The Story of John Bentley, the Voice of Barret in Final Fantasy VII Remake. Part Two.
In the second part of this two-part interview, John discusses the values that have earned him a long career and continuous progress as an actor.
His Old School Ways
One look at John Bentley’s IMDB page is enough to appreciate the impressiveness of his resumé. As you gander at his accolades and slew of roles in amazing shows, movies and video games, you’d think he’d earned the right to boast a little bit about the longevity of his career.
You’d think so — but he won’t.
Call the man behind iconic characters like Barret Wallace and Nick Fury anything akin to a “legend” and he’ll humbly thank you before shaking off the praise.
John’s talent goes hand in hand with his humility. For him, a lifetime of doing what he loves didn’t happen because he’s special, per se. It’s more than that.
“Just do the work. Most people just don’t do the work,” John says about thriving in this dog-eat-dog industry. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun because I love what I do. I absolutely love it. But if you don’t come to the table prepared to work, then you probably won’t be hired to do more work.”
It’s an old school take — advice you’ve probably heard from a parent, teacher or wise tutorial NPC. But for John Bentley, hard work isn’t just a platitude good for a quick copy and paste; it’s a methodology that’s carried him from one job to the next and one milestone to another. It’s a code of conduct with deep precedent. He was raised by hard workers. People with far more obstacles and even higher stakes to overcome. For them, hard work was the only option.
“Maybe it’s the Chicago in me,” John muses about the root of his work ethic. “Or maybe it’s the way I was raised by a dad who always wanted to make sure there was food on the table, or a mom who worked hard as a teacher and cared for the children that she taught. Or maybe it’s having aunts and uncles who were a part of the civil rights movement who all became educators. Whatever this drive is, you just want to be excellent at what you do.”
For Final Fantasy VII Remake, the hard work began even before he stepped into the recording booth. While he’d played the original game, John knew that wasn’t enough. To embody Barret, to really do him justice, much more needed to be done.
“I couldn’t do Barret without knowing about Final Fantasy as a whole. Period. I couldn’t do Barret without doing research on where he came from. Everybody just sees a big Black man — sometimes with a little girl on his shoulder. But how did Marlene come into his life? Where did he come from? Is he from Midgar? Who is Cloud? You have to do your work.”
While John is thankful for the awards and praise he’s received for his performances in Remake and other projects, he believes that the real reward is the final product. Personal notoriety is never the goal.
“It’s like going to a ball game,” John explains. “You didn’t see the practices. You didn’t see the injuries. You didn’t see the recoveries. You didn’t see all of that. You get to experience the finished product.”
In the case of Remake and any number of games he’s been a part of, he doesn’t want you to see the work — you don’t need to. But the blood, sweat and tears are always there. His and the collective efforts of many others come together to create an experience that brings excitement and joy. That’s a job well done. One that he’s helped deliver many times before.
Final Fantasy, The Last of Us, Resident Evil, Call of Duty, Kingdom Hearts, Red Dead Redemption and so many more. The number of iconic game series John has played a role in is longer than Chadley’s list of battle intel tasks. And while working his tail off is how he operates in every project, he describes the relationships he’s built as the foundation for becoming an industry mainstay.
“It’s being cordial,” John reveals with a shrug. “Saying ‘hi’ and being friendly — things that are considered really weird now. A lot of people start off doing these things, but they aren’t consistent.”
It sounds like simple advice, but cordiality shows respect. And it’s the respect John has for the people he works with that’s helped him develop and excel. After all, doing your best work starts with listening to those in charge of getting the best work out of you.
“Have respect for the booth tech or director or creator,” he insists. “As an actor, you have to listen. As a person, you have to listen. I’ve learned that, if you have one person giving direction, listen to that one person despite all that surrounds you.”
Sure, this is sometimes easier said than done. He’s been there. Directors, writers, creators, coaches — there are some you’ll get along with and some you won’t. When it comes to dealing with the latter, John is patient and looks at it from a different perspective. A lesson he learned on the football field and has long applied to an industry overflowing with dominant personalities.
“It’s how I was brought up,” he explains. “You have good coaches and some horrible coaches. Some are a blend of both. All they want to see is you do well, but they don’t know how to get that out of you, so they go back to how they were taught: They talk at you. The whole time you’re like, ‘Coach sucks!’ But, if the end result is you do a whole lot more than you thought you could because coach pushed you, you realize you both had the same goal.”
At the end of the day, improvement and growth are what he wants. Blind confirmation and blaming others never got him anywhere.
“I will never forget playing football when I was a freshman,” he begins, recalling some of the best advice he’d ever gotten during his difficult college football years. “A senior from the University of Minnesota, named Jason Bruce — good dude — said, ‘Bentley, don’t give them any excuse not to play you. You’re too good for that. Be better than what they want.’”
John smiles and gestures toward himself, remembering the epiphany that struck him then and there like a limit break to the soul.
“This meant I needed to do more work. Me.”
Personal culpability: The hardest pill to swallow when it comes to discipline. In the end, longevity down the path you’ve chosen starts with a decision that only you can make. That’s what Jason Bruce taught 17-year-old John; now, John is passing that lesson down to us.
So, to sum up: How exactly has John Bentley done all he’s done for as long as he’s done it? By listening. By building relationships on the basis of respect. By working harder than everyone else. By doing the simple things good people do but often forget about.
Call his ways old fashioned; he knows they sound like it. But if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. It’s an old saying, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
