Yahoo News Xbox’s ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops 6’ Voice Cast to Star ‘Insecure’ and ‘The First Purge’ Actor Y’lan Noel (EXCLUSIVE)
“Insecure” and “The First Purge” star Y’lan Noel will be the voice star of Xbox’s eagerly anticipated “Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.”
Details about Noel’s unnamed character and the storyline of the game are being kept under wraps until formally unveiled by Activision at the Xbox Games Showcase event in Los Angeles Sunday, but Activision marketing chief Tyler Bahl teased to Variety Noel is playing “a new character” that is featured in the key art above.
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“He’s never worked in gaming before, but we really were impressed by his voice tapes. He’s super charismatic, super thoughtful,” Bahl said. “And when you’re playing a new character, we give the actors a bio, we set the scene, but they make the character, they bring that to life. So as the lead, he’s playing this brand new character that he defined and the team was just so impressed with what he’s been able to deliver.”
Best known for playing Daniel in Issa Rae’s “Insecure” and starring in Gerard McMurray’s “The First Purge,” Noel will next star opposite Natalie Portman in Apple TV+’s limited series “Lady in the Lake.” His other notable credits include starring alongside Rae in the romantic drama “The Photograph,” with Cleopatra Coleman in “A Lot of Nothing,” and with Sasheer Zamata in the indie comedy “The Weekend.”
The Activision team used new VFX technology to record Noel moving while seated in a dark studio to create the “Call of Duty: Black Ops 6” poster, which features Noel’s character. And the dynamic key art is just one portion of Activision’s larger strategy to tease “Black Ops 6” through its “The Truth Lies” marketing campaign that has been rolling out over the past few weeks in online image “leaks,” influencer posts and “take overs” of news vans and newspaper front pages.
“‘Black Ops’ has always been about conspiracy. It’s been about these clandestine government agencies and really thinking about what is the truth,” Bahl said. “And when we started to break this down, especially for today, in this moment, there’s digital media being altered, there’s things changing all the time. And so we really wanted to build a campaign around this concept of, ‘The Truth Lies.’ Like we’re not really sure what to make of anything that we read or see anymore. And we want to lean into that in a really big way. I think one of the themes of the game is around, is the government working against you? And that’ll come across for the reveal this week. But building up to that, we wanted the audience to feel a little bit more of, ‘Can I trust what I’m reading? Can I trust what I’m seeing?’ — just like the game is going to feel once players are able to play.”
Answers are coming this Sunday at Xbox Games Showcase, which will be available to stream online, when Activision will reveal the “Black Ops 6” trailer and gameplay details about the “Call of Duty” title.
“The showcase is 100% focused on ‘Black Ops 6’ for us. ‘Call of Duty’ is always about stature and swagger, and we look for these big moments that we can take advantage of and Showcase, because we haven’t been able to do Showcase in almost a decade, this is a great opportunity for us to do something with Xbox at their one of their biggest moments of the year.”
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