Hail to the King: David Menkin talks FINAL FANTASY XVI

The actor who brings the villainous Barnabas Tharmr to life reflects on the character, being embraced by the fans and the Barnabas Tharmr Wellness Resort.
By Duncan Heaney
Tags: Final Fantasy,FINAL FANTASY XVI

FINAL FANTASY XVI’s Barnabas Tharmr cuts an imposing figure.

As the Dominant of Odin and the King of the nation of Waloed, he wields enormous power, both physically and politically. In other words, he’s a real threat to protagonist Clive Rosfield.

His English voice actor, David Menkin, adds to that sense of threat with an inspired performance that oozes charm, confidence and dark threat. With the PC version of FINAL FANTASY XVI now available on Steam and Epic Games Store, we spoke to the actor about how he found this distinctive voice - and how he’s been embraced by the FINAL FANTASY fan community.

Hi David. In your own worlds, who is Barnabas Tharmr?

Barnabas Tharmr is… a very charismatic fanatic. He is someone who knows what his purpose is and will go to any lengths in order to fulfil it. He believes that he is helping to bring about the greatest change.

And with that, he also gets to be a charismatic asshole.

How did you find that balance between him having that charisma, but also being very threatening?

It kind of helped when I got to see the art of him. When I realized: wow, this man is hot and always like… slightly moist. There’s always like a sheen of something on him.

I think that what I did was that I made sure to let the team know from the beginning that I was not going to do to do typical villain, low bass stuff. And anyway, Ralph Ineson (Cidolfus Telamon) covers that. So, I thought to myself, “why not play someone who has absolutely nothing to prove to anyone anymore?”

He’s not afraid of anything, he’s not proving anything. So, he just gets to sit very comfortably in his voice, almost at time very light in his voice, and very quiet.

I thought it’s a good way to approach a villain because most villains that I’m asked to play or audition for, are always there to show that they’ve got the biggest cojones in the world. As far as Barnabas is concerned, he’s like, “I rule the school.”

How did you find his distinctive voice?

When I auditioned for FINAL FANTASY XVI, I had just finished work on FINAL FANTASY XIV: Shadowbringers where I played a character called Magnus who had a Scandinavian lilt to him. When they brought me upstairs to audition for this unknown project, they said, “Actually, we’d like him to be from somewhere in the same region.”

When I read it, I started pushing it hard but then I realized, no - actually I’m going to go very much the other way and just be very measured. So rather than having a very Norwegian accent or Swedish accent, I made sort of a pan-Scandinavian accent.

The closest that I’ve done to that before was when I was in an advert for the launch of the Euro in 2001 / 2002. I had to create a pan-European accent and if you listen to the advert, you can kind of hear Barnabas being born (laughs).

Barnabas has some very dramatic scenes. How did you visualise these moments while you were making them?

When we were recording, if they had something to show me, they would show it to me. For example, there’s a scene at sea that’s very impressive and they showed me the work in progress so I could understand the scale of it.

Because of that, I understood where I was and what I was doing. I think I was smart enough to ask a question that I ask in every game, which is: who am I? Am I mortal? If I’m not mortal, am I affected by the elements? And do I need to make myself heard over the elements, or does me speaking mean the player can hear me?

And they were very clear from the beginning: Barnabas does not need to raise his voice because everyone can hear him. That was such a great key to understanding who I was playing.

You’ve played lots of different roles, and your range is pretty impressive. Do you consider yourself a chameleon?

I know a lot of people who are human jukeboxes, and I wish that I could do what they do!

Like Rasmus Hardiker or Kayvan Novak from What We Do in the Shadows… those people are able to do absolutely anything. And let’s just say that I can do about one English accent and that is sort of Julie Andrews on acid (laughs).

But what I try to do is find different tonalities and different cadences in my voice based on the character. I make that very much based on what they look like. Hopefully, I get to see how they walk, how they move, and I let that inform me.

There’s this weird thing that a lot of stage actors say: that their character starts with the shoes they wear. And, actually, there is a lot to be said for the movement. So, when I saw how light Barnabas was, that informed me there.

But I realize I’m stepping away from answering your question (which was more of a compliment than anything else). I love playing distinct characters and because of that, I guess people think that I play very different characters vocally.

But I just love it. And it’s so weird until you get it right. You just know it’s wrong and have to sort float around until you’re like, “There he is!”

How much development did Barnabas take?

When I went in for my first session, they pretty much said: “We’re going to have you sort of set the tonality for Waloed. I didn’t know that Nina Yndis (Benedikta Harman) or Gunnar Cauthery (Sleipnir) were hired.

What was great is that we all came at it with slightly different things, which then let everyone else from Waloed have something in the area that nothing sounded wrong.

And I think we’re lucky because there’s a typical lack on information in games - they don’t want to tell you anything unless you really need to know it. What we had was a great directorial team - Hannah Price, and Morgan and Ollie from Shloc. And Michael-Christopher Koji Fox in Japan. All of them together knew exactly what they needed.

So even though at times I felt at sea, they knew exactly how to anchor me.

How much did you know about the other performers in the game?

To give you an idea, I realized that Ben Starr (Clive Rosfield) was in the game because we kept passing each other on the road. And one day, he just stopped me and said, “Every time I listen to your voice, it sounds like you want to make love to me (laughs).”

So, I didn’t have personal interactions like Ben did with some of his team. We would sometimes get to hear what our fellow actors had recorded, but for the most part I went in there and worked with the performance director Hannah.

They don’t like to have me mix with others, clearly (laughs).

How have you found the fan response to the game?

Oh, it’s been amazing! I was even at a FINAL FANTASY pub quiz recently!

People are amazing and they have responded so well to the fact that we’re all a bit unhinged (laughs). And Ben clearly leads the charge with that!

Now, because I turned up in a bathrobe in a promo, telling people about a signing event, people actually turn up to conventions wearing bathrobes and hair towels. I keep on getting gifts where they’re calling me the Spa King. It’s the Barnabas Tharmr Wellness Resort (laughs).

That’s flattering. And odd!

But flattering and odd is any fandom! They’re so awesome - they know more about your character than you do. I’ve been very much informed by what people love and what people dislike about Barnabas.

I’ve got to say that the FINAL FANTASY fandom… they treat us like human beings. There are other games that I’ve been in where I meet fans and they talk to me as if I’m the character, and that’s always a little bit weird.

At the same time, we have to be careful because things that we may have thought about, in order to create our performance, may not be lore. I have had a few slightly terse emails from teams before going, “Please don’t say that about your character!”

That hasn’t happened with Square Enix. I am very much a small cog in a massive machine where I feel that the fans are a much bigger cog than I am. I like that - I feel like that’s the way it should be. After all, fans are the reason they keep adding numbers to something that sounds like it’s coming to an end.

You and the cast have been quite prominent both before and after launch. How do you feel about that?

I think it’s great because the actors are part of what the players experience, and having access to us keeps the experience going.

I think Ben Starr was very instrumental in asking for us to be front and center here because he LOVES FINAL FANTASY. And we were slightly worried about that. We thought, won’t people be disappointed that we haven’t played FINAL FANTASY VIII or X or haven’t been doing online campaigns for XIV?

He said, “No, because you love your character, and you love the game that you’re in.”

Because of that, I think Square Enix allowed us to be front and center because, you know, the superstars of these games are the directors, the developers, the composers - we know that. But, at the same time, we are the ones where a fan can come up to us at a signing or send us some art on social media.

And because they’re so awesome in the way they approach us for the most part, there’s nothing stopping us from being able to say, “That’s an amazing piece of art, or an amazing cosplay.”

What’s also great is we get to work with people at Square Enix who are also massive fans of FINAL FANTASY. So, therefore, everything sort of ripples out and we’re both allowed to be ourselves and also ambassadors for something we’re lucky to be a part of.

FINAL FANTASY XVI is out now for PS5 and PC via Steam and Epic Games Store. Two editions are available:

FINAL FANTASY XVI Standard Edition

This includes:

  • The base game

It's available now:

FINAL FANTASY XVI Complete Edition

This includes:

  • The base game

  • Echoes of the Fallen, DLC chapter - the discovery of an artificial Mothercrystal leads Clive to the treacherous Sagespire, a ruin of the mysterious, and long since gone, Fallen civilization. It’s an action-packed ascent to the top that features some truly spectacular boss fights!

  • The Rising Tide, DLC chapter - Clive and his allies are drawn into a new adventure involving the hidden village of Haven, and the lost Eikon of Water: Leviathan! This is a longer adventure that takes you to a brand-new area with blue skies, new quests, new accessories, weapons and - uh-oh - tonberries aplenty!

It's available now:

A free demo is also available. It lets you play through the opening prologue of the game and carry your progress over to the full game.

To stay up to date with news and information about this and other FINAL FANTASY games, be sure to follow us on social media:

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