The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Realm expands on the story building first seen in the 2017 hit Breath of the Wild with even more cinematic cutscenes and many of the main characters (excluding protagonist Link) now have even more dialogue.
Speaking with Axios recently about her return to the role of Princess Zelda, the character’s English voice and American-Canadian VA Patricia Summersett revealed that she drew from an “amalgam of different inspirations” for Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.
According to the source, she was influenced by “Daenerys Targaryen” (played by Emilia Clarke) in Game of Thrones and took “a bit” of inspiration from Emma Watson’s Hermione Granger in Harry Potter and also Mia Farrow (especially from her role in The Last Unicorn).
As mentioned, this is Summersett’s third appearance as Princess Zelda – including the spin-off Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. And although she’s been a part of Link’s journey for a while, she notes that she’s never actually met series producer Eiji Aonuma.
She also found out about the Tears of the Kingdom only when Nintendo released the first “first look” teaser of 2019 – mentioning how it’s “normal” for voice actors to figure this out, and developers need to have a “certain amount” of gameplay created before bringing in talent to record dialogue.
