Jason Spisak & Mia Sinclair Jenness Interview: Arcane League of Legends

Before they were champions in Riot Games’ long-running multiplayer online battle arena title, the characters of League of Legends were shaped by a war between the rich upper world of Piltover and its seedy underbelly Zaun. Netflix’s Arcane explores the building of tension between the two societies and how it would mold Jinx, Vi, Jayce, Caitlyn, and Viktor into the playable characters fans know and love.

Screen Rant spoke exclusively with Arcane stars Jason Spisak and Mia Sinclair Jenness to discuss joining the world of League of Legends, the long road to bring the series to life, and the joys of taking on their characters.

Screen Rant: What about the show really drew you both to the project? 

Mia Sinclair Jenness: I’ve always been a little bit familiar with League of Legends; my brother plays and I’ve also just kind of always been aware of how massive and loyal the fan base is. I was also immediately just drawn to Powder as a character. The writing is brilliant, everything about the show is brilliant; they’ve done such an incredible job. But Powder, I just see a lot of myself in her, there’s so many reasons why I love Arcane.

Jason Spisak: For me, playing Silco, I mean who wouldn’t want to play a manipulative psychopath? [Laughs] I get to play a fair bit of villains, I played the Joker in Batman: Hush. When you get asked, “Hey, could you play this villain?” I never approach it that way. A villain is just the hero of a different story and when I read Silco for the first time, the monologue had this beauty to it.

This efficiency of words, the economy of tone, and yet it was so ruthless in what it’s outlining. The monologue I’m referring to is, “Do you ever wonder what it’s like to drown,” when he says that monologue at the top of episode three. It struck me like a piercing violin note, the first time I ever read those words, and the voice it just followed right along, it was almost like a jacket I was meant to wear.

What would you say were some of the creative challenges for you both finding the heart of your characters and then bringing them to life through your voice work?

Mia Sinclair Jenness: I already had something to go off of. Jinx is Jinx, everyone knows Jinx, most people love Jinx. Powder is a new character, if you look at it that way, you don’t know Powder. But taking Jinx and breaking her down to see who Powder was was difficult, but at the end of the day, extremely rewarding. There were some scenes in the show where Powder is going through it, to put it very lightly, and kind of tapping into those emotions and trying to not let it affect me outside of recording was difficult. But I think I know that I did my best work on those scenes and throughout the entire show.

Jason Spisak: You did an amazing job. One of the toughest things when you get a character like Silco, who runs the show behind the scenes and is the puppet master in the shadows – that’s challenging, you don’t want to overplay that. Silco is a very subtle character. One of the challenges, when you get the material, is you read the words and some of them can seem very demonstrative. But it’s not, it’s an art of weapons that are words, and if you are true to him and don’t overdo it, you end up with something beautiful to watch, and you’re waiting for the next move that Silco makes in his chess match. So yeah, one of the challenges was definitely not to overplay it.

In speaking with Ella Purnell she mentioned how she got a little room to play with the characters during sessions. D you both also get the opportunity to improv and find the rhythm of your characters in each session that you had?

Mia Sinclair Jenness: Yeah, definitely. I felt connected to Powder right off the bat, but exploring her relationships with her other family members and people in the show, that took a little bit more getting used to and a little bit more thinking and playing around with. But yeah, the entire team, they are so generous and so willing to play around with us and see what works and I think the final outcome was really, really phenomenal.

Jason Spisak: One of the examples of the commitment to their craft, Christian [Linke] and Alex [Yee], the two creators of Arcane, when we were recording the pilot, they actually came into the voiceover booth with me, so I was not alone. Usually, you’re on one side of the glass, and the engineer and the producers and everybody else is on the other side of the glass, but they actually came and sat in the room with me, so that we could bounce ideas off each other and just feel the creative energy for where they wanted Silco to land.

I was very close to what they wanted, vocally and my approach to the character, but you want to never leave anything on the table. So I would constantly ask them, “Hey, can we try it this way? Hey, can we try it that way?” Just to see which one of them landed with them the best, and sometimes it wasn’t what they expected. As a creative process, you’re always made better by the other people in the room, so if you try stuff, it may be something that they never thought of, and they’re the creator, you never know, you’re bringing that for them and that’s your job.

What was it like for both of you getting to work with the various stages of animation that were prepared for your recording sessions, because I know that some of it was fully ready and some of it was just pre-visualization?

Mia Sinclair Jenness: I got the job when I was 10, I turned 11 while I was working, and now I’m going to be 16 in December, so it’s been a while for everyone. I didn’t really have any sort of character art, if I’m remembering correctly, to go off of a first. I think I had maybe a couple of sketches, if at all, to kind of look at and figure out who Powder was, but at the same time, I also had Jinx, I always had Jinx to go off if I was feeling lost, if I was feeling confused as to who she was. I always could go back to Jinx and break it down from there.

Jason Spisak: I came in a little bit late in the process, they had already done I think a scratch recording of the pilot, and there was some character art for Silco that wasn’t final. But our recordings in the booth, when we recorded the episodes for Arcane, there was nothing up on the screen, so we were doing a radio play, in a sense. Not all the actors at once, but you were creating this out of a vacuum, they would show you some art references. Like they did show me pictures of Piltover –

Mia Sinclair Jenness: Yeah, I got that one too.

Jason Spisak: – and the under city in Zaun and they showed those things to give you the sense of what it looks like when you’re going to be dropped in on animation. But you’re just doing it in an empty room, at least for until you’re doing ADR and then at that point, you do see the sketches and things like that. They would playback whatever they had for us when they could, but it was pretty deep into the process before we saw it.

Mia Sinclair Jenness: I think the first time I saw any sort of clip of Arcane was very recently, maybe like my second-to-last session that I had before the season came out. But I remember when I saw it, I was blown away, I think I like stood there for a second after watching it and I was just kind of like, “What.” Because I was expecting it to be phenomenal, obviously, Riot as a whole is just so talented, but I don’t think anything could have prepared for the complete and utter incredible job that they did.

Jason Spisak: It’s a visual extravaganza, but also auditorially. The music that they choose and all the chorus of voices and voice actors they got, it is a complete and whole phenomenal piece. That word comes up a lot, but in order to be that way, every aspect of the show had to bring it and it does from the first episode. You’re just sitting there watching it like, “I just love this so much.”

Mia Sinclair Jenness: Yes, I can corroborate that that is in fact the case. I have my soda and my popcorn and I’m like, “I cannot look away.” I’m not even just saying that, even if I wasn’t in the show, I would still be absolutely blown away.

Jason Spisak: Fortiche, the animation studio, I have to give a shout out to them in every interview, because they did incredible.

Arcane premieres on Netflix on November 6 at 7 PM PST.

About The Author

Grant Hermanns
(1580 Articles Published)

See also  Genshin Impact: Xingqiu Constellations Guide

Grant Hermanns is a News Writer, Interviewer and Hiring Manager for Screen Rant, having joined the team in early 2021. Way back in 2015 while still in his college days, Grant got his start in the entertainment journalism industry with creator-friendly site Moviepilot until it shuttered nearly three years later. From there he joined the staff at ComingSoon.net and was its Associate Editor prior to coming over to Screen Rant.

To say he’s a lover of film and television would be an understatement and when he’s not mass consuming either you can find him exploring the world of Dungeons & Dragons with friends or slowly making his way through his gaming backlog.

More From Grant Hermanns