Chloe Hollings: Overwatch and The French Connection

by Lleyton Hughes

French born, ‘partly Australian’ actress Chloe Hollings will feature in the new Netflix show On the Verge, created by Julie Delpy.

On the Verge focuses on four female friends in their 40s who live in LA, and Hollings plays the role of ‘Elodie’, a friend of Delpy’s character.

Hollings revealed how grateful she was to work with the Before Sunrise actor/Two Days in Paris director, who wrote, directed, and stars in the series.

“Julie Delpy is amazing to work with. I really look up to her. During difficult times, she handled this huge team both elegantly and with a firm hand. I loved every bit of the experience and would do it again in a heartbeat,” said Hollings.

The series was filmed during COVID and came at a perfect time for Hollings, considering she had only recently moved to Los Angeles.

“I got involved in this project in the depths of COVID! During the first lockdown, my manager sent me this audition. It truly was perfect timing because, as a person who’d recently arrived in LA, I was starting to wonder if it was even reasonable to stay in this city,” Hollings said.

Hollings is also a voice actress, having started at the sprightly age of 8, today best known for her role in the highly successful video game Overwatch. It was this role as ‘Widowmaker’ that propelled her career worldwide.

“The game is played by over 60 million people throughout the world. And frankly, I just had to learn to deal with it as it came,” Hollings says of the spike in her popularity. “I hadn’t experienced such global attraction before … suddenly I was getting invited to appear at Comic Cons all over the world.”

Hollings expressed how much she enjoyed her role in the video game and praises voice acting for allowing her to play a variety of different characters, even though she doesn’t look like them.

“I love my character [in Overwatch] so much. She’s so far away from anything I would ever be, which is so much fun. I love that about voice acting. I don’t have to look like the character at all, I can still get to play her,” Hollings said.

“That’s revolutionary. In a world where actors in general are feeling more and more pressure to look a certain way if they want to get certain parts, it’s refreshing that video games and animation still allow us this freedom. Whether or not we book a job is based on performance, nothing else.”

Hollings was born in France but spent a chunk of her childhood in Melbourne before moving back to her home country when she was 7. She credits this short time in Australia as having a valued impact on her career.

“Knowing and living amongst another culture is invaluable; it teaches empathy, humility, it enriches the way you think. You start to realise how much a specific environment can influence an individual, which of course is key to being a great actor,” Hollings said.

We spoke with Chloe ahead of the release of On the Verge’s first season.

You began doing voice work at a really young age, can you tell us how that came about?

“My mother was editor in chief for an English-learning magazine, and they were sort of the first in France to start using audio CDs to support their content. They would write out little scripts and hire actors to act them out. I was 8, a good reader, an English speaker, and there were a few roles for little kids. So, my mother got me to try! Not only did I love it, I was good at it, and soon all the other similar publishers started hiring me too. It basically served as my training. Their budgets were never huge, so they couldn’t hire too many actors, and there were dozens of different characters to act, so I had to learn quite quickly how to change my voice and work with different accents. It quickly became second nature. In one session, I would have to play a little boy, two little girls, one from London and one from Sydney, an Irish monkey, a Scottish granny. It was a lot of fun and an extraordinary learning experience. I grew and evolved in booths, they felt like home. And they still do, actually. I’m 33 now, and have been voice-acting for 25 years! It’s such a big part of my existence. And literally everything I’ve achieved in my life so far, is thanks to voice acting.”

Did beginning so early have an impact on your childhood?

“It had a wonderful impact. Besides the obvious, I was getting great paychecks for a 9-year-old, I was learning how to be professional. People — adults — trusted me with their projects, so I gained a lot of confidence. I could explore my creativity. I had a safe space to have fun in and discover all the different creative facets I had in me. I also met a lot of people, which as a child or teenager, we don’t typically get to hang out with. But I was spending my Saturday afternoons in a booth with adult actors that were so much fun to be around, always making jokes and goofing around! This era also brought me lots of autonomy. I learned how to rely on myself during this time.”

Do voice acting provide you with the same sort of feeling you get from acting, or is it a whole other experience?

“The challenges remain the same: how can I understand this person? Why is she saying this? What do I need to believe in order to say this line and mean it? And that’s the true thrill for me. Once I understand where a person is coming from, I get to play. And this happens whether I’m on stage, on set, or in front of a mic. Of course, the better the writing, the more complexities there are, and the better it gets. But I’ve been quite lucky so far. However, physicality does change. With voice acting, I’m closer to being on stage: I move a lot, make crazy faces… It helps. In front of a camera, I must let the camera capture me. But the essence is the same.”

What was it like voice acting for a video game? Did you expect much of it when you first got the role?

“Hell, NO! I had no idea. The audition was held in Paris of all places, so I wasn’t expecting this to be for a giant LA-based company. I was extremely relaxed, my expectations were below sea-level. I went in a first time, got called-back, then got a remote test with the Blizzard team, and, finally, booked it officially. And I was honestly like, « Cool! » Thumbs up. Of course, I was impressed with the design, the writing, the character, I was excited that I got to star in my own animated short film and the project seemed awesome. But I couldn’t have guessed that Overwatch was going to take the world by storm, change my life, prompt me to move to the other side of the world, get me to travel all over the globe… Not at all! The experience was extraordinary. I love my character so much. She’s so far away from anything I would ever be, which is so much fun. I love that about voice acting: I don’t have to look like the character at all, I can still get to play her. That’s revolutionary. In a world where actors, in general, are feeling more and more pressure to look a certain way if they want to get certain parts, it’s refreshing that video games and animation still allow us this freedom. Whether or not we book a job is based on performance, nothing else.”

How has COVID affected your career? It seems to have come at a bad time for you having recently moved to LA, how have you been coping through it all?

“I actually wrote an Instagram post about this recently… A lot of people tend to think that I came here at a bad time, but I learned a lesson in perfect timing by coming to live in Los Angeles when I did. Sure, I wasn’t expecting a world pandemic — who was? Would I have been happier in Paris? I doubt it. LA gave me the luxury of being able to take daily walks at a 6-feet distance from everyone else, soak up the sun, enjoy the birds and flowers that are all around my neighbourhood. I wasn’t far from wild nature, and was even able to take some magnificent hikes. Compared to the lockdown I would have experienced in Paris, in a much smaller space and a very dense city, I have nothing to complain about. As to work, I installed a home booth in my apartment, and was able to keep recording and auditioning. I found a manager during that period and was even able to be on set with Julie Delpy! I consider myself lucky. The rest of the time, it was a great opportunity to become even more clear about my goals in life. I created a podcast, I worked on my next book. Even though I was living by myself and could have felt isolated, I keep quite a lovely memory of it all.”

On the Verge streams on Netflix from September 7, 2021