Published:
Maggie Robertson’s portrayals of monstrous, “complex” women aren’t stopping any time soon. The Resident Evil Village and Baldur’s Gate 3 actor was revealed to have a starring role in Warlock, Invoke Studios’ upcoming D&D action-adventure game. Her role? A powerful, “dangerous” witch named Tasha.
If you’re not an avid tabletop gamer, this might be your first time meeting Tasha. She’s one of the most powerful spellcasters in the D&D multiverse – a queen among witches, an occasional demon seducer, and something of a minor deity in the world of fairies.
Tasha “straddles the line between good and evil,” Robertson tells me in an interview at Gen Con. “I think that makes her a very fascinating character,” she adds. “She’s very charming and cunning, and all of that makes her really dangerous.”
It makes sense that Tasha would end up as Patron to Kaatri, our titular Warlock. The Dungeons and Dragons Gen Con panel that revealed Robertson’s role, however, also confirmed that Tasha wasn’t exactly an ally. Her support is inconsistent at best.
“You’re gonna get a different reaction on any different day,” Robertson says. “I like to figure out why she decides in this moment to be helpful and why she decides in other moments not to be helpful.”
I point out to Robertson that Tasha continues a trend with her acting roles. The Monstrous Feminine, a term coined in the ’90s by Barbara Creed, lists archetypes that terrify because they caricature femininity. Monstrous mothers, vampires, witches, castrators – Robertson has played them all.
“I think I’m a nice person!” she says. “Yet these characters just come to me.”
“It’s at the very least cathartic,” she continues. “I can go through all these dark, complicated emotions and actions and put myself in this dark space, but then I can completely leave it at the door.”
Robertson says her training as a Shakespearean actor is key to bringing these roles to life. “I feel like Shakespeare is great for videogames,” she tells me. She says Lady Dimitrescu felt “very heightened, especially the way she uses language… I feel similarly with Orin. I think language is a throughline for me, and Tasha is no exception – girl likes to talk.”
Robertson credits that same training with her success in videogames since RE8. Lady D, she says, “changed my life in every way.”
“I don’t know if I would have been ready for the opportunity Resident Evil gave me if I hadn’t done that Shakespeare degree,” she explains. “I think that was the thing I needed to be prepared for the opportunity came my way and to turn it into the success it became. Performance capture felt like the happy medium of all the different training and backgrounds I had.”
Robertson never expected her success as Lady D, telling me that she’d never considered a career in videogames before that. However, “the lightning bolt struck and I was exactly where I was meant to be, exactly when I was meant to be there. There was a sense of electricity when I was on set shooting that game. I really feel like I rolled a Nat 20 on that one.”
Warlock, Invoke and Wizards of the Coast’s new D&D-set title, will launch in 2027, with a gameplay trailer set to drop during Gamescom’s Opening Night Live.