Stephen Ogg on His Attitude Toward Trevor and Working on GTA 5

Stephen Ogg, who portrayed Trevor in GTA 5, appeared on Michael Rosenbaum’s podcast, where they discussed various topics such as acting, depression, and farting. Naturally, they also touched on his work on one of the most successful entertainment products in history. Steve, who has never actually played the game (he enjoyed Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, and Galaxy Game as a kid but isn’t into video games now), debunked the widely held belief in the gaming community that he hates his character.

I probably said to someone, “My name is not Trevor. My name is Steven.” When people call you by your character name, it’s kind of weird because I don’t get it. To be cartoon — like, video game character cartoon — there is just no way I can be cartoon. And then it became this thing: “He hates Trevor. He hates GTA. Don’t call him Trevor. He’ll freak out.”

The actor also admitted that the fame brought by Grand Theft Auto V and the TV shows he starred in hasn’t changed him. Yes, he’s more recognizable, but overall, it hasn’t significantly affected his life. Additionally, Steve shared details about working with motion capture. Wearing a spandex suit with multiple tracking markers and a helmet-mounted camera means you can’t touch or even get too close to other actors. However, he adapted to this quickly. The entire process was supposed to take a year, but it ended up lasting three! The shooting schedule was broken into specific segments rather than being continuous, as developers needed time to animate the captured footage. Just the script pages recorded by Ned Luke alone numbered in the thousands.