In my review of Resident Evil Requiem, I praised the game for its cinematic storytelling. At the center of that emotional story is Grace Ashcroft, RE9’s anxious new FBI protagonist, brought to life by a standout performance from Angela Sant’Albano.I recently sat down with Sant’Albano to talk about stepping into the role, how Capcom approached Grace differently from past Resident Evil heroes, and why the character’s fear, trauma, and growth feel so real. In our conversation, the actor opened up about Grace’s emotional arc, the scenes that hit her the hardest, and where she hopes the character could go next.Why Grace Feels So Different in Resident Evil RequiemScreenshot: CapcomGrace feels very different from past Resident Evil protagonists. She’s more emotional, more vulnerable, and you can hear that fear in her voice throughout the game. Grace Ashcroft has genuinely become one of my favorite characters in the franchise. And I think a big reason she resonated with me was because of how emotional and cinematic her story was. How much of that performance was improvised versus planned?Angela Sant’Albano:Well, first of all, thank you for saying all that. It means a lot to me.A lot of it was planned, to be honest. We didn’t really improvise once we were shooting, but we were given the scripts, of course, and we had table reads. Within those table reads, we were able to tweak a line here and there, maybe add a line if we felt there were moments where Grace might say something a little more indirectly. We would also add a little bit of blocking during rehearsal.A lot of the process was: we’d do the table read, then rehearse on our feet. We’d lock it in so our performance capture director could film it on her phone, just in rehearsal. Then I’d go home that night and really memorize my movements, in a sense. In rehearsal, we would never go full out emotionally. We’d just get the loose shape of it, because it’s a video game, so the digital side and cinematics are preconceived in a way.Then on the day of filming, the language and dialogue were never really improvised. It was all pretty much set. But throughout the scenes and table reads, we were able to add elements to our characters and develop them. Capcom was so collaborative, and there was a real open dialogue, which was really lovely.Did Capcom make it clear early on that Grace was meant to be a different kind of Resident Evil protagonist?Screenshot: CapcomAngela Sant’Albano:Honestly, when I first got the job, I didn’t know that Grace was such a big part of the story. There’s so much secrecy, of course, behind all these games, so I didn’t really know what I was signing up for. Obviously, it worked in my favor. It was great. But when I first signed on, I had no idea.I knew that she was an FBI analyst. I knew that she was going to go to the Wrenwood Hotel, and that’s pretty much all I knew. Then on our first day, we had a big table read, and they walked us through the overall scope of the game, chapter by chapter. And I remember having this moment of, “Oh my God. I think I go all the way through this game.”I remember leaving the room and calling my parents, and I was like, “I think it might be a big part, Mom.” And anyway, at that point, they told us more about the plot and sort of our arcs, but we really did shoot chapter by chapter, and the final chapter wasn’t officially locked until about halfway through shooting.Screenshot: CapcomSo in a way, it was really, really nice for me, playing Grace, because my future was unknown to me as Angela in the same way that it was unknown to my character. So it kept things really alive. And going back to what you were saying about cinematics and keeping the performances very emotional and real, it was something that Capcom cared a lot about. They really said, “We want these performances to be as cinematic or like film as possible.”Our performance capture director, Kate Saxon, had worked on theater and TV, and that was her background. Now she’s obviously a big video game director too, but she always said, think of it as doing theater in the round, because you have the audience all around you. But then it’s a film-like performance, because the camera is right there on your head, so the audience, or the player, is right there with you.And that really excited me, because I felt that players were so close to me. The people playing were essentially me. So whenever my breath would shake, or my hands would shake, I kind of imagined it as if it was in the controller, like how the controller has the speaker and all those kinds of elements.Screenshot: CapcomI remember thinking about that a lot and being like, they are right here with me. So every little, tiny detail I add is actually being picked up. Because sometimes when you do film and TV, they might miss it. You know, you’re in a wide shot, sometimes you’re in a close-up, but even still, it might not be captured exactly how you intend it to be.Whereas with Resident Evil Requiem, I really felt that I had 360 degrees of cameras around me, and then one on my head. And in a weird way, I felt like I was right there with the player. And so I wanted it to feel as terrifying as possible for them, if I could.How Angela Sant’Albano Built Grace’s Emotional PerformanceScreenshot: CapcomGrace isn’t a traditional action hero. She panics, hesitates, and struggles. But by the end of the game, she feels changed. At least to me, it felt like Grace found her confidence by the end, after she finally found something worth fighting for. Was that arc something you were consciously building toward? Angela Sant’Albano:That was all intentional. In a way, it made it easier for me to play a character like Grace, because I got to live through her whole arc. As you said, she doesn’t start in this position of strength or confidence or power, which I often think is actually harder to play. Because obviously, as an actor, you create your whole backstory, but when you can sort of live the backstory through the game, I mean, you really see Grace in flashback, in those moments that directly affect the woman that she is today.We wanted Grace’s arc to feel so real and defined. I wanted it to be clear that when she meets Emily, this is the moment in the story where she is finally connecting to another human being properly. For the first time, she’s loving and caring for someone other than herself. She hasn’t done that since her mom passedSo that relationship, to me, was the heart of the story for Grace, which then meant that once Emily transforms and, you know, passes, that primal, guttural cry Grace lets out – it’s so incredibly painful for her. I wanted everything to cost something. And by seeing where she begins and where she ends, it kind of made it all easier for me as the actor.The emotional details are what made Grace stand out. Even small things like her discomfort around people or physical touch made her feel real compared to previous Resident Evil protagonists.Screenshot: CapcomAngela Sant’Albano:She really hyper-fixates on things. Yes, she’s very, very bright. She’s incredibly intelligent—but she hyper-fixates on things that interest her. She doesn’t have a lot of interaction with other people. She goes to work and then she goes home. And you can even see that in the first scene that they put in the trailer, where she goes and has that little meeting with her boss. She’s not comfortable maintaining eye contact with him. You know, she’s not a social person.And I wanted that to be clear as well in the flashback of that journey, because in the flashback, she reaches for her mom’s arm. At that point in her life, she was much more comfortable with physical touch.Screenshot: CapcomBut then after the loss of her mom and all of that incredible trauma, she’s become so incredibly inward and contained as a form of self-protection. And so then, even when she first meets Emily, who’s a little girl—obviously she’s in a glass box—but there is still that element of fear.And I wanted players to see that Grace was even uncomfortable with a child. There is this real barrier with Grace in the beginning of the story. And then she has to, in order to escape and get out of this terrifying hospital, confront that fear of touch. She has to pick Emily up in order to move through the area quicker.The Resident Evil Requiem Scene That Hit HardestWas there one scene that stood out as the most emotional for you to perform?Angela Sant’Albano:Definitely the scene where Grace loses her mom in the flashback, and when Emily transforms. Those were my favorite scenes to film because they really scared me. I think the more scared you are of doing a scene, the more you’re going to throw yourself into it.Screenshot: CapcomAnd I think that always sounds weird, but the more scared you are of doing the scene, the more fun you’re probably going to have, because you’re really going to put 150% into it. I remember Alyssa’s scene was the one that we did first, obviously in the sequence. I remember being really nervous because I just didn’t know whether I could get to that level of emotion in such a short period of time. I’d never done that before, honestly, as an actor. And so I just remember thinking, we’re going to go 150%, let’s just see what comes out. I put the face of my mum onto Jane Perry a little bit, and I just sort of played and wanted to see where it would go. And luckily, it went really well, and it felt really good. Once I knew I could get there and I trusted myself, then we did it a couple more times.And yeah, another scene there that I have to say I loved was the gurney scene, because I just loved being upside down, tied down. I loved all of the physical elements of that. And I also loved the scene with The Girl where she drags me through the corridor, because they hooked me up to a wire and dragged me. Nate, who was our stunt coordinator, and some other people just grabbed it and dragged me across the floor. It was so fun.Screenshot: CapcomI love all that kind of stuff, because it means that the screams are really genuine. It kind of shocks your body into having that reaction. And so it feels—obviously it’s acted as well, and it’s performed—but the impulse to help you get there is real. So I think the motion capture is what really makes everything feel very alive.One line that really stuck with me from the Alyssa flashback scene was when Grace says, “Mom, I’m scared.” For some reason it hits incredibly hard. It just feels like a very real and terrifying moment.Angela Sant’Albano:I remember thinking about that line a lot as well. At that age, we don’t want to admit we’re afraid. We’re in that phase of, “No, I’m an adult now, Mom.” So that line costs Grace so much. When you’re 18, it’s really hard to say that.When you’re young and you are putting on this “I know what I’m doing, Mom,” then it costs you so much more to admit you are afraid. I think that is what made that line so impactful. When I read it in the script, it hit me so hard, because I know as a teenager, that’s really hard to say to your mom, you know?Screenshot: CapcomYeah, it just felt so vulnerable. I also think a lot of times when you play games, it can get too dialog heavy. But there’s just something in that moment with how Grace calls out to her mom that makes the moment feel so heavy. Angela Sant’Albano:I also think Capcom did an amazing job with writing Grace Ashcroft. As you said, with fewer words, you can communicate so much. When things are too verbose and too long, they lose power. And they were very good at keeping Grace’s dialog, precise and concise.And I think that really helps also, because, again, she’s quite shy and timid, and she doesn’t want to talk too much to strangers. I just think the writers captured her voice really well in the script.How Motion Capture Made Grace Feel More RealYou’ve worked in film and television too. How does performance capture in video games compare to making a movie or performing in theater?Angela Sant’Albano:I really don’t think there’s a major difference between video game performance capture, film acting, TV acting, or theater acting. I think at its core, it’s just finding the truth in your character, their lived experience, and then just leaning into who they are.However, there are elements to performance capture where you have to know technically about certain things. So for example, they’ve built a door for you to walk through, but it’s not a real door. It’s two poles, so you can’t grab the pole like that. Or, you have to push the door a certain way so that your hands aren’t going through it in the game itself.Screenshot: CapcomSo there are obviously technical things that you have to learn. Another one is eyelines. So Emily, who’s played by the lovely Emma Rose, who’s now a very good friend of mine—she’s a tiny, still Irish actress—I adore her. And we always would laugh because her eyes were much lower than mine. So I had to look down the whole time while we were filming. But little things like that, technically, you obviously have to learn. But once you get past all that, the performance is no different. I really, really think that.Those motion capture details really comes through in Resident Evil Requiem though, especially in the physical details, like how Grace holds a gun.Angela Sant’Albano:I think motion-capture lets you lean into different details. For instances, Grace’s shaky breath, or how I held a gun. I knew that the player was going to be watching my hand as the gun was going, so that little shake indicates immediately, “Oh, she’s terrified right now.”There were also one scene where Grace is in a room with blood tanks, and Victor walks in. He opens the door and walks through the room, and I’m hiding behind these big containers. For that scene, I was actually the cameraman. So my camera on my head was really what the player was going to be seeing.Screenshot: CapcomI remember in that moment thinking, okay, vocally, you’ve got to really be on it, because they’re not seeing you. They’re not seeing your performance, but they’re hearing it. But then you also can’t give the player motion sickness, so don’t move your head too quickly.So when I was following Victor, I was trying to move my head very slowly. That way the player was getting to see everything without feeling the franticness in my head movements, but they were hearing it in my voice.Could Grace Return in Another Resident Evil Game?If Grace were to return in a future Resident Evil project, what direction would you want to see her go in?Angela Sant’Albano:Well, I feel like they left the ending in a really beautiful way, where you see that Grace has somewhat adopted Emily. And then you also see that she has this budding mentorship friendship with Leon.A lot of people say she feels more confident at the end, and I think that’s true. But I also think if you threw her back into that situation, she would still be incredibly afraid. She’s still not going to be great with a gun.Screenshot: CapcomWhen you think about the time frame of Requiem that she was in that space, in that world, it’s not that long. It’s probably, what, 24 hours, maybe 48 hours, you know, of high-stress situations? I don’t necessarily think that means that Grace, all of a sudden, is a Leon character.I think also Grace, in being able to manage her emotions a little bit better given this experience, would then be able to access a lot more of her intellect and her brains, and be able to kind of rationalize things a bit better and put two and two together a little bit more, or a little bit quicker. Grace is someone who still suffers from anxiety, and I don’t think that ever necessarily goes away. You know, just because you’ve been thrown into something crazy doesn’t mean you wake up the next day and you have no anxiety.Screenshot: CapcomYeah, I do think she will inevitably be a little bit more comfortable. But I don’t think she’s that much more comfortable, to be honest. I would be really interested to see where things go with her and Emily, and her and Leon—like how their relationship develops, and how Leon realizes Grace can actually really help him in ways that maybe before she couldn’t should Capcom go in that direction with the series. But I don’t know anything about that.I hope that there’s a future for Grace in the series, because I would be sad to leave her. I also think it would be very exciting and challenging to find like Grace in this slightly new position and new world.Plus there is a lot left the series can explore about Alyssa Ashcroft. There is still a lot Grace doesn’t know about her. Or what really happened with her mom by the end of Requiem. Angela Sant’Albano:Yeah, there’s much that, I think, at the end of Requiem, Grace still doesn’t know. If anything, it probably makes her more curious. Makes her wanting to be a little bit more like her mom, and maybe be investigative. I don’t necessarily see her becoming a cop or a combat woman. But yeah, I do think she might lean more into who her mother. So yeah, that would be my take.The post Resident Evil Requiem Star Angela Sant’Albano Explains Why Grace Ashcroft Feels So Real appeared first on VICE.