Why Kumail Nanjiani’s Orc Didn’t Sound Like One in Middle-earth: Shadow of War

Those who played 2017’s Middle-earth: Shadow of War may have recognized a familiar voice among the game’s orcs in Kumail Nanjiani’s The Agonizer. The comedian recently talked about The Lord of the Rings’ game and explained why his character sounded profoundly un-orcish.

On Daniel Van Kirk and Rory Scovel’s podcast Pen Pals, Nanjiani provided a run down of his video game acting credits including his role as Middle-earth: Shadow of War’s The Agonizer. According to Nanjiani, he expressed concern regarding his performance not particularly sounding much like an orc and was told that his voice-over work would be edited in post-production to sound more orc-like. To Nanjiani’s surprise, those added orc flares never occurred, comedically resulting in a character that closely resembled The Eternals star’s conversation cadence.

The Pen Pals continued to riff on The Agonizer’s position as an outlier among his fellow Middle-earth orcs, but Nanjiani ultimately concluded that he enjoyed both working on and playing the game. Van Kirk pointed out that Nanjiani’s orc role landed him a rarified nerd air, having performed in the universes of Star Wars, Marvel, and Lord of the Rings. Nanjiani, a major Lord of the Rings fan himself, had never considered the franchise hat trick afforded by his role in Middle-earth: Shadow of War until Van Kirk mentioned the feat.

In a much briefer discussion, Nanjiani touched on his two other video game roles as Reggie in Telltale Games‘ The Walking Dead: Season 2 and Jarun Tann in Mass Effect: Andromeda. The Silicon Valley actor outlined some of the challenges unique to video game performance such as comprehensive scripts and properly striking a balance between characterization and conveying necessary game mechanics. Though the podcast trio jokingly proposed a potential spin-off game for The Agonizer, Nanjiani voiced earnest hesitance in accepting another gaming role anytime soon.

Scovel steered the Pen Pals opening discussion toward video games because Nanjiani himself used to host a video game podcast, The Indoor Kids, with his wife Emily V. Gordon. Though the former Nerdist network podcast ended, Nanjiani and Gordon still share an active love for gaming. The actor specifically discussed the comical stresses of playing Overcooked in their household.

Middle-earth: Shadow of War is available to play now.