THERE ARE SPOILERS FOR DAWNTRAIL AND OTHER EXPANSIONS BELOW!
With the July 2, 2024, release of FINAL FANTASY XIV Online: Dawntrail expansion, Warriors of Light all over the world were ushered into a brand-new story that took them to the land of Tural. There, Galool Ja Ja, the leader of Tural as the Dawnservant, started a contest to choose his successor to lead the multi-cutural nation. Four candidates emerged to complete: Wuk Lamat (voiced by Sena Bryer): who is supported by the Warrior of Light; Koana, who is supported by Urianger and Thancred (voiced by Peter Bramhill); Zoraal Ja, the sole blood-related child of Galool Ja Ja; and Bakool Ja Ja (voiced by Javier Prusky), the candidate who, like Galool Ja Ja, has two heads.
I sat down with Sena Bryer, Peter Bramhill, and Javier Prusky at Dragon Con 2026, and we talked at length about all things Dawntrail, what it was like stepping into their various roles, and more!
You can find out more about Sena Bryer on her official website, on BlueSky, IMDb, and on LinkedIn.
You can check out Peter Bramhill on his Linktree, on Spotlight, on X, on Instagram, and on IMDb.
Finally, you can follow Javier Prusky on his official website, on Facebook and Instagram, on Twitch, on X and Bluesky, and on IMDb.
You can find out more about Dawntrail and the newest FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Expansion, Evercold (releasing January 2027), on the official Dawntrail website and the official Evercold website, on Facebook and Instagram, on X and Bluesky, and on YouTube and Twitch.
You can also check out Dragon Con on the official website, on Facebook, on X, on Instagram, on Bluesky, on Pinterest, and on Discord.
This interview has been edited for content and clarity.
OR: Hello, my name is Quentin H. with oprainfall, and could you please introduce yourselves?
Javier Prusky: Hi, I’m Javier Prusky.
Peter Bramhill: Hi, I’m Peter Bramhill.
Sena Bryer: I’m Sena Bryer.
OR: Thank y’all for coming to Dragon Con! Gulool Ja Ja told the Warrior of Light in A Father First that he “elected to hold the rite of succession not to choose a fitting candidate, but to cultivate one.” The three of you were part of three factions of candidates to become the next Dawnservant.
SB: That’s true!
OR: Wuk Lamat — who acted brave while lacking self-confidence. Bakool Ja Ja — who acts like a cruel, uncaring villain as he suffers from the horrific pressure of being Blessed Siblings. And Thancred — who warmly mentors and supports Koana after he himself grew in Shadowbringers from someone who is cold and stoic [after prior expansions].
All three characters were ‘cultivated’ across their various journeys into better people. Can the three of you talk about how you adjust your voice and performance to show that character growth and journey?
SB: Everyone is looking at me!
PB: Go, go!
SB: I think there’s definitely — and the writing lends itself to this — in the beginning, [Wuk Lamat] stuttered a little bit when she’s talking because she didn’t know quite what she is getting into yet. But by the end, she’s making the speeches, she knows what to say, you know? And then she comes into contact with another nation, but she’s already at the front, she’s not relying upon others to speak for her. So, I would say, I enunciated more, I just spoke with more confidence, and yeah!
PB: I’d say, for Thancred, he’s had a big journey over the years. Initially, he was quite flippant and then tone — I’ve aged, as well, so we’ve aged together — but his tone is much more flippant and high pitched. Remember, he appeared naked apart from a little squirrel tail for his modesty — that was my first lines in the expansion [Heavensward].
And he was up there “wah waaaah, hello, ding dong” and then as he’s grown and even has this moniker now of ‘Dadcred.’ Like, he’s grown this maternal side to him after everything he went through in Shadowbringers, and taken on Ryne and all this. So, now, he has this gravitas, this sort of world-weary, gristly, gravelly, words of wisdom that he can impart which I don’t think he ever thought he would be able to. And that’s all down to the writing, the directors — it’s a real gift to [be] given as an actor to have a journey that flows through like that. I feel like I’ve been at the beginning of the night and the end of the night traveling voice-wise.
JP: For Bakool Ja Ja — I got the script beforehand, so I was able to see the journey and see how it is [like] Icarus flying too high to the sun and then burning and crashing into the ground. The way I approached him, with his voices, is that he had a lot to prove. A lot of Dawntrail comes from Latin roots, so I wanted to go into archetypes of children, father’s children, and parents — of how they deal with parents. Because Bakool Ja Ja’s story is all about proving himself to his father, proving himself [by] being the only sibling that survives undergoing a horrible, harrowing journey that kills a lot of his siblings throughout for him to become this Blessed Sibling, which is really cursed. As he grows up, it is being put on that pedestal to perform to succeed.
So, the way I approached him was having — well, he’s two voices, he’s two characters — the Mighty having this bravado, this brute force, this over compensation, so there’s this ferocity, this anger, that is always there right from the start. Some people coin it as a cartoon villain, as a Disney villain. And that was sort of what I wanted to give. I wanted to give to that extreme. Same thing with the Mystic being the mastermind, the brains of the operations, and being more conniving. And as time goes on during his journey — to become an antihero, for him to have his fall. I kept pushing that boundary of strength, of bravado, of that high pedestal, of that pressure. I started dropping, at certain moments that I thought were key in his journey, golden nuggets. If you replay it, you can start seeing cracks. There’s little cracks in his voice, little cracks in his confidence, in his ‘can he make it, can he not make it?’ to the point where he gets defeated and completely shattered. And from there, he’s a shattered little kid trying for the approval of his parents, the approval of his dad.
And from there, with the help of Wuk Lamat, he builds himself up and then tries to do good and what that means, and he goes into the journey of trying to be a good guy but coming from the villain standpoint. So, for him, even when he’s good, he’s like ‘[w]ell, I still want to kill, I still want to clobber, but that’s a good thing, right?’ and they’re like ‘[n]o, its not good’ and I’m like ‘[o]h, okay.’ So, trying to figure out what good means for him. So that’s his journey for him.
I love having the antihero arc and having that voice that is very different from my voice — having him go really, really high in his confidence to get shattered to [then] build up.
OR: I want to follow up on that. You portrayed both Bakool Ja Ja the Mighty and Bakool Ja Ja the Mystic. How did you give both heads somewhat similar — yet different — personalities, especially as they change into someone who wants to protect instead of merely dominate and harm?
JP: I think [that] the big thing to know is this is a ‘team game.’ Meaning, to create this character, is not just my creativity myself — its also the director, the localization team, the creators themselves — that have this vision. I am one piece. One of the things I love though — the team, the director, the localization team, allowed me to have creativity, to have say — a lot of other games sometimes don’t. But I had liberty to decide a little bit of those voices. A lot of those voices that came in there were played in the audition room. In the audition room, I already knew that he had two voices.
So, when we got into the session, we sort of solidified it. They talked to teach other, and the big thing I always talk about with Bakool Ja Ja is: ‘two heads, but one heart.’ They share a heart. So, the drive, what they want, the need, is the same. Their ways of doing it are different. If you see a lizard in [its] normal habitat go charge, you cut their tail [and] they keep going. It doesn’t matter. That’s Mighty. Then you have the chameleon. That’s Mystic. The chameleon shiftshapes, it’s in the background a lot. So, it’s more about making plots, making plans. So, keeping those animals in mind, that’s how their brains came into being. But, at the end of the day, they didn’t want them be that different, because they are sharing the same stomach, the same gut, the same diaphragm, the same heart. So, the same voice comes out, but then the vocal chords — because of how those animals are — comes out differently [and] how they see the world.
“Being allowed to go there, not having a director and localization team that is so set in their ways — and having ‘[l]et’s explore something new, something different.’ So, for me, that’s one of my most beautiful moments is something that’s not in the script.”
OR: Mr. Bramhill: You took over the role of Thancred in FINAL FANTASY XIV Online from Taliesin Jaffe starting with the Heavensward expansion. How did you find your way into the role to make him your own — especially when the Japanese voice actor, Yuichi Nakamura, remained the same during that transition?
PB: I was aware of what had gone before, but I didn’t want to listen to it to make it influence me, because that can happen. You want to sort of find your own way, your own path. So, we developed the research we needed to do with that character, and I treated it like a new character, even though it had a ‘pre life.’ So does any character in a play or in a drama — like, you’re not starting from the day that they’re born, you’re starting from a point in time.
There’s a quote I use quite a lot. Have you heard of the phrase: ‘You find the knife that fits the wound’? So, you find what hurt him in the past, what helped him in the past, whatever it was that you find there — the action of that character, and then you take it from there. Because I don’t want to mimic or copy what’s gone before. Because Taliesin has done a brilliant job, as well as a really rich character, it works that way, but it was time for a new start for me. I’m not stepping into anyone else’s shoes character-wise. That’s how I did it.
OR: Sena Bryer and Javier Prusky — in Mogtalk Episode 312, both of you talked at length about how the callback auditions were in person, and Mr. Prusky: you talked about how you auditioned initially for Gulool Ja Ja before being asked to do a take as Bakool Ja Ja.
The final voices we heard from both of you in Dawntrail are unlike any others we’ve experienced on our star or in Her reflections. How much of the final characters were created in that callback audition, and how much was developed later on? How did y’all arrive at the final voices for your characters?
SB: So, for my initial audition, I did two takes. I did one that was standard American. So, standard American English. And one that was more — I tried to go for kind of like, Chicano-LA, but when I do that, it just naturally becomes New York-Puerto Rican. Wuk was cast a year before everyone else. I came in, and basically, I said: ‘[w]hich one did you want to do, because I gave two takes.’ And they said, I can’t remember exactly, but it was more along the lines of, more or less, ‘[w]hich do you want to do?’. So, I decided I wanted to do the Puerto Rican [accent] because representation is great.
And, like, I played the game since its inception in 2010, so I know — this is the ‘new world.’ This is the America’s epilogue. From what I saw of the characters, I was ‘[o]h, it’s very Mesoamerican. At least, the part she’s in is very Mesoamerica. You go north, you get some more North American/Canadian indigenous stuff. So, I thought, ‘[o]k, I’m going to put it in around that area.’ And I think it was the first recording session when I leaned that Turali is almost like an Esperanto of all the different people where they came together and said ‘[w]e are going to make a lingua franca.’ I thought: ‘[o]h! I’m going to let it be nebulous, her accent.’ It’s going to be mostly Puerto Rican because that’s just where I’m from, but if it goes a little bit this way, goes a little bit that way, I’ll let it.
JP: For my audition process, I didn’t get the audition script until I walked into the room, the holding room. The script I got was for Galool Ja Ja, which is the 60-old Dawnservant. And, so, I came in for that character. And I remember going in the room and [he] had two heads, because that’s what it said on the slides. It was just a few lines. I had to make split decisions. It kind of described a little bit of what the creature was. When I went it the room, they described to me, his age, this is the creature that he is, this is one head, this is another head, we want slightly different voices, but not too far away. I did it, I took the notes, I did the take, they went ‘[o]h, awesome’, directs here, redirects there. It was actually a very positive environment. It was like both the localization team and the director really were just vibing with me in a way that I was [like] ‘[o]h this is a playful room, I get to really go out there and make choices and make bold choices if I want to- its encouraged.’
And right when I was ‘[t]hank you so much’ because we were taking forever in the sense of — normally auditions take five, 10 minutes, but I was in there for 15 minutes. Much longer than what I saw [of] people coming in and out. So, it was going great. And as soon as I was walking out, they were ‘[h]old one second!’, and then the localization told the director and said: ‘[w]hat do you think about Bakool Ja Ja for him?’. That meant nothing for me, I didn’t know what that word was, I didn’t know what the game was — but all I knew was: ‘[o]h, they want to hear me for another voice? Let’s do it!.’ Closed the door, and the engineer was like: ‘[w]e are a little behind, but you guys are in charge, so do it.’
And then we came in, and that’s when it made more sense for my voice, who I am — a little bit of a natural personality, my age range — I think at the time I was late twenties — it was right at 30, I was ‘[o]h this is perfect, this makes sense’. It fit a lot easier. And they described the character, and from there, we designed voices a little bit. They told me: ‘lizard, chameleon’, and I went ‘[o]kay, great, I can work with this, I can work with gut instincts.’ A lot of time, when you go into sessions, it’s the first time you’ve seen these lines. You may not get the script, you may not even get the character description, so a lot of us as voice actors is responding in the moment. Being quick, going for gut, going for characters that we’ve played before that we can draw from and then expand from there. So, a lot of us sometimes have to draw from that. It’s interesting, because we don’t have those lines before, we don’t know a lot about this project. So, I went on gut, and then- I didn’t find out I got the role and I didn’t go into the session until two months later.
It wasn’t a recorded session, which means, I wasn’t able to hear it back. So, I literally had to go from memory [and] thank goodness they had the recording and the reference. Even then, we started talking before we recorded that first line [about] where we were going to place it, what tweaks we wanted to do, how we wanted him to change it a little bit more, because now I had the full story, I knew the arc. So, I had a bit more information. So, from there, it was a little different than what we had in the initial audition, but at the end of the day, its like ‘you got booked most likely from the voice in the audition, so its most likely where you’re going to be close to [be] doing.’
OR: For all three of you — what was your favorite character story beat in Dawntrail that you brought to life?
PB: Well, Thancred had less to do in Dawntrail, really, but I liked his maternal side — its something that’s been investigated since Shadowbringers and through Endwalker. But it was always with Ryne, his surrogate daughter, if you like. So, it was nice to explore that with Koana. And also, it gave a little extra level of bond with Urianger, as well, as we became this sort of double act of trying to boost this team or trying to get someone to choose the right path. I mean, he had a great message for the globe that we’re living in right now, and it was nice to see a character that may have dubious beginnings come to a nice conclusion.
SB: They gave me the entire script for Dawntrail the day before my very first —
JP: It was like two days, before?
SB: The Monday I was recording, the Tuesday — ‘[o]f course, you don’t have to read the entire thing’ — of COURSE I read the entire thing.
JP: You have to!
SB: And I saw Galool Ja Ja’s death, and I thought: ‘[o]h man, they gave me some meat. They gave me some juicy lines.’ So, that was the scene that I was like: ‘I’m putting a hundred-and-twenty-percent of myself into this.’ And it was heavy. There was definitely a point where I was — it may have been Kate [Cwynar] who said — ‘[a]re you good for another one?’ and I said ‘I’m sorry man, I think, I think, I’m good, I’m good.’ Because it was heavy!
JP: For Bakool Ja Ja, his big emotional reveal and arc in the [Skydeep] Cenote — there’s a moment where I find beautiful directing and localization, letting the actor go through it, and there was this instinctive, just natural moment to how those lines flowed when he’s taking about his horrible history and childhood. And, there was a moment where, I don’t even know, when it was ‘Javier the actor’ or ‘Bakool Ja Ja — I want to say it was Bakool Ja Ja, really in character. And I breathed out.
I was in the middle of a line, and I went: *breathes out audibly*. And then continued talking about the harrowing, horrible — am I saying the word ‘harrowing’ right? What is the definition of ‘harrowing’?
SB: Yeah!
PB: When it’s painful and haunting.
JP: I have my daily vocabulary in my toilet paper, and I’m using it right! Because I said it before, and I was like: ‘[a]m I saying these words right?!’
But that breath, and I think that’s one of my most favorite things — sometimes I have, I got messages on social media and people who come to conventions, and I remember how I felt during that breath. And to have people come to me and say: ‘[w]hen you breathed, my heart broke, and I got it.’ And I’ve had prints where they just want to say: ‘Breath’ in parenthesis. That’s what they want as the quote, because it’s powerful. And, that was found through a true, instinctive play. Being allowed to go there, not having a director and localization team that is so set in their ways — and having ‘[l]et’s explore something new, something different.’ So, for me, that’s one of my most beautiful moments is something that’s not in the script.
OR: So, thank you for coming to the 40th Dragon Con, I’m happy you’re here! Last question: With the coming release of Evercold in January 2027, how does it feel to say goodbye — at least for now — to Tural and Alexandria?
SB: The food isn’t going to be as good!
PB: Yeah, and Thancred’s tan is going to fade, isn’t it?!
JP: *laughs* He’s going to just break away — like brittle!
SB: We’re going from cochinita pibil to surströmming! Like, what is this?!
PB: Yeah, I think Thancred and Urianger booked the cruise early on without thinking — ‘it’s going to go from so hot to so cold’ — they didn’t pack! He’s going to have to repack and buy some clothes when he arrives, skin a seal.
JP: Poor Bakool Ja Ja is going to have to cling to everyone, because it’s a lizard so it craves heat! He doesn’t even like touching, going near people, and all the sudden, he’s going to be like ‘[h]ey friend!’
PB: It’s just his two heads in an electric blanket. *laughs*
SB: Wuk Lamat’s got fur, so no issue!
OR: Thank y’all very much!
SB: Thank you!
JP: Thank you!
PB: Pleasure. Have a great one!
