Dropout’s Vic Michaelis Wants to Throw Their Star Wars Character Out a Window

For Vic Michaelis, Attack of the Clones was never a movie to put on ironically. They often drifted off while watching it—not out of boredom, but because the film felt reassuring. Michaelis told Polygon they had watched the first 45 minutes of Episode II around 300 times. The prequels, they said, offer a comforting sense that nothing can go wrong while they’re on screen.

These days, Michaelis is part of the galaxy they once watched for comfort. In Star Wars Zero Company, they voice Runa Blask, a sharp-tongued adviser to the mercenary outfit led by Captain Hawks.

Best known for their improv comedy work with Dropout, Michaelis has also appeared in films and scripted television. The game marked their first voice role in a video game, a prospect they found daunting—especially given the added weight of joining the Star Wars universe.

Those worries soon eased. Bit Reactor, the studio behind Zero Company, knew Michaelis’s work at Dropout and considered it a factor in casting them as Runa.

Improv helped Michaelis prepare for the role, though it didn’t mean rewriting dialogue or inventing jokes on the spot. They described improv as a discipline built on preparation, and credited the game’s writers with Runa’s funniest lines. Many of Michaelis’s favorites, they said, came directly from the script or from ideas the writing team had pitched.

One recurring bit has Runa calling things “wizard,” a Star Wars way of saying something is cool. Michaelis joked that the tall character uses the word so often they may have said it roughly 500 times.

Players have quickly taken to Runa’s jokes and her habit of needling Hawks. Michaelis has seen fans describe her as someone they adore but might also want to toss out a window—a reaction they found relatable and fitting for the character’s big-sister energy.

Thankfully for Runa, she can’t be killed in the game. Zero Company includes permadeath for its operatives, but Runa stays behind at the group’s headquarters, known as the Den, rather than joining combat missions.

Michaelis has watched players mourn characters they invested time and care in when those characters don’t survive. They admitted to wondering, half-jokingly, whether fans might someday feel that strongly about Runa, too.

Before joining Zero Company, Runa described herself as a freelance adviser to powerful families and corporations across the galaxy—in practice, a financial fixer for the Separatists. She hopes her work with the mercenary group will bring her a fortune, though she knows it probably won’t. Her dream is to buy a moon and turn it into a resort.

Michaelis has a more modest plan for life in the Star Wars galaxy: owning a small business. They imagined running a bookstore and hosting comedy nights, only to get tangled up in interplanetary politics and city regulations while trying to make the events happen.

In Michaelis’s imagined series, the trouble would begin with a simple goal: bring a few stand-up comedians into the bookstore and sell wine after hours. Before long, they’d be marching to the Republic with a stack of local ordinances, caught up in a much larger conspiracy by accident.

If Star Trek can support a celebrated animated sitcom, perhaps Star Wars can make room for a shopkeeper trying to get comedy night off the ground. Disney, the idea is yours.

Source: Polygon