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The actor behind Baldur's Gate 3's beloved Tiefling Barbarian Karlach says the biggest misconception about the character is that she is a "really sweet, nice, happy-go-lucky person."
While Karlach certainly comes across that way when you first come across her in Act 1 – heck, I made sure to not balls up the quest to get her to join my party for that reason – actor Samantha Béart says it's actually not the case. As part of getting into the headspace of the character, Béart tells The Gamer she had to make sense of the years of suffering Karlach went through.
"I think she was a very different person in hell," she says, before adding: "I imagined being locked in a supermax prison, with no hope of getting out and doing all sorts of horrible gang stuff to survive, and then finally actually getting out and going, 'Do you know what? I get to decide who I am now. And I'm not going to be that person anymore.'"
I mean, fair. Hell is hell for a reason, I suppose. Béart goes on to explain that she see what follows as a "redemption arc."
"I think she was a piece of work in hell," Béart says. "She would have had to be, [...] it was life in prison. That's where I was in my head with that, because otherwise, it's quite hard to relate it to something realistic. You just think about how people behave in those very small communities. Essentially, I think you can completely change to survive."
Regardless of whether you misjudged Karlach or not, Béart approach to her portrayal certainly worked. Part of what made Baldur's Gate 3 click for so many was the impression left upon them by the cast, and even among the many favorites, Karlach ranks quite highly.
