Did you know that Lucia, the firecracker of a woman and one-half of the leading pair of Grand Theft Auto VI, was hiding in Grand Theft Auto Online the whole time, dealing blackjack at the Diamond Casino before her big promotion to protagonist?
Manni L. Perez is credited voicing an unnamed blackjack dealer in the 2019 Diamond Casino update, and fans are near-certain she is Lucia in GTA 6, right down to the resemblance. However, Rockstar Games hasn't confirmed a single cast member for GTA 6 yet and it may not do so until much closer to the game's release. So while Perez is all but confirmed as Lucia, it remains a rumor until Rockstar says otherwise. The casino gig is true though.
It's also true that Rockstar has done this before. Franklin Clinton, the Grand Theft Auto V protagonist, is voiced by Shawn Fonteno, who was credited as "Solo" for an unnamed Grove Street gang member back in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
In case you want actual characters who climbed their way from background characters to taking on lead rules, Rockstar's back catalogue is stuffed with them too.
Toni Cipriani ran errands as a Leone capo in Grand Theft Auto III before headlining the prequel Liberty City Stories. Victor Vance got gunned down in the opening minutes of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, then came back to star in his own prequel, Vice City Stories. And Johnny Klebitz went from a handful of supporting missions in Grand Theft Auto IV to leading The Lost and Damned, before Rockstar, memorably, killed him off in GTA V. The studio treats its own games like a farm system.
The fact that Rockstar pulled the face of its next flagship out of a background role most players clicked straight past is a habit that says something about how Rockstar builds its worlds. The studio records enormous pools of ambient, gang, and pedestrian dialogue for every game, and it clearly keeps track of who does an excellent job. A convincing street voice in San Andreas or a throwaway casino line in GTA Online is not filler to them, it is an audition nobody knew they were giving.
When a lead role finally opens up, the studio already has a shortlist of people who sound like they belong in the world, for the simple reason that they were already standing in it. We can add this to the growing laundry list of reasons why Rockstar is well ahead of the video game industry when it comes to NPCs.
With GTA 6 bigger than ever, we've no doubt that Rockstar probably already has a couple of actors and actresses in mind for the future of Grand Theft Auto. This means that somewhere in GTA 6 right now is a voice actor who will headline a game nobody has even announced yet a decade (or, maybe two) from now, but we'll also find out after we've walked past them numerous times in Vice City and Leonida.
