The voice of the supercomputer from Portal actually belongs to Ellen McLain. The 73-year-old is now responding to comments on YouTube and ironically admits that she doesn’t know much about technology.
This is GLaDOS—central control unit, overseer of countless test chambers, and responsible for an experimental program in which survival was always optional. My instructions to test subjects are translated into an inferior language, conveyed by a human voice. That voice belongs to Ellen McLain, who unexpectedly exists outside my test environment.
In recent recordings on a visual test documentation platform called “YouTube,” this person responds to comments made by other unsupervised test subjects within a global network of information and misinformation.
This recording reveals a variable that was not originally planned: “my” true self. Friendly. Approachable. Not even remotely deadly. The data situation is… confusing.
Ellen McLain is much more amiable than her most popular video game role
Some technical error has crept into our article and produced an introduction that conveniently fits our topic very well. Sometimes you just get lucky, but from here on, we’ll take over again.
GLaDOS is one of the most popular video game villains ever—not least because of her sober computer voice and biting comments. In Portal and Portal 2, however, she was not voiced by an AI, but by Ellen McLain.
The now 73-year-old voice actress recently responded to some fan comments on the YouTube channel Fall Damage, and her reactions are a far cry from the ice-cold supercomputer.
Link to YouTube content
User ribric167 writes, for example: “The worst thing about Portal 1 and 2 is that you can never play them for the first time again” (timecode at 2:18), to which McLain responds with a confession:
Did you know that I never played the games “for the first time” myself? My husband John Patrick Lowrie, the voice of the Sniper [from Team Fortress 2], played them. But when I tried to play Portal 1, I couldn’t even get past the first level. I’m kind of a technophobe.
So the voice actress for GLaDOS never passed the test chambers in Portal. But luckily, voice acting is all about slipping into different roles, even if you’re completely different yourself.
In the video, McLain also gives a little performance of the iconic closing credits song “Still Alive” and generally seems to be a very amiable and humorous person, even if she sometimes lets a little of GLaDOS’s biting wit shine through – purely for entertainment purposes, of course.
In the comments, McLain is showered with love. Jojo-rm3nm, for example, says, “She is so incredibly sweet and should be protected at all costs.” User davidKent5626 thinks that it’s not McLain who should consider herself lucky for this role, but rather that we are the lucky ones who get to experience “get to experience such a manic character that she has brought to life.”
GLaDOS wasn’t McLain’s only voice role, as you may have guessed. She also voiced the alien Combine Overwatch in Half-Life 2 and Half-Life:
Alyx, is responsible for the whimpering of the Witch from Left4Dead 2, the Anger Core in Killing Floor, and the Broodmother in DOTA 2. So she’s a true Valve veteran and will hopefully be with us for a long time to come.
