When Rhys from Tales from the Borderlands was revealed to be in Borderlands 3 many assumed that Troy Baker would return to voice the role. However, it turned out that this would not be the case. Now, the veteran voice actor has opened up on why he wasn’t returning to the role in Borderlands 3.
When the news first broke, Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford stated that Baker had simply turned down the role. “You’ll have to ask Troy,” Pitchford stated to a fan who had asked him about Baker’s absence on Twitter. “I was told by the audio director that he turned it down.”
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However, this statement seems to contradict Baker’s own statements on the matter. “I said I would love to come back,” said Baker in an interview with OnlySP. “[Gearbox Software] said I’m not coming back. Their timeline tells an interesting story. I think it’s interesting that Randy Pitchford tweeted out that I turned it down, and then he said he heard that I turned it down. I would fact check before I tweeted out to the internet.”
Now, in an interview with VG247, Baker opened up on the exact reason he couldn’t take the role due to being a SAG-AFTRA, the union that represents voice actors (among others). Gearbox, on the other hand “wouldn’t go union.”
“I can’t do a non-union gig,” stated the voice actor in the interview. Additionally, he also mentioned that this was an issue that they knew would come up. “We always knew going into it, that this was going to be the thing,” continued Baker. “They were going to take these characters, and put them from the Tales from the Borderlands series from Telltale, into Borderlands proper. I’ve been waiting for this call. They were like, ‘Do you want to do this?’ And I said, ‘Yes’. They never, because they would never move from that position. I’m not mad. It’s invariably a completely different character, but it still stings.”
