Most actors might not have a big say in what they read, but Keanu Reeves is not most actors. CD Projekt Red said that the work on Keanu Reeves’ Johnny Silverhand in Cyberpunk 2077 turned out to be much more than the devs simply telling him what to do. Instead, he brought his own flavor to the role and it ended up being more of a collaboration.
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Speaking to PCGamesN during Gamescom 2019, Cyberpunk 2077’s senior concept artist Marthe Jonkers said that Keanu’s involvement in the project “was more of a collaboration than us telling him ‘please do it like this.’” He added that Reeves brought his own ideas about what Johnny Silverhand would say or how he would sound like. According to CDPR’s CEO, Silverhand has more dialogue lines than any other NPC in the game, which made Reeves a fitting choice.
Keanu also seemed really excited about playing the part as well. When he got to meet the CD Projekt team, he sent them a video with a personal message.
“He’s a really cool guy, that’s for sure. He did send a video to our whole team, a personal message to the team which was really, really nice,” said Jonkers.
Reeves has been a hot topic around the internet and has been spreading to other titles as well. Hideo Kojima, who is currently busy with Death Stranding, admitted that he “was recommended Keanu Reeves” but ended up going with Mads Mikkelsen. The game already has a star-studded cast of well-known actors that even includes a cameo by Canadian video game journalist and Game Awards host and creator, Geoff Keighley.
Johnny Silverhand is one of the bigger characters we’ve seen so far in Cyberpunk 2077, but CD Projekt confessed that it didn’t choose Reeves because he was a big name actor. The devs felt that he had a connection to the character, based on his previous roles.
