There are bad guys and then there are Bad Guys that you just can’t wait to punch in the face. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle’s Emmerich Voss falls easily into that second category. He’s a Nazi, and an especially vile one at that. Voss is so snide and so sure of himself in that greasy, smart arse kind of way. He plays on people’s weaknesses and exploits them, allowing him to use (and abuse) others to his advantage. “Nothing is quite so easy to manipulate as an insecure male,” he says at one point. And don’t get me started on gestures. Yes, Voss is a very punchable bad guy, and this is a sign of a job well done by Voss’ actor, Marios Gavrilis.
The Greek Gavrilis was born and raised in Germany, and along with acting and a spot of film producing, he has also been a mainstay on the voice-over and dubbing scene for 20 years. If you ever play Death Stranding in German, the voice you will hear coming from Sam Porter Bridges’ lips, that’s Gavrilis. He also dubbed Alexios in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Venom in Spider-Man 2 and Dani Rojas in Far Cry 6. As for his live-action work, he has starred in a rather brilliant short film based on social deduction game Among Us, to name but one.
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When Gavrilis first auditioned for the role of Voss, he had no idea where things were heading. The project was shrouded in mystery; code names were used for both the title and its characters. “I never imagined it would be Indiana Jones,” he tells me. “I did know though that it was a MachineGames title, and since my character was German, I thought it could be for the new Wolfenstein game.”
The scene Gavrilis was given for his audition was actually Voss’ very first introduction in the Great Circle. “I thought ‘wow, that’s some brilliantly intense written character’. The writing in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, particularly in that scene, is straight up genius.”
He eventually found out he’d got the part at the end of 2021, and only then was he told the game was an Indiana Jones title, and he was going to be the main adversary to Troy Baker’s Indy.
“I was flabbergasted, I couldn’t believe it. Thank God I didn’t know that I was auditioning for something that big. I would’ve probably screwed up the audition big time,” Gavrilis says, adding from a psychological point, “it can be an advantage not knowing what you’re going in for”. This element of the unknown can leave an actor feeling “freer”, and therefore allow them to “try out unconventional things” during an audition.