Cortana From the Halo TV series has been recast with the voice actor from the games.
Natascha McElhone (Californication, The Truman Show) who was originally cast to portray Cortana and Dr. Catherine Halsey in the Halo Tv series was not able to fill both roles due to scheduling conflicts. Because of this Showtime has recruited Jen Taylor instead.
Jen Taylor is the original voice actress for the Halo Games and is a very experienced voice actress with a career dating back two decades. She has played the role of Cortana throughout Halo 1,2,3, Reach,4,5, and has also been Microsoft’s Virtual assistant on Windows devices.
She knows the character of Cortana so well that many will be asking themselves why she wasn’t their first choice from the start.
Among other voices that Jen Taylor has played over the years are those of Cate Archer in No One Lives Forever 2 and Contract Jack, Jessica Cannon in Sin Episodes, Zoey in Left 4 Dead, Atomic Wonder Woman in Infinite Crisis, and Princess Peach in many of the Mario games.
The character of Cortana is an AI that assists and sometimes turns on Master Chief throughout the Halo game series.
It is still unclear if Jen Taylor will be playing the role in person or lending her voice to a fully CGI character.
Jen Taylor joins David Sapani and Olive Gray as Jacob and Miranda Keyes, Pablo Schreiber as Master Chief, Bokeem Woodbine as Soren-066, Shabana Azmi as Admiral Margaret Parangosky, and Bentley Kalu, Natasha Culzac, and Kate Kennedy as three new Spartan characters.
The series is being produced by Amblin Entertainment (Steven Spielberg) and Halo’s Developer 343 Industries. The Director and Executive Producer will be Otto Bathurst which created such masterpieces as Peaky Blinders and Black Mirror.
The first season will reportedly be nine episodes long, although it is not yet clear what the centre plot of the show will be.
Showtime has disclosed that the show will be a dramatization of “an epic 26th-century conflict between humanity and an alien threat known as the Covenant. Halo will weave deeply drawn personal stories with action, adventure, and a richly imagined vision of the future.”
The debut of the series has been delayed from its original release date in 2021, because of Covid-19, and now with Halo Infinite being delayed to sometime in 2021, it is feasible that both will be launched around the same time giving us a double dose of Halo.