where that button gets pushed. He obviously hasn't forgotten his father. He hasn't forgotten Paul. They've honored him, his sword is on the mantle, Rudeus visits his grave, and he's very deliberate about keeping Paul's spirit around and keeping him in the house. Because Rudy visits the grave and talks to Paul, I get the sense that he's developed his own way of maintaining that relationship. At the birthday party they throw for his little sisters, they're all celebrating and he takes a drink, sets it on the mantle next to Paul's sword and essentially tells him that they'll be doing this again when the girls turn 15. He still has conversations with Paul. He keeps his father's spirit alive in the house, so I think there's always this underlying feeling of, "He is here. He is with us. He can see us. He can see me. I'm going to do right by him, and I'm going to prove that I can do right by him." We see it more directly when Rudy visits the grave or when he gives his dad a drink and speaks to him directly. I don't necessarily get the sense that Rudy constantly grieves over Paul missing these moments because he's created this way to share those moments with him. But I do wonder how often Rudy thinks, "Dang, I wish he heard that," or, "He would have had a comeback for that." I wonder how often those thoughts creep in for him.
Imaginative Visions: From an acting perspective, what's it like portraying a character across essentially his entire life? You've played him as a child, teenager and now an adult. What's the challenge of continuing to find new avenues to explore while keeping him recognizable as the same person?
Madeleine Morris: It's unique. It is a unique experience. I've never done it before, and I don't know if I'll ever do it again. You're right, but I almost feel like he's less three performances and more like 30 performances, especially in Season 1. He grows up so quickly over so few episodes. That's about 10 years in 20 episodes, so his voice was changing every other episode.
It was fun to map that out, but nobody told me to do it. It wasn't a conscious decision where I sat down with Jeremy and Ben, our director, and we discussed exactly how his voice would change as the show went on. I just kind of did it because, of course, it's going to change as he grows up.
He starts as this tiny baby, then he gets a little older and more articulate. His vocal cords begin developing more, then he goes through puberty and the voice starts dropping. Over the course of Seasons 2 and 3, he eventually settles into the adult man that he's become.
Within all of that, you're really looking at 30 or 40 different micro-performances representing different slices of his life. The fact that it has been me the entire way through gives you that through-line because it's still one actor. But at this point, I think I've injected so much of my own personality, cadence and speech patterns into the way Rudeus is performed that sometimes I wonder, where does Rudy end and I begin?
Imaginative Visions: Sometimes while watching the series, it's easy to forget that Rudeus had an entirely different life before he was reincarnated. So here's a hypothetical question: What do you think his life would have looked like if he hadn't died in his original world?
Madeleine Morris: Pathetic. He'd have been dead. He died.
[laughs]
If we're assuming that he didn't push Nanahoshi out from in front of that bus, I genuinely don't know if he would have made it very long after that. His parents had passed away, and his family had kicked him out of his parents' house. Where does a hikikomori end up when they get kicked out? Where do they go? What is that like? What are those social services like in Japan? I don't know.
That's a scary thing to think about. Somebody has probably written that fan fiction, and it's going to be terrifying.
Imaginative Visions: Rudeus has learned from a lot of people over the course of the series. If Season 3 Rudeus had to name the person who has taught him the most across his entire journey so far, who do you think he would choose?
Madeleine Morris: Sylphy. I think it's Sylphy. I think they are soulmates and best friends. I think it's impossible for him, or really anybody, to rank all of the people in his life, but I think Sylphy is ride or die forever.
VIDEO INTERVIEW
Comments