Zelda's voice actor didn't know she was auditioning for the titular character
Nintendo secrecy strikes again.
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It turns out that the voice actor behind Zelda in both Breath of the Wild and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom didn't even know she was auditioning for the character.
To say Nintendo is secretive is like saying you need air to breathe: the two come hand in hand. Obviously that's especially been the case with Tears of the Kingdom, a game that only really had proper trailers this year, just a few months before it came out. So it shouldn't be all that surprising to hear that Zelda's voice actor herself, Patricia Summersett, was not told that the character she was auditioning for was in fact the princess of Hyrule.
In an interview with IGN, Summersett spoke about her role as Zelda, and how she ended up with it in the first place. Unsurprisingly, she wasn't told all that much about it prior to her audition. "It just looked like an RPG fantasy," Summersett shared. "I didn't have any other information than that it was for a princess character who had a lot of weight on her shoulders."
A few weeks after auditioning, she got the news that she would be playing Zelda - though she was thankful she didn't know that prior to the audition. "I have a feeling that if I knew what it was, I would've overthought the process," she said. "I'm happy I went in blind."
Summersett was appropriately secretive when asked about if Zelda's role would be bigger in this sequel, as there isn't all that much voice acting in Breath of the Wild, though did say "If you look at the trailers, you'll see that the gameplay is indicative of a very large adventure. Whenever you get to re-approach a game after having already played a character, you're going to want to stretch as far as you can."
On the topic of whether she thinks fans will be happy when it comes to fan service, the answer was a resounding "Yes. Oh yeah." That could mean anything, obviously, but it's still exciting as a Zelda fan myself. Now all we need is the ability to play as Zelda herself - and if we're lucky, it might be possible.