The original voice actress for Bayonetta wants fans to boycott Bayonetta 3.

Hellena Taylor who was the original voice actress for Bayonetta wants fans to boycott Bayonetta 3 because she was only offered $4000.

That's the reason why she didn't return to voice the character again in Bayonetta 3, and instead was replaced by voice actress Jennifer Hale. She wants fans to not spend their money to buy the game but to give it to charity instead.

https://www.ign.com/articles/bayonetta-voice-actor-hellena-taylor-says-she-didnt-reprise-the-role-in-bayonetta-3-as-she-was-only-offered-4000

According to Kamiya, she’s lying.

https://twitter.com/PG_kamiya/status/1581316361657102337

I ain't boycotting shit!

Damn, wtf. Wouldn't have expected that to be the reason lol.

Still, what a dork. Yeah for sure 4k is insulting. That's when you say nah I'm good and walk away. Not this shit.

Also gotta wonder did Hale get a better offer? Wouldn't expect her to work for peanuts either.

@ConanTheStoner: lol you raise a good point. Voice actors bring life to the character, but in a game like Bayonetta, people are playing for gameplay lol

Maybe but Kamiya can be a real jerk online so we don't know who is telling the truth here for now.

Certainly unfortunate if true but I’ll still be buying the game myself.

Yeah me too. Hale is a very well known voice actress who has done tons of voices in video games. Ether something else happened with Taylor not voicing Bayonetta anymore or Hale didn't mind the offer that she got.

Both parties are saying this and that. Unless one has actual proof to their side of the story, I wouldn't trust either of them.

@mycatismilk: the more startling thing to me is she claims that Bayonetta franchise has made $450 million lol

Is that my point? 😅

Regardless of the VAs importance, still think they should be compensated fairly. I know fuckall about VA wages, but 4k for the main character in a game with plenty of dialogue does sound wack af.

I just find this to be a wildly immature response. I have years of experience as a contractor. My skills are specialized and hard earned. I've had my share of insulting offers. I just say no thanks and carry on, I don't go online and try to bury them. Certainly don't encourage others lmao

Wouldn't be surprised, all their latest games are a failure, they ran out of money and offered her $4k and a free family meal at McDonalds.

Maybe some intern sent Hellena the offer via email, but accidently left off a zero? 😂

Yeah man, shit just doesn't make sense.

@ConanTheStoner: oh yea I don’t think anyone here is saying voice actors shouldn’t be paid fairly lol.

I guess I'll be donating to Target or Best Buy depending where ever I have the most rewards or gift cards.

Not having much of an idea of what voice actors are paid and all I do have some questions here especially with how she presents her case.

Bayonetta isn't her only role and it isn't why she trained for 7 years to hone her skills so while I get wanting to value your talents and skills this is just a one time gig basically, not an ongoing production like a TV series or something like that. So how much work actually goes into her part? Is it a few days in the recording booth and that's a wrap she's onto the next thing or is it an ongoing process for months?

Bayonetta 3 doesn't strike me as an epically long game with a ton of dialogue, cut scenes, and branching narrative that would results in dozens of hours of voice actors being recorded leading to weeks upon weeks in the recording booth like you see for major RPG's where the narrative is driven via character interaction and all that.

And how much did she get for the prior games on top of how much time went into recording the voice lines for those games?

She then goes on to talk about because of this she had depression and anxiety because she might end up homeless before talking about others struggling to make their bills and such. Yet it doesn't look like she's done any voice acting work since 2014 when Bayonetta 2 dropped and the DLC hit Smash Bros. for Wii-U. So during the last 8 years or so what has she been doing to support herself? Checking her website it is horribly out of date with her bio saying she's set to start work on the new Brad Pitt movie World War Z... In her upcoming section she's got Ugly Betty from 2007...

So I get the impression her skills and talents weren't getting her continued work and she was being offered what was seen as an acceptable rate for what she brought to the table which was someone who hadn't been active in voice acting for years at that point.

She then ends it by talking about how Platinum tried to say her schedule just couldn't make it work and all that but she has nothing but time which sounds like she's not working at all right now... so is $4,000 low here? If no one is lining up to hire someone for their talents do those talents have value?

I get being angry and bitter to a degree but the ending part comes off as petty when she says Jennifer Hale has no right to say she's the voice of Bayonetta and to sign things as such because she's the one who created the voice originally. But she's no longer voicing the character and the part now resides with Jennifer Hale because she wouldn't accept the pay for the part. So it kinda sounds like Jennifer Hale is the new Bayonetta just like Mark Ruffalo is the new Bruce Banner after Edwards didn't want to work with Marvel/Disney again and couldn't come to terms on pay.

There's a lot more going on here than she's letting on...

Kamiya blocking everybody LMAO

Why would I boycott a game over sour business negotiations? 🤔 Has nothing to do with us and doesn't hurt the final product.

I've briefly gone over the tweets he's getting, and it's from people who are siding with the voice actress despite her giving no evidence to suggest that the information she provided was correct. It's all conjecture. Blindly following and doing as their idols tell them.

They made an offer, she refused it. It should stop at that. She could have made a counteroffer. Asking fans to boycott because she wasn't satisfied with the offer is pretty petty.

This may be unfair compensation, but she had the right to refuse it and she did. VA should definitely be fairly compensated, but if it isn't in their budget, then it kinda is what it is.

Sucks if true, but they can offer what they like and she can choose to accept it or not. Move on.

@ConanTheStoner: Jennifer Hale is Union. She and other VA's took part of a protest a few years back for better pay in the industry.

@iambatman7986: Twitter seems to disagree. It's a mess.

alot of greedy people nowadays. Its just like most companies, giving out huge cash parachutes of $50 million to the CEO, meanwhile the workers that are actually doing the work get peanuts. The problem with these companies, is that the executives and the board, the CEO are pretty useless, they do no work. The game would sell as long as the marketers, the sales, and the development team (which includes the voice actress) is there. This is the truth for pretty much every company out there.

Even if true, way to screw yourself out of future VO jobs by responding this way.

Well what did she expect, for them to shut down production just because she turned down the role? That's just not how this business works.

4k is pretty low compensation for stuff like this especially considering the gross revenue of the game. If its true, sure call them out and shame them.

F*ck it, nothing petty about calling out a company that gave you a sh*t offer. If it's bad PR for the side that made the offer, then maybe they should have accounted for coming across as cheap hacks. 4k is nothing. Hell, 50k is nothing for companies like this.

Oh dear... TMZ is involved now. Just who we need involved: Harvey Levin...

Well... thats a very petty thing to do

I'm pretty sure most people who wants Bayo 3 will get Bayo 3 regardless so that was a wasted effort on her part

"And I would like to explain to you why I didn't voice Bayonetta 3."

The reality of the situation is that most don't care.

@nintendoboy16: Oh no, the cesspool that is twitter disagrees.

Voice actors are highly overrated imo. Tons of people who can do their work. 4k to read some lines on a paper is plenty.

Shit pay but it won’t make a difference. Game could have been made by a terrorist organization and people would still buy it because gamers ain’t shit.

**** Kamiya and Nintendo's cheap asses for this (I wasn't playing the game anyway).

$4000 to stand in front of a microphone for a few days? Still better than the amount of effort I have to put in to make the same amount of money.

Her video has 4.5 million views, wow.

Also AI is going to take over.

I mean if its your first job ok I understand but she is doing it the 3rd time! Atleast dont insult her with lowballing like that!

Come on sheeps don't protect nintendo all the time know your worth. Don't let these multi billion dollar companies exploit the **** out of people.

When she buys me a game I’ll not buy one for her.

@sakaixx: Conan is a sheep?

If this was Sony, they'd offer her at least 60k for the job. Bayonetta and Metroid should be Sony exclusives tbh.

Maybe an indication of the game's quality if true. We will soon find out. Either way, I wasn't interested in the third install from what has been shown.

@SolidGame_basic: Numbers don't add up. Even at full $60 price, $450M translates to at least 7.5M units sold for both games. They were hits, but not on that level.

That sounds like your usual rabid fanboy.

I know right. Yes, $4000 sounds shit, but it's got me thinking... how long does a voice actor work on a video game? A week or two? If so, then it doesn't sound that bad.

On topic: Sucks if its true and they treated her like that. The pay might be in line with what she got paid for the first game, which she's on record for saying 4 day 4 hour sessions of performance, but its probably more in 3s case considering they got a multiverse of multiple Bayonettas going on now.

Either way people deserved to be paid more, and thats across the board. The devs who make the game, the performers who add to the game. You can both think how she is treated is wack, and also be perfectly fine enjoying a Bayonetta sequel taht won't be as good as the first game.

I look forward to people who don't play these games well to make excuses for Platinum tho.

Both of them are part of SAG. both are union workers, so that's whats odd here.

shit take

They replaced her with a more expensive voice actress

There are rumors circulating that this was Platinum's way of telling her they didn't want her back. They lowballed her, she declined as would be expected, they then turned around and hired a more famous and very likely much more expensive VA.

@jg4xchamp: Well, I'll be damned. I knew Hale was as she took part of the protest years back with Steve Blum years back.

Also... Alexa/Cortana/Siri? What's the temperature in Hell?

How many job offers VA normally gets per year?