With over 400 acting credits to his name, to call Marvel's Avengers star Nolan North one of the most prolific actors working today would be an understatement. He also happens to be among the most talented, and after bringing Nathan Drake to life in PlayStation's critically acclaimed and best-selling Uncharted series, he's now breathing life into Tony Stark, a.k.a. the Invincible Iron Man.
That's not the only thing Nolan has been working on lately, though, as he's also the star of his hit YouTube channel Retro Replay. There's a tonne of great content on there, including reunions with his fellow Uncharted cast members, video game speedruns, hilarious advice videos, and more.
If you haven't subscribed already, you really should, as this entertaining channel is packed full of the feel-good content we need...especially in the midst of the pandemic we find ourselves in!
As well as YouTube, you can also find Nolan on Twitter at @nolan_north and Instagram at @reallynolannorth to keep up to date with this series and his many future projects. In this interview, Nolan takes us through what he hopes to achieve with Retro Replay and exciting future reunions!
Your YouTube series, Retro Replay, is a big hit, and I was wondering what inspired you to start that?
PJ Haarsma, who is one of my producing partners, came to me after we did a series called 'Con Man' together with Alan Tudyk and Nathan Fillion. I was part of that, and we just became really good friends. He said, 'We've got to do something together,' and he was working with his buddy Drew Lewis, who kind of came up with the idea of, 'Hey let's have Nolan play old video games.' That's basically what the idea was, and that's when I was like, 'Eh, I don't know much about games. I don't know if it'd be a very good idea.' So, I talked to Troy Baker about it, and we brought him on board to do it, and the first time we ever taped it, we were just like, 'Let's just see what happens.' And the show is what happened.
You know, two and a half, almost three years later, Troy decided he wanted to go do something different, and that's fine, he went and is doing his thing, and we just decided, 'Let's just try to keep it going and try to figure out what new shows and different content we can create.' We started, 'Father Knows Best?' with my son just for fun. COVID kind of dictated that because we had to do stuff we could keep within the family. Another little thing we did was 'Advice From Uncle Noly' who's a character that started appearing on the show who I'd do every now and then, and then our fans and subscribers of the show, who we call 'Replayers,' they decided, 'We like this,' so we kind of expanded it and just good and bad advice from this character I created and the fans kind of ran with.
Now, we're trying to expand. We've got Liam McIntyre and Todd Lassance doing 'Get Good' from Australia, and they're gonna join our channel and put up some content of their own, and we're always on the lookout for friends of ours who are creating content that we of pop in there and put them under our banner. We've got some new creative things coming up, but the one thing we've all learned about what YouTube is all about is community; the 'Replayers.' They're now a self-sustaining entity; they just pick each other up when one's down, they're a good support system for a lot of people, and just good wholesome fun. A lot of our fans have started channels of their own, and they stream together, so it's been very, very, very rewarding.
Your Uncharted cast reunion was so cool, but do you have any plans to perhaps bring together the casts of any other games you've worked on?
I think it would be a disservice to not do that. I want to go back. I've done a lot of stuff for the Call of Duty series, and the zombies, and I just think it'd be great to get those guys together again. Steve Blum, Fred Tatasciore, and Tom Kane. Get those guys together, and either watch someone play those games or we just get together and talk about it. For some of the Assassin's Creed stuff I've done too. I think it's always a good idea, and I love to expose some people to voices they may not know, just yet. With Avengers, we've talked about possibly doing Avengers. So many people know Troy, they know Laura Bailey, they know Travis Willingham, but they don't know Sandra Saad, who's Ms. Marvel. They might not know Jeff Schine. I'd like to get Jeff on either by himself or with the cast. It's always good to spotlight some of the people that don't typically get the spotlight, and then bring them on introduce them to our followers and vice versa. It's a very good idea.
You mentioned talking to Sandra, but as she's one of your peers, what's it like for you to get to interview her like that? For me, I'm obviously a big fan of your work and this is my job, but when it's a fellow voice actor, what's that experience like?
I don't know if you know this, but I went to journalism school for college and then I did graduate school for broadcast journalism, and I was actually a professional reporter for a year in New York, New Jersey. So it was kind of a throwback to what I had always kind of learned when I was in school, but it's not any different than it is for you, I don't think, because the truth of the matter is, I'm a fan of the people I work with. One of the things I really want to do with Retro Replay is to lean more into a lot of the stuff I do in animation which is technically outside gaming.
Bring on people that were my heroes like Frank Welker, Rob Paulsen, Maurice LaMarche, Jeff Bennett, Grey DeLisle, and Tara Strong. There's so many people who are so talented and they tend to do some gaming as well, but I'm fans of these people. I would love to just sit and talk with Peter Cullen for a while. I did a Transformers series with him, Transformers Prime, and he's just a gentleman and such a sweetheart. How fun would it be to sit down with Peter Cullen and Frank Welker at the same time, and have Megatron and Optimus Prime there with me? I've been in rooms working with them and, you know, my jaw is on the floor because these are guys I grew up with. It's interesting to be able to talk to someone like Sandra who's new to it. And I remember, Rob Paulsen, interviewed me and I said, 'Why are you interviewing me? You're my hero,' and he was laughing about it. He and I are doing something Sunday with a new thing he's doing and I'm doing his show, and he owes me at least two shows. He's got to let me interview him and come back and forth. It's less of an interview, and I like it to be more of a chat. I wouldn't consider myself a journalist the way you might, so it's usually just a chat.
With Sandra, it was interesting to get her perspective on something that was brand new to her that I've done for 20 plus years. It was so refreshing. Her enthusiasm inspires and is infectious and inspires even me to get perspective and remember why we do this and why we have so much fun doing it.
Finally, with Retro Replay, what would you tell our readers about what they can expect moving forward and do you maybe have more Marvel's Avengers guests planned or any surprises our readers can look out for?
You know what, we are just going to go through our Rolodex and have a bunch of different people on. We want to expand it. We had Anthony Calabrese, a speed runner, who speed ran through The Last of Us and Uncharted which got great views. I want to focus on our community and get more of our community involves so people can see each other and say, 'He brought that guy on, so maybe he'll bring me on!' You know, why not? Come and play a game with me. We're always looking for friends who might want to come on and just have fun. We do want to try to schedule willing get a little more topical and record more frequently. Just make it a little more variety to it and as long as we keep bringing interesting concepts, and we're having fun with it, we want to look into pop culture and gaming, and animation.
A lot of people don't know that I do a lot of animation as well and I have so many friends in that space. I would love to bring them on. I'd get Tom Kenny, Bill Fagerbakke, and Clancy Brown, who are such iconic characters from Spongebob Squarepants; that's Spongebob, Patrick, and Mr. Krabs. They're all friends of mine and even if it's just a Zoom call, I'd love to get them on and talk Spongebob. I've done games, smaller characters in the movie. I want to do things I'm a fan of and get people to see what makes me geek out and those are those people. It's not always about guests, it's about engagement with the community. We have ideas about different types of game challenges with the audience we can do live. I'd like to do more live things where people can ask me questions. There's something I miss about doing theater. I don't know what's wrong with me, but it's like a masochist, I like being put on the spot and that live environment. Sitting there, being off the cuff, and having nice, open, honest conversations with people and doing voices for them and whatever they like. That engagement is what's really cool.
We have some other people we want to have on, people who may want to start channels under our umbrella, but it would be nice for people to say, 'I'd like to see what Retro Replay did today,' and for them to go on and just check things out. If it's part of their day and something that makes them happy, that's what really excites me.