Jim Santangeli, who played Simon Pearson in Red Dead Redemption 2, confirmed on TikTok Live that he has a small role in Grand Theft Auto 6, making him the first publicly confirmed actor for the game. Rockstar has not commented.
Jim Santangeli, the voice and motion-capture actor who played Simon Pearson in Red Dead Redemption 2, confirmed during a TikTok livestream that he has a role in Grand Theft Auto VI. He described it as "a little small bit" and "some cool stuff, but small," suggesting a minor part or cameo rather than a major character.
This is the first publicly confirmed actor for the next Grand Theft Auto. Rockstar Games, as always, hasn't commented.
For anyone who has not played Red Dead Redemption 2, Simon Pearson is the Van der Linde gang's camp cook and butcher. He is a supporting character with a warm presence and comedic moments, responsible for camp provisions and occasional banter about his past as a failed sailor. Santangeli's performance gave Pearson a lived-in quality that made the character memorable despite limited screen time relative to the leads.
He is far from a household name, but Rockstar does have a reputation for hiring the same actors across multiple games, or at least people related to them.
Aside from Red Dead Redemption 2, Santangeli also voiced a pedestrian NPC in Grand Theft Auto IV, so his relationship with Rockstar is well established.
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For what it's worth, Santangeli is not describing a lead role or even a significant supporting character. "A little small bit" and "some cool stuff, but small" suggest a named NPC with a handful of lines (a shopkeeper, a bartender, a mission-giver who appears once), a cameo or Easter egg, or a background pedestrian with enough recorded dialogue to make the world feel populated but not enough to constitute a character arc.
Rockstar populates its worlds with thousands of NPC voice lines. A "small" role could mean dozens of recorded lines that a player hears while walking down a street and never thinks about again. It could also mean a brief but memorable encounter that the community discovers and memes for years.
The fact that Santangeli mentioned only playing the "Miami" GTA (meaning Grand Theft Auto: Vice City) adds a small but entertaining detail. The actor performing in GTA 6, set in a fictionalized Florida, has the original Vice City as his only GTA frame of reference.
Of course, the NDA question is the elephant in the room. Rockstar's information security since the 2022 breach has been extreme. Thirty-four employees were fired for sharing information, the studio reportedly will not send review codes, and a YouTuber who entered the building had police at his hotel. Yet a voice actor just casually confirmed his involvement on TikTok Live.
Either Rockstar's NDAs for minor voice actors are less restrictive than those for employees and press (plausible, since the information "I have a small role" reveals nothing about the game's content), or Santangeli disclosed something he was not supposed to, and the consequences, if any, will play out privately.
Given the casual and lighthearted way he discussed it, the former seems more likely. Rockstar probably does not consider "an actor who played a camp cook has a small role" to be a material security breach.
