Cara Delevingne says she has booked two weeks off to play Grand Theft Auto VI when it arrives on November 19.
The British model and actress, who happens to voice DJ Cara on the pop station in Grand Theft Auto V, says she has booked two full weeks off once the game is out. She is not being shy about why.
"I love that game, I always will," Delevingne said in a red-carpet interview, adding that she still wears her old Grand Theft Auto merch and "booked out two weeks after the game comes out" because "it's gonna be incredible." She is a vocal fan and Rockstar Games once hired her to play a version of herself on the radio.
The role is a real one. Delevingne voices DJ Cara, the hyper, sarcastic British host of Non-Stop-Pop FM at 100.7 in Los Santos, a part she recorded around the 2013 release and returned to for the enhanced versions. It was one of her first proper acting credits, back when she was better known for runways than radio. The clip of her two-weeks-off comment has been passed around.
There is a nice symmetry to it. DJ Cara has reportedly recorded fresh farewell lines for Grand Theft Auto Online, sending players off toward Vice City and teasing a final in-game meetup around November 18. So the same voice telling Los Santos goodbye on the airwaves is the one clearing her schedule to move on. Fans have already turned that farewell into a mass cruise through Los Santos the night before launch, a send-off hosted, fittingly, in DJ Cara's voice.
Previously, when Delevingne was asked if she'd return for the sequel, she gave a laughing "no comment."
Regardless of a potential return, she is in good company. Booking time off for a video game used to be a punchline. Now it's become a trend all over the world. F1 champion Lewis Hamilton says he will cancel work to play it and clear his whole schedule around launch. A games studio, Bulkhead, is giving its entire team December off and telling players to go enjoy it.
It's not a famous-exclusive phenomenon either. HR data shows a GTA 6 time-off surge that GTA 5 never caused.
Clearing the calendar for GTA 6
Who | The plan |
|---|---|
Cara Delevingne | Two weeks off, the voice of DJ Cara |
Lewis Hamilton | Cancelling work around launch |
Bulkhead Studios | The whole team off for December |
Regular workers | A time-off surge in HR data |
GTA 6 has famous fans and regular workers alike booking time off, with Cara Delevingne literally in the game.
GTA 6 has famous fans and regular workers alike booking time off, with Cara Delevingne already voicing DJ Cara in GTA 5.
Delevingne also sits in a longer Rockstar tradition. The studio has a habit of casting real celebrities as radio hosts, from Karl Lagerfeld on Grand Theft Auto IV's electro station to a string of real DJs across Grand Theft Auto V. Delevingne was the rising-model-turned-host in that group. The rumor is that, another DJ in DJ Khaled, among others, will play a similar role in GTA 6.
With that said, Delevingne has spent eleven years telling Los Santos what song is coming next. Now she is counting down to Vice City with everyone else, except she gets to hear her own voice say goodbye on the way out.