It’s not every day you get asked by your boss at the FBI to visit the very hotel where your mother was killed to investigate another murder. In Resident Evil Requiem, what feels like a comically gross conflict of interest turns out to be the setup for the mysterious, action-packed game, one of the most terrifying horror stories I’ve ever seen. In February, RE Requiem, the ninth installment in the core Resident Evil gaming franchise, was released, giving fans not one but two playable characters through which they can experience this zombie-infested world: fan favorite Leon Kennedy and newcomer Grace Ashcroft.
A little over a month since Requiem debuted, it has already become the fastest-selling game in the franchise, selling more than 5 million copies in its first five days on the market. It has spawned dozens of fan edits on social media, particularly of its most thirstable character, Leon, who was introduced to the RE universe as a rookie cop but has since grown into a grizzly, zombie-slaying government agent.
But it’s 20-something intelligence analyst Grace Ashcroft who creates the emotional heart of Requiem. I’m new to the world of horror games, and Resident Evil is admittedly my first time not backseat gaming one, but I found myself taken in by the eerie, multilayered storytelling and gameplay that drops you right into the action. The game introduces the player to Grace at the start, and as you play you see her grow from a timid FBI analyst to a confident action heroine, unraveling the complicated story of her past and the truth behind new bioterror threats.
To shed more light on Grace’s arc in Resident Evil Requiem, Teen Vogue sat down with Angela Sant’Albano, the 25-year-old British American actor who brought the character to life onscreen through hours of motion capture, which involves recording people’s movements using sensors on specialized suits and then digitizing that data to create 3D animations.
Resident Evil Requiem manages to be even more terrifying than Hereditary, The Witch, and 28 Days Later combined. There is something utterly horrifying about having to decide to round a darkened corner or push open a creaky door with the chance to be met by a giant, genetically engineered monster. Grace is, by and large, an audience surrogate—a regular girl thrust into a harrowing situation and forced to face her biggest fears. “Grace Ashcroft is not your typical heroine,” Sant’Albano tells Teen Vogue via a Zoom call from her London apartment. “She’s not comfortable with combat. She’s not great with a gun. This sense of duty about doing the right thing pushes Grace out of her comfort zone.”
Ahead, Sant’Albano lets us in on everything it took to get into the role of Grace, from donning her first motion capture suit to finessing the finer details of her signature anxious breathing.
Angela Sant’Albano: I auditioned for Resident Evil Requiem around April 2023. It was the first video-game audition I’d ever done. So I didn’t know what to expect, to be honest. None of the audition scenes were actually real scenes that we shot for the game. CapCom—they’re very secretive about their storylines.
AS: We had no chemistry reads. We went in completely blind, and I think we just got lucky that we all got along so well. Nick is a gem. He welcomed us into the world and educated us on motion capture and a lot of Resident Evil lore.
AS: I have always wanted to do motion capture. I grew up a huge fan of The Lord of the Rings and was always on YouTube watching Andy Serkis play Gollum and Benedict Cumberbatch as the dragon.
It took a year and a half to film all the Resident Evil Requiem cut scenes. We filmed it in short bursts: three weeks of filming, then a month's break. We filmed at Imaginarium Studios, which was actually founded by Andy Serkis.
One day, very early in our shoot, I got a bit flustered because [when you’re doing motion capture,] you’re playing to the whole space and the camera is right there [inches from your face]. I remember our performance-capture director saying, “Think of it as doing theater in the round. You have 360 degrees of cameras all around you capturing every tiny little movement you are making…. You have intimacy because the audience is here with you.” So, you don’t have to project as much as you do in traditional theater; you get this freedom in your body. As soon as she said that, it just clicked.
AS: She's probably the character that I've played that's the most far from me. I always think of Grace as a very contained person. She's not very comfortable with being observed. While she's incredibly analytical herself, she doesn't want to be the one with eyes on her. I always thought of her body language as very “inward,” as if she's putting up a wall of defense to protect herself at all times. She's very uncomfortable with eye contact, and she looks at people at a bit of an angle because she never wants to be fully present with them. Another big part of Grace is her anxiety. She suffers from an anxiety disorder, and that comes out vocally in her stuttering.
I remember thinking, I really want to build on this, but I need to make sure that every single stutter is intentional. For example, when she's meeting her boss in the very first scene [and he’s telling her to investigate a murder at the Wrenwood Hotel,] she was feeling anxious because of the pressure of her boss and that interaction. Then later, she's running through the Wrenwood Hotel with her mom and the high-stress nature of that situation causes her to sort of fumble her words. She stumbles over herself.
AS: I remember when I was playing Resident Evil: 4, I thought a lot about what the experience would be like for the gamer when they were playing Requiem. A lot of the players are wearing headphones, so I really wanted to lean into illustrating Grace's anxiety through her breath…through that shallow sort of shakiness that she has most of the game.
I remember doing it while we were doing the motion capture, but then also in ADR [the process of re-recording actors in studio to replace audio after shooting,] we would rerecord some of the breathing. I would do it at different speeds. I would do more intensely, or less so, just so there was a balance. I think Capcom ended up using most of the more intense breathing because they liked how much anxiety that gave the player when they were playing the game.
I also think so much of what Grace is trying to say isn’t in the dialogue—it’s in her body language. And a lot of that manifested in these little physical tics or movements…. [In a couple of] the scenes when Grace was feeling particularly anxious, I would move my body weight from foot to foot to create this nervous sway for her. I had such tension in my body when we were filming; my shoulders were always raised and my hands were typically clenched.
AS: We had a wonderful stunt coordinator named Nate, and he taught us how to hold a gun and how to best protect ourselves during stunts. Of course, for all the stunts, we had mats down. We were very, very protected.
There’s one scene I remember vividly, where Grace is on the floor, and she's waiting for something to happen. She knows that [something] is behind her, and then all of a sudden, [something] grabs her ankle and pulls her down the corridor. They used the scream that I did during that shot in one of the trailers, but I remember that scene so well because I was hooked up. It was either a rope or a wire on my ankle, and I was dragged across the soundstage.
AS: Grace goes on a really big journey throughout the story. When Grace’s mom walks into the room [and Grace is on the computer]…that’s really the only scene in all of Requiem where you see Grace before any trauma occurs. She's speaking much more casually and comfortably without any stuttering. You can also see that she is comfortable with physical touch with her mom. Later you’ll see there are moments, especially when she goes to pick up Emily, that she's very uncomfortable with this idea of touching another human being.
There’s that big scene when Grace’s mom is violently murdered. I remember doing a lot of research into different kinds of panic attacks and what causes them, but also how they sort of come up and come out of you. I remember I was very, very nervous to film that scene when my mom dies, just because I'd never had to get to such high emotional stakes in such a short period of time. We only did about five takes of that scene, but I remember Jane [Perry] who plays my mother, and I saying to each other, "Look, we're going to go 150% every single time."
AS: I would jump up and down before, and start my panicked breathing and hyperventilating. My favorite part of that scene is actually that primal, guttural cry that she does [when she sees what happened to her mother]. I remember we did that [once], and it was actually the take they ended up using. I felt that scene so deeply that I couldn't stop crying. I think sometimes when you're acting, your body doesn't know what is you as Angela and what is Grace.
AS: For Grace, I think Emily is the heart of her story. Suddenly, it's not all about her, and it's not about just protecting herself. It's about taking care of this little girl that she's met, who also happens to be the first person that she's truly connected with since her mom died. In a weird way, that mother-daughter relationship comes back for her in the form of her relationship with Emily. And while she's incredibly uncomfortable with it at first, this sense of duty and doing the right thing pushes Grace out of her comfort zone to really face her fears and be courageous.
AS: I don't really know where the franchise is going or what the next game will be about, but I do think there's a future for Leon and Grace. I think they have a budding mentorship happening. [But] I don’t think she is suddenly going to become a Leon character; I think she is still going to be afraid.
If you really think about it, Grace has probably only been in that situation for about 24 to 48 hours, max. So if you chuck her into another terrifying place, she's still going to be terrified, but I think she might be able to access a little more of that analytical brain and her smarts in a future game. That, and I’d love to see where her relationship with Emily goes, and if Grace becomes a mom to Emily in a similar way to what she had with Alyssa.
