The Cyberpunk 2077 Voice Actors That Brought Night City to Life
I know we are here for Cyberpunk 2077 voice actors, but we can’t start without addressing the elephant in the room. There were many issues with Cyberpunk 2077 when it released on December 10th, 2020. Players dealt with annoying bugs, game-breaking glitches, and enough drama to fill an entire Night City data shard. But here’s the thing. CD Projekt Red knows how to write a story, and a well-written story is only half the battle. You need the right voices to bring it to life.
Since launch, Cyberpunk 2077 has transformed dramatically. The 2.0 update overhauled the entire game, Phantom Liberty dropped with Idris Elba leading a star-studded expansion cast, and Cyberpunk Edgerunners on Netflix introduced a whole new generation of fans to Night City. The voice cast that made this world feel real deserves a proper spotlight.
Here is every major voice actor in Cyberpunk 2077 and Phantom Liberty.
Cherami Leigh – Female V
As you may already know, Cyberpunk 2077 lets you build your own character when you first drop into Night City. One of those choices is your voice, and if you went female V, you got Cherami Leigh. Honestly, you chose well.
Leigh is one of the most recognizable names in voice acting. If you’ve watched anime at all, you’ve heard her. She’s voiced Sarada Uchiha in Boruto, Lucy Heartfilia in Fairy Tail, and has appeared in dozens of major game titles, including Persona 5, Nier: Automata, Borderlands, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, and Final Fantasy VII Remake. Her performance as V is layered and convincing. She makes the character feel lived-in even when you’re doing something completely unhinged in the middle of Night City.
Gavin Drea – Male V
The male V voice is the one most people heard in the early Cyberpunk marketing and promotions. Gavin Drea brings a gruff, believable quality to V that fits Night City’s vibe perfectly.
Outside of Cyberpunk, Drea has appeared in Vikings: Valhalla and Daisy Jones and The Six, and voiced Flann Sinna in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. He’s not a household name yet, but his work as V absolutely holds up through the entire game and into Phantom Liberty.
Jason Hightower – Jackie Welles
Jackie Welles is the kind of friend everyone needs. He’s loyal, he’s loud, he believes in you even when you probably don’t deserve it, and his presence in the early hours of the game makes everything that comes after hit that much harder.
Jason Hightower brings genuine warmth to Jackie that makes him feel real. Before Cyberpunk, Hightower had voice roles in Red Dead Redemption 2, Fallout 76, and Ghost Recon: Wildlands. He also voiced Captain Doza in Star Wars: The Resistance and was the auctioneer in Ralph Breaks the Internet. His work as Jackie is the best thing on his resume, and it’s not particularly close.
Michael-Leon Wooley – Dexter “Dex” Deshawn
In Night City, fixers are the middlemen for dangerous, high-paying jobs. They connect clients to mercs and take their cut without getting their hands dirty. Dex is one of the first fixers V encounters, depending on your life path choice, and he makes an impression immediately.
Michael-Leon Wooley gives Dex a smooth, controlled energy that makes him feel genuinely threatening even when he’s being friendly. You know there’s always an angle. Wooley is best known outside gaming for voicing Louis the alligator in The Princess and the Frog and Darkseid in Injustice 2. His range is impressive, and Dex is one of the more underrated performances in the entire game.
Keanu Reeves – Johnny Silverhand
When I first saw that Keanu Reeves was going to be a part of Cyberpunk 2077, I was both excited and confused. Excited because Keanu never disappoints. Confused because I didn’t know how much of the game he’d actually be in. I wasn’t sure whether he was just there for the marketing.
After playing through the full game, I can say without hesitation that Keanu earns every minute of screen time. Johnny Silverhand is one of the most compelling characters in any video game in recent memory. He has the second most dialogue in the entire game after V, and CDPR has said he helped write some of his own lines. The antagonistic, grudging relationship that develops between V and Johnny is the emotional core of Cyberpunk 2077, and it works entirely because Keanu commits to it completely.
Constantine and The Matrix are two of my all-time favorite films. Seeing him in a game at this level felt surreal in the best way.
Carla Tassara: Judy Alvarez
Judy is one of the standout characters in Cyberpunk 2077 and one of the most popular romance options in the game for good reason. She’s complicated, she’s passionate, and she genuinely cares about the people in her life in a city that doesn’t exactly encourage that.
Carla Tessara voices Judy with a vulnerability and intensity that make her one of the most memorable characters in Night City. Outside of Cyberpunk, Tessara has appeared in Horizon Forbidden West and Remnant 2. Her performance here is the kind that makes you want to complete every single one of Judy’s quests just to spend more time with the character.
Emily Woo Zeller: Panam Palmer
Panam Palmer is an ex-nomad with an attitude and a very specific set of skills that come in extremely useful when everything goes wrong. She’s fiercely independent, she doesn’t take nonsense from anyone, and the missions you do alongside her are some of the best in the game.
Emily Woo Zeller brings real energy and spirit to Panam. She’s also well known in anime circles for voicing Saber in Fate/Stay Night and has had roles in The Last of Us Part II and Pokémon. The chemistry between V and Panam in their questline is one of the genuine highlights of the entire Cyberpunk 2077 experience.
Robbie Daymond: River Ward
River Ward is about as honest as it gets in Night City, which is saying something in a city where everyone has an angle. He’s a former NUSA cop trying to do the right thing in a world that makes that very difficult. If you’re playing female V, he’s a romance option worth pursuing.
Robbie Daymond is a prolific voice actor with credits in Halo Infinite, Hi-Fi Rush, and a significant body of anime work. He brings a straightforward, grounded quality to River that acts as a nice counterpoint to all the chaos happening everywhere else in the game.
Rome Kanda: Goro Takemura
Takemura is one of the more fascinating characters in Cyberpunk 2077. A disgraced bodyguard for Arasaka, trying to navigate impossible circumstances, his relationship with V develops in ways that genuinely surprised me. He goes from antagonist to something more complicated, and that journey works because of Rome Kanda’s performance.
Kanda is also a comedian who has appeared on Conan and SNL, which you would never guess from his serious, controlled work as Takemura. The contrast between his comedic real-life presence and this gruff, intense character is a genuinely impressive range.
Idris Elba: Solomon Reed (Phantom Liberty)
CDPR clearly decided that if Keanu Reeves raised the bar for what celebrity voice acting could be in a video game, they were going to clear it in Phantom Liberty by bringing in Idris Elba.
Solomon Reed is a FIA agent with a complicated history and an even more complicated set of loyalties. Elba plays him with the kind of controlled intensity that made his work in The Wire iconic. He never overplays it. Every line feels earned. If Keanu was the reason people were excited for the base game, Idris Elba is the reason Phantom Liberty exceeded expectations.
Minji Chang: Songbird (Phantom Liberty)
Songbird is your entry point into the world of Phantom Liberty and one of the most morally complex characters in the entire Cyberpunk universe. Her relationship with Solomon Reed and her situation as an asset with her own agenda make her one of the more interesting characters CDPR has written.
Minji Chang delivers a performance that carries real emotional weight throughout Phantom Liberty. She’s a newer face in voice acting, but her work here is confident and compelling.
Honorable Mentions
Hideo Kojima – Oshima:
The legendary game director makes a cameo appearance hanging out in a corpo bar. Only in Cyberpunk.
Michael Gregory – Viktor Vektor: The best ripdoctor in town
Grimes (Lizzy Wizzy):
Yes, that Grimes. She voices Lizzy Wizzy, a chromed-out megastar musician in Night City. The casting makes perfect sense when you think about it for two seconds.
Matthew Yang King (Kerry Eurodyne):
A returning character from the original Cyberpunk tabletop game, Kerry is a guitarist for Samurai and a romance option for male V. King’s performance adds real texture to a character with a lot of history behind him.
The Cyberpunk 2077 Voice Actors Who Made It All Work
What makes Cyberpunk 2077 work at the level it does is that almost nobody phoned it in. From Keanu Reeves building a genuine character to Jason Hightower making you actually care about Jackie, the voice cast treated this material seriously. Combined with everything CDPR added in the 2.0 update and Phantom Liberty, Night City has never felt more alive.
Which voice performance was your favorite? Drop it in the comments below.
As always, thanks for reading. Stay Gritty, Gamers!
