Voice Actress Briana White On Bringing Aerith To Life, Award Nominations, and Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth’s Ending

After being announced nearly a decade ago, the Final Fantasy VII remake project is well underway, with the second installment in the trilogy, Final Fantasy Rebirth, having launched earlier this year. While there are trade-offs between the original Final Fantasy VII and the ambitious remake trilogy, one of the biggest benefits of these new games is that their inclusion of voice acting makes it easier than ever to connect with the characters.

In particular, Aerith Gainsborough, one of the most famous characters from the original, gains a great deal in the remakes thanks to voice actress Briana White’s portrayal. We got a chance to speak with White, who recently won the Golden Joystick for Best Supporting Performer and has been nominated at The Game Awards for Best Performance. We asked her about getting into character, Aerith’s legacy, and what it’s like to be in the middle of award season.

Paste Magazine: So, I know you have a YouTube channel, Strange Rebel Gaming. What drew you to making a gaming channel, and what makes you interested in both playing games and talking about them?

Briana White: Gosh, so I’ve been gaming since I was little. My mom’s a gamer, and I would sit on her lap, and we’d play King’s Quest together. So, gaming has been a part of my whole life. After I had just gotten out of college, I was acting here in LA and thinking a lot about how I could spend my time when I wasn’t being an actor. When I wasn’t taking classes or getting new headshots, I was sort of waiting for the phone to ring for the next audition, and I didn’t like not doing enough with my time. I’m a little bit impatient. And so I had a friend who had a YouTube channel, and he had seen some success with it, and, I mean, now he has well over a million subscribers, but at the time, he was up and coming.

And he said, “You know, YouTube has really changed my life. You should try it.” And I said, “Well, I wouldn’t have anything to make a YouTube channel about.” And he says, “Well, what do you do for fun?” And I was like, “I don’t know what that means. I work, and that’s about it.” You know, I was fully involved in the hustle, but I had been rediscovering my love for gaming at the same time because I didn’t really have time to play games much in college, and so I had been rediscovering it with games like Mass Effect and Fable, and playing all the games that I missed while I was away at school. And so I said, “Well, gaming is pretty popular on YouTube right now. Let me see if I could try that out.” And that’s kind of how that started.

Paste: Related to playing games, I was wondering how familiar you were with the original Final Fantasy VII before taking on the role of Aerith. Did you have any kind of relationship with that character beforehand?

White: I never played the original Final Fantasy VII. When I was young, my mom got me and my sibling a Nintendo 64 so that we could play Mario Kart and she could play Ocarina of Time. So, we were a Nintendo family, and we never played PlayStation. My first Final Fantasy ended up being Final Fantasy XIV, which is their MMO, and I fell in love with it. I loved the world, the story, the characters, and how the combat and the gameplay intersected with the story.

And so after how much I loved that, I played Final Fantasy XV on my channel when it came out. And because I was kind of involved in the gaming space at that time, I was well aware of the remake project. It was announced in 2015 and everyone lost their minds about it, but that was really most of my knowledge of it; just that it was highly anticipated. But, you know, we didn’t really know how it was going to go.

Paste: Your performance as Aerith really fleshes out the character, and I’m curious how you brought that performance to life. Is there anything you did to get into character or bring out what was in the script?

White: So I didn’t get the script ahead of time; we never do. But when I got the audition, I really went back and learned everything that I could. I watched playthroughs on YouTube. I watched Advent Children. I read as much as I could about her character and her legacy, and then I listened to her previous voice actors, both Japanese and English, and I sort of formed a voice based on a character that I knew had to be a character that you fell in love with immediately. That was my first version, when I went in to start recording, sort of this sweet flower girl. And then a few more playful or sassy lines came up, and I really went quite sweet with them.

And it wasn’t until the writers and the Square Enix team pulled me in and they said, “What we really liked in your audition, and what we want to embrace is that playful side.” Yes, she is very sweet and nice, but she’s had a really tough life, and she grew up in the slums, so they didn’t want it to come off as one note, sweet flower girl, even though that’s sort of what her legacy evolved into from the original Final Fantasy VII, and particularly in Advent Children. There, she’s more of an angelic, ethereal character, but where she begins in Final Fantasy VII Remake is not there. So even though that honored her legacy of the past, we needed to see who she really was, who she really started out as. And she’s actually very spunky and tough as nails. So, yeah, it was a development between honoring where she’s been and who she’s been, but also at the same time honoring a fresh version of her and balancing that out. It was very much a collaborative process between me, the director, and the writers.

Paste: The remakes have great banter between the main cast of characters. I’m curious if there’s anything the voice actors did to promote that sense of camaraderie between the cast, and how much direct interaction was there between you folks? Because I know that with voice acting roles, you tend to be alone in the booth.

White: Yeah, we were alone in the booth all of the time. We got a chance to meet each other in person one time at E3 2019, and that was just me, John [Eric Bentley], Cody [Christian], and Erica [Lindbeck]; it wasn’t the entire cast. Other than that, we pretty much recorded the entirety of Final Fantasy VII Remake without having met each other. Britt [Baron] and I met for the first time at PAX East 2020 after the game was completed and was about to be released, I think like three weeks later or so. So all of that in the remakes is just acting. It’s all completely solo in the booth.

Every once in a while, we’ll get a chance to hear each other’s voices in our headsets right before we give a line if it’s necessary. Or Britt and I say a lot of lines in tandem, and they need it to sound like we’re saying them together but separately, enough that you can hear us individually. Or things like laughter, too. But they don’t want it to sound like we’re in stereo, they want it to sound like there are individual characters. And so if we need to listen to each other to give a good performance, sometimes we’ll get to, but sometimes I’m the first one recording that scene, and so I don’t get to listen to anybody else. Because I get to be the first one, and then Britt gets to hear me and play off my performance. But that’s pretty rare. 90% of it was all just acting.

Paste: Between voice acting and screen acting, is there one you tend to prefer? Are there elements you like or dislike about one over the other?

White: I like all of it just because what I love about acting is the collaborative process of making something out of nothing. I love being creative with other people, where we all come together and say, “There are a lot of challenges to making this thing, but how can we make it work instead of saying why it won’t work?” I love that element, and that’s something I can get on stage, in TV, film, and video games; it doesn’t really matter which. So, for me, it’s all about working with other people.

But there are definitely a lot of differences, like how with screen acting, for the most part, you get to use your whole body to tell a story. My eyes can be saying one thing while my smile is saying a different thing, while I have my fingers crossed behind my back. But when you’re voice acting, all of that, the whole story has to be told just through your voice. You have to be able to play around with different inflections, different softnesses of your voice, different textures, and where your breath is held.

At the same time, you have to figure out the element of physicality as well because that actually affects the way that you speak, too. So sometimes, we can’t move very far from the microphone, which is right in front of our mouth, because it picks up every little, tiny sound. But if I’m doing a combat noise, I have to be able to make that sound, whatever it is, right? And so sometimes figuring out physicality is required in order to make that sound feel alive, but I have to do it with just my hands so that I can still keep my mouth right at the microphone so that it doesn’t sound off-mic. It’s very technically challenging.

It’s a whole different world, and I had to learn all of that when I was pushed into the deep end with no experience for Final Fantasy VII Remake. I had to really learn on the job while I was recording. Again, I depended really deeply on my team, my directors, Bob and Kirk. They were able to say, “Okay, I like those three takes, but let’s give it another one and try it like this.” And they really helped me out when there was something I was struggling with because of my lack of experience with voice acting at the time.

Paste: I know that with screen acting, sometimes actors get the chance to provide feedback about their characters to the director. Was that all possible in your role as Aerith? Was there any back and forth where you were giving your thoughts on the character with the voice-over directors or anyone else?

White: I would say, for the most part, I didn’t need to, just because the writing team, the localization team, and the team working on it in Japan have a really good grasp of what makes Aerith amazing. And I didn’t need to poke in and say, “Hey, actually, could we tweak this a little bit?” There weren’t a lot of points where I felt like I needed to do that. I trusted them with the direction they’re taking the character, and that hasn’t changed. If anything, when we record a line, I always give three takes off the bat. And that means I have to deliver it a little bit differently in three ways right from the start. That way, we get to pick and choose which versions we like and which we don’t like, whether it has different emotion, or slightly different diction or pacing. All of that goes into deciding which take we want to go with. And sometimes, we’ll even pick the beginning part of Take A and the ending part of Take B. It’s very, very specific. So because of how detailed it is, sometimes I will say like, “Oh, I really didn’t like that Take B, could we not go with that one?” Or “If there was something you liked about that one, can I give it another go with what you liked?”

I would say that for Remake, there wasn’t any of that at all because I was so inexperienced and so nervous that I was going to get fired every day. I really didn’t think they were going to like what I did. And then with Crisis Core, I felt very much out of my element again because I was taking on the same character, but I was taking on the exact script from 2007, and I was taking on a younger version of her, so I was very nervous about that.

But for Rebirth, I really got to discover my voice in the booth. You know, my voice acting process and my artistry and creativity, I got to bring that version of myself into the booth for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. That’s why it’s really so special to me to have been nominated for these performances. Because for this one in particular, I felt like I brought more of myself and more ownership into the room in being able to craft this performance. So, it really means a lot to me to be nominated for this one, specifically.

Paste: Related to that, how did you feel when you heard you’d been nominated for Best Performance at the Game Awards? Or when you found out you had won the Golden Joystick for Best Supporting Performer?

White: My first reaction to being nominated was, “What? Who me? What?” No, I still don’t really believe it’s happening. It feels incredibly surreal, just because, you know, it’s a project I’ve been involved in for almost half a decade now, so a very long time, and it’s very close to my heart, but I am just focused on the work and celebrating it, and nominations were not at the forefront of my mind at all. I’ve never been to The Game Awards or the Golden Joysticks. I’ve watched The Game Awards, of course, as a streamer, but I’ve never been involved in it. And so, it sort of felt like what I thought was a window where I’m on the outside looking in has turned into a door that I’m being welcomed through. And that feels incredibly surreal.

Paste: It could be argued that many of the characters in the remakes are a bit more fleshed out than in the ’97 game, partially because there’s more time, dialog, and writing to do so. In particular, some would say Aerith’s greatest legacy in the original and the thing she’s most remembered for is her death, while by comparison, that doesn’t feel as true for her rendition in the remakes. I’m curious how you think this version compares to the original and how you wanted to bring that out?

White: I, of course, knew from the second I auditioned that Aerith is a character people know of because of her death, which was a huge surprise in the original Final Fantasy VII. That wasn’t really happening much at the time with media in general, the good guys were completely good guys, you know, and the bad guys were completely bad guys, and the good guys always completely won, and the bad guys always completely lost. But when you lose Aerith in Final Fantasy VII, it completely surprises you, and it raises the stakes because then you get to play the whole rest of the game with something more to fight for and to hope for. I think that’s really a beautiful message.

Of course, with the remake series, we don’t know what’s going to happen. We start at the beginning of her story in Midgar. Or at least, the beginning of her story in Final Fantasy VII because there’s Crisis Core, which is a prequel. But we start near the beginning of her story in Final Fantasy VII Remake. And so, as an actor, I couldn’t take on her legacy as a character who died in 1997. I had to focus on who she is in this moment and really let everything else go, which was an incredible challenge. But, for me as an actor, I tried to focus on what was directly in front of me and what motivated her to say whatever line and let the top creators focus on the large, overarching rest of it. Because, you know, to be honest, I don’t sit down and have conversations with them over tea about this kind of thing. They make these decisions, and then it eventually trickles down to me. So, for me, I really just had to give a realistic portrayal of this girl in this moment, and I really tried to focus on that.

Paste: How do you feel about where Aerith ends up at the end of Rebirth?

White: Well, I’ve been asked not to talk about story spoilers specifically, but from everything that I’ve experienced, you’re supposed to wonder. It’s left open-ended, just like the end of Final Fantasy VII Remake. It’s the same in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth; it’s open for interpretation. And there are going to be people who say, “Oh well, it’s obviously this way,” versus people who say, “Oh well, it’s obviously the other way.” And I believe that’s on purpose because life is complicated, and art is allowed to be, too. It’s allowed to make you wonder, “Am I seeing it the right way?” and converse with other people about your feelings. I think that’s something beautiful. To be honest, the entire remake series has been like that, right? The entire remake series has left you wondering, is it going to be the same, or is it going to be different? And the entire series has played with the tension of that question: how can something be so completely the same and yet so completely different at the same time? That’s the question.

Paste: Something I really like about the remakes compared to the originals, is that the relationship between Aerith and Tifa feels much more fleshed out. It doesn’t really feel like they’re competing love interests, but more that they’re friends. Can you talk a little bit about conveying that element of the character?

White: I love that about them. I think it is a much more realistic and modern way to portray these characters. I also think it’s very lucky that I love Britt, who voices Tifa, and she’s really wonderful too. Because in those moments where we get to, you know, talk about boys, I’m envisioning my friendship with her. And it’s really heartwarming. It’s really beautiful to see these two girls grow in their love for one another, so that it only strengthens the relationship between the whole party, like the fact that they tease Cloud together just a little bit and talk about how his hair looks just like a Chocobo. And I think ultimately those end up being some of the most beautiful moments in the game, the moments that they get to share; you get to almost fall in love with both of them, and that’s really beautiful.

Paste: Not counting Aerith, who’s your favorite character from Final Fantasy VII? Either in the original, the remakes, Advent Children, or anything else.

White: Every time I get asked this, I have a different answer.

Paste: I don’t blame you, it’s a good ensemble.

White: It really is. There are so many amazing characters, and they all have so much depth and complexity. I have to say today, or even just this part of today, my favorite character is Tifa. She is a character who is so gentle and soft-spoken but will never let that get in the way of standing up for what’s right, and that’s what I really admire about her as a character. She cares very deeply for others, and always wants to do what’s right, but she is so smart about knowing what’s right for everyone isn’t always possible. It’s complicated, and she internalizes that complication, acknowledges it, and still tries to forge forward. She’s almost like a little bit the moral compass of the group, you know, especially of Avalanche. Specifically, Barrett is angry and wants to get back at Shinra and doesn’t care about the cost. And Tifa says, “Well, wait a minute, I care about the cost.” I absolutely love that about her. She is, she is so strong and rigid, but at no point is it ever harsh. She’s so soft, like a warm cup of chai. I love Tifa.

Paste: What was your favorite memory from working on the remakes so far?

White: My favorite moment? Gosh, I have a whole collage of moments that play through my head when you ask me that question; from the very first session I went into skipping and smiling, to the moments of self-doubt. I had many moments of self-doubt, thinking, “I just can’t do this. This is just too hard. I am not meant for this,” to recording some amazing scenes that I just knew people were going to love, like the resolution scene, the dream sequence in Remake. To finding out that we were going to get to do Crisis Core and being able to bring that version of her to life. And then being able to record for Rebirth, and being able to say, that “This is the first step on our new journey,” and then saying that “Life and death are two sides of the same coin,” and knowing how that was going to impact people. And then, filming the sky wheel scene which I knew people were so excited to see. I mean, asking me to pick my favorite moment is impossible; I’m going to get emotional. It’s such a huge part of my life, and it means so much to me that I can’t pick a favorite. It all means so much to me.

Elijah Gonzalez is an assistant Games and TV Editor for Paste Magazine. In addition to playing and watching the latest on the small screen, he also loves film, creating large lists of media he’ll probably never actually get to, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon games. You can follow him on Twitter @eli_gonzalez11 and on Bluesky @elijahgonzalez.bsky.social.

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