Interview: Patricia Summersett on voicing Princess Zelda for nearly a decade

Believe it not, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is almost ten years old. It was a massive game for many reasons – it launched alongside Nintendo Switch, was a new take for the series by going fully open-world, and introduced various aspects like voice acting in a mainline game for the characters.

Patricia Summersett has been the voice of Princess Zelda since 2017. After working on Breath of the Wild, she returned for Tears of the Kingdom as well as the Hyrule Warriors titles Age of Calamity and last year’s Age of Imprisonment.

We previously spoke with Summersett in 2017, but with The Legend of Zelda celebrating its 40th anniversary, now’s the perfect time to catch up all of these years later. Find our full discussion below.

What can you tell us about what it was like auditioning for the role of Zelda all of those years ago?

Looking back, I’m grateful I didn’t know what role I was auditioning for. If I’d realized that mysterious script-without any real clues about the game – held the keys to the castle, I might have overthought it or made different choices instead of trusting my gut.

Even though I’d been acting for ten years, I had just moved to LA, so the stakes already felt high and I needed things to work. Any role in any game would have felt like a win. Honestly, I still tend to feel that way about landing a role.

After landing “a role” in the game, I showed up for the first recording session, signed an NDA, and was then informed that the role was Princess Zelda. The adrenaline rush was unreal. I only kept my composure because… I don’t know how. #acting. And there was a recording session I had to nail!

What do you remember from that time?

With nearly a decade of the sands of time over my memory, I’ll do my best. 2016 was a year of newness and uncertainty on all fronts. A lot was happening in life around the recording sessions, which became bright highlights and a welcome focus. They were so much fun. Everyone in the room was deeply invested, meticulous, and kind – everything you hope for in a creative process. Jamie Mortellaro was a wonderful director, and I’m immensely grateful for his support and guidance.

I hadn’t yet met my castmates, and nearly everything about the game – its world, the people in it, how it would be received, the launch of the Nintendo Switch – remained a mystery. Living for a year with the secret of such an exciting role was surreal, and I was constantly paranoid about revealing anything. In the quiet of a temporary apartment, I pored over the Hyrule Historia, drank coffee, and amused myself by learning TP Hylian.

That year also included a theatre production in Toronto (Blood Wild) and trips back to Montreal to film projects like Mother!. Watching the reaction to Nintendo’s Breath of the Wild E3 trailer was pretty insane.

When we previously spoke in 2017, you had only just completed your first role as Zelda. Has anything changed with regard to your approach to the character now that you’ve had a few more titles under your belt?

Roles are always evolving. If you’re doing it right, you bring your present self to them. You meet the character in the moment, with the script in front of you. You can reference the past, but you can’t play the past.

I love how Zelda has evolved across the games, and I’ve evolved too over the last ten years as an actor and a person. She matures and grows through hardship, but never at the expense of her quirky, nerdy humor. Or her capacity for compassion. All of that nuance comes from the writing, directing, translation, design—the entire creative team shapes the character’s evolution and throughline. I get to ride along.

Do you change your approach at all when the role you’re playing deviates from game to game? Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are similar in many ways, but then Age of Imprisonment and Age of Calamity seemed like more of a departure and bring new story elements to the table.

Exploring new iterations and timelines for a character feels a bit like unlocking memories – filling in their inner world in ways you can carry forward. The Zelda app notes were great for that too; recording them taught me a lot of LoZ lore.

For me, Zelda remains the same core character across these games – different contexts and circumstances, but the same essence that began with Breath of the Wild. Recording the Hyrule Warriors games also adds a technical layer beyond cinematic scenes, with short bursts and emotes designed for the button-mashing pleasure of a playable Zelda. And yay for playable Zelda!

What was it like recording new lines for the Zelda Notes memories?

An exercise actors often use to build a character’s inner world is writing a fictional journal in the character’s private voice – capturing mundane or revelatory moments and what they choose to find meaningful or noteworthy.

For me, recording the Zelda notes felt like a version of that exercise. I got to sit inside her inner thoughts for countless hours—but without having to invent those thoughts myself. The creative team had already done that work. And the director whispered sweet words of encouragement and made great jokes that would make both Patricia and Zelda chuckle. It’s hard work okay?

Zelda often does something different for each game, but we’ve now seen four titles in the Breath of the Wild universe. Did you expect to be voicing Zelda for this long, and how did it feel to learn that you’d be coming back with numerous roles?

I will never take for granted the invitation to reprise a role, expand upon previous work and return to such a beloved universe. I am surprised and overjoyed every time I re-enter Hyrule – and quite frankly it looks pretty different each time I do. These things are never ever a given.

If Nintendo is finished with this version of the series, do you feel ready to pass the torch of Hyrule’s princess?

I don’t desire – or need – to pass a torch. There are already many torches, many versions of Zelda, each shaped by hundreds of artists before me. We can all exist at the same time, welcomed into a global community.

On that note, people are still just picking up Breath of the Wild for the first time! Regardless of future projects, I must dutifully warn them of the Blood Moon’s rise. It’s serious. The Worm Blood Moon just occurred at 4am last week and I was up all night.

Do you have a favorite Zelda game that isn’t Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom?

Ocarina of time, then Twilight Princess.

Our original interview from 2017 is available here.