Picture: Analesa Fisher plays Omi in Cyberpunk Edgerunners season 2 – Studio Trigger / CD Projekt Red
It’s been over four years since its phenomenal debut, but Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is finally back for a second season. Expanding the world of Night City means bringing in a new roster of colorful characters and voices, including Analesa Fisher, who joins the cast as the nomadic survivor Omi. We recently caught up with Analesa to discuss their creative process, the heavy emotional toll of the new season, and how they brought Omi to life.
Analesa Fisher (they/them) is an actor and voice actor, Disability Rights Advocate, and Environmental/Animal Activist. They voice Omi in Cyberpunk Edgerunners season 2. Before Analesa’s work on Cyberpunk Edgerunners, they starred in Netflix’s Metal Lords, Tubi’s Saving Buddy Charles, and will star in the upcoming coming-of-age film Rise and Shine. Their voice acting work includes the Monster High franchise, Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir, and video games such as Honkai: Star Rail, Cookie Run: Kingdom, and more.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 pulls you back into Night City, where lives become entangled to the extreme. Weak, a washed-up cyberpunk legend, is now forced to live without chrome as he searches for a sense of purpose in a world that’s passed him by. Meanwhile, the deadly nomad D sets out on a path to revenge that brings him close to corpo secrets never meant to be found. Across this ten-episode standalone series, uncover a story of family, obsession, legacy — and how your lens reflects the stories of the people around you.
So when did you first learn about the character Omi? What was the casting process for that?
Okay. So this is crazy. I had auditioned for Yupi, the blonde character, and I wanted her so bad. I was like, “Oh, she’s crazy, she’s so cool, and she’s super upbeat.” Then I didn’t get it, which was fine. And then a week later, I went to visit my family in Portland. I was literally at my brother’s house, playing with his children. I got a text from my best friend, Valeria Rodriguez, who voices Roman in the show. And she goes, ” Can I call you? And I knew that she was in session, because I know her voiceover schedule. I was like, ” Is everything okay?” She calls me, and Wendee [Lee] takes the phone from her, who is literally with the director of Cyberpunk, and asks, “Analesa, can you do an audition tonight?” And I was like, “I’m in Portland!” But she asks if I can get it to her as soon as possible, and all I have with me is my travel mic, which is pretty bad. She asks if I can just try to record it, and I can always re-record at home in LA when I get back from Portland.
So I get sent the little bit of vocal reference, and I’m like, “Oh, this is a deep voice character. I don’t know what I’m gonna do.” That’s not my bread and butter. So, my mom’s house is like this big open cavern with nowhere to record, so I take all my equipment, go down to the car, and into their parking garage. I then hook up the mic, sit in my mom’s car, and do this audition with my laptop perched on the dashboard! Then, I kinda just went for it. I’m not sure what happened, but something just sort of clicked. I think mostly the emotional part. The main audition sides were mostly the heavy, emotional stuff she gets into with one of the main characters, which made it much easier for me to connect with. So I tried to drop into it and be a bit more confident, even though my voice is usually high, silly, and fun.
I sent it off to Wendee, and I wasn’t sure if it sounded like dogshit, but I could record on Sunday and asked her to let me know. So… I don’t hear back; she doesn’t respond to my message, so I’m like, okay, it must’ve been either horrible, or it must’ve been good enough that she’ll send it over to the producers and stuff. Then Tuesday that next week, while I’m in the recording studio, I get a text from Wendee. She asks me about my availability, and I’m just like, “No! Are you joking? Is this really happening?” Wendee sends back this little emoji, and my face just went white! And of course my audio engineer and my director in that session were asking if I’m okay, and I was just like, “Yes! I can’t tell you anything, but yes, I’m very much okay.” That was the journey.
That’s awesome. It’s quite ironic that the character of Omi is a nomad, and your audition took place inside a car.
Oh, I didn’t even think about that! That’s true. She’s like, I’ll figure it out.
So Omi offered you a completely new challenge, considering you’re used to voicing characters with a much higher pitch?
Yeah! A very big challenge. I just want to say I’m so thankful to Cyberpunk, CD Projekt Red, Wendee, and everybody for being patient with me. Because I know I would do these heavily emotional scenes, and Wendee would be like, “That was great. I need you to drop your voice.” So I’m like, “Yes, okay, I remember.” But when you’re emotional, and you’re lost in the moment, your voice tends to pitch back to where it normally sits. So I really had to figure it out. Omi is emotional, but she’s still strong. She’s a survivor, and obviously D went on a more destructive path, but Omi is just trying to live her life, which taught me that you never know when it’s going to be over. You never know when you’ll lose the people you love. So I’m just going to live. But where does that confidence sit in your voice? I think that helped me eventually, at least I would like to think it did, but we got through it either way.
Picture (L to R) Analesa Fisher is the voice of Omi in Cyberpunk Edgerunners S2 – Studio Trigger / CD Projekt Red
I thought her voice had quite a solemn tone. You could hear the pain behind the voice. I think you did that extremely well.
Oh, thank you so much. I am always somehow being typecast as girls who are either dying or going through something really traumatic. And I’m like, “What’s going on!?” Like, off-camera, I’m asking myself, “Is it me?” Do I give off Victorian child energy? What’s happening?
So how would you describe Omi in a few words? What do they mean to you?
Omi embodies truly doing what you can to survive. And I think so much about that is that she’s not about revenge, and she doesn’t get it. Like, she doesn’t understand why D would want revenge.
Obviously, you wish these things hadn’t happened to your family, but for her, it’s like, you’re wasting your life and giving them what they want. I think the best revenge you can give anyone is to keep living and live your best life. And I think Omi is very much the embodiment of that, you know, her going to the diner with Roman and, you know, running around Night City and doing what she thinks that the rest of her family would want her to do, which is to continue on. I think that’s really her role in the story: to show that.
D and Omi are cut from the same cloth, but both go down two distinctly different paths.
Yeah, it’s sad. It really does make me sad too, because I know for Omi, when she realizes D is there and on this horrible trajectory, it’s like, genuinely, please stop. She’s beating the shit out of him. She’s, you know, she’s following him where he’s going. She’s yelling at him. She’s trying to infiltrate their plan. She’s trying to stop him because she just knows that there’s no peace down that path. And she doesn’t want to lose anyone else. I think that’s the biggest thing: like, please don’t go. You’re like my brother. I don’t know what I’m going to do without you if you’re just gone.
Picture: D in Cyberpunk Edgerunners season 2 – Studio Trigger / CD Projekt Red
So was there any specific preparation for the role? Had you played the game or watched the series? Were you already a fan of Cyberpunk?
I am a huge fan of the Cyberpunk anime. I really only like two anime. Jujutsu Kaisen is number one; that’s my favorite anime of all time, and Cyberpunk is my second. I love tragic stories. I love stories that are colorful and fun, and then punch you in the heart like, “Hey, did you want to think about crying today?” Because if you didn’t, you are now. I’m always drawn to those stories. I’ve probably watched the show three times already, and I wasn’t sure they’d ever make another one.
Then, obviously, when my best friend got booked as Roman, I was very excited. I was invited to go with them to the Crypto Arena to see the first episode, and at that point I still hadn’t been booked for the show, but I was sitting there watching the episode and thinking, “Wow, we get a second season! This is amazing.” By the time I was booked, there was no time to prepare; I was coming into the booth tomorrow, which is very much the life of a voiceover artist!
I had to trust that I already knew the story, what Night City is, and where they’re coming from in telling the second season. Then I had to trust our wonderful director and our wonderful story directors, who were on the session as well, to help guide me through. And yeah, I think that’s just, it’s just the life of a voice actor. You have to just be willing to leave your ego at the door and be like, I’m a puppet. You tell me how high to jump, and I will do it to the best of my ability.
So, being a fan of the show already helped you a lot going into this role? It sounds like your personal investment in the story helped you apply that emotional aspect to the role right from the off.
I think so. I told them that when we got into the session, they were like, “Okay, so you obviously know a lot of what’s going on.” I was like, “Yes, let’s start. I’m here. I know what’s happening. Let’s get into it.”
I think the overall tone was very clear in my head because I had watched the first anime several times. I still haven’t played the game, but it’s now on my list because, again, my best friend recently started playing it after they booked Roman, and they’re like, “Oh, I love the game.” So I’m like, okay, I’m going to, I’m going to play the game next.
That’s interesting. Did you receive any specific lore or world-building notes from CD Projekt Red or Studio Trigger to help you understand Omi’s nomadic background a little better?
A little bit. Yeah. They did kind of run me through what the nomads are and what their clan stands for. One of the things they said a lot, especially when a nomad speaks, was what they wanted to do with Omi compared to D, because D has kind of brain-rotted himself into being more of a Night City character. Omi is almost Shakespearean in the way she speaks, which we talked about a lot. Especially because when you’re watching the show and even reading all the lines in session, we’d get “chooms”, and we’d get all of this, like, little slang words.
Omi doesn’t say any of that. Omi speaks almost like an old-world person, which was hard, especially with flaps because you’re trying to put these, like, big elegant words into matching the flaps for anime, which was difficult. But something that they spoke about a lot was that they [Nomads] just don’t; it’s a completely separate world.
It’s, it’s almost like a compound or almost like a cult, but not in the negative way necessarily. They’re just out there trying to live a life so separate from this brain-rotted life in Night City. And I think that also plays a big part in the betrayal of what happened to Snake Nation: D just can’t understand why someone would want to come and do that to people who are, like, minding their own business.
The best way to describe the Nomads is that they’re not plugged in like the rest of them in Night City. They have their own very distinct culture. One of my favorite things to do when I’ve replayed Cyberpunk was to start as a Nomad.
I know to even think about that, because I feel like so much with the culture of Cyberpunk as an aesthetic, necessarily, it’s always so focused on, like, what would be the Night City life, right? Everybody’s brain rotted, everybody’s brain dancing, everybody’s doing all this crazy stuff. And you don’t really ever get, what about those people in rural Indiana that maybe still aren’t plugged in that way, or maybe are still trying to live life?
I mean, there’s always going to be a play for traditional values somewhere in the world, no matter how advanced we get. I mean, there are the Amish; there are people who live by all sorts of codes of living. And including that in the Cyberpunk aesthetic with the Nomads, I think, is really interesting, like you said, because you can kind of see, well, if you’re not a part of it, what does that look like? And how do you look into it from the outside before getting into it?
So what surprised you the most about the tone or the story once the animated footage was paired with your voice?
I think how, with me specifically, it was, again, going back to the deep voice, I never felt like my voice was deep enough or strong enough. And something that we talked about in session was that they were like, we still want these people to sound real. We don’t want you to sound like a characterization of a strong anime girl, like Omi is still very young. She’s very real. And we want her to sound like a real person. And so having those intricacies in the voice of, I’ve got a lot of rasp in my voice, and sometimes it gets higher, and sometimes it goes a little lower, depending on if she’s angry or she’s upset.
Playing around with that, I think it surprised me because I’m so used to seeing anime done in one way. And same thing with Kimoy [Lee] voicing Talia, it’s the same thing. She’s my favorite voice, I think, in this new season, because they could have gone the anime direction, where it’s almost like a power from Chainsaw Man; it could have gone that anime direction of really bright, really grating, she’s this crazy girl running around Night City, but she just sounds like a teenage girl. And I think that there’s something so important about that, overlaid with all of the horrible shit that’s happening, is that it brings it to a level where you’re like, oh, these aren’t just animated characters on a screen. These are real people going through real stuff. And hearing that all come together, I think that’s what surprised me the most: remembering that.
What I loved about the first season was, oh, yeah, that’s what we’re doing here, I forgot. Then feeling like I fit more into the world after that.
Picture: Talia in Cyberpunk Edgerunners season 2 – Studio Trigger / CD Projekt Red
It reminds me of how Powerhouse Animation approaches voice acting, like with Castlevania. It’s so much more dramatic, and, as you described earlier, very Shakespearean in the way they articulate.
Yes. Well, it’s just larger-than-life. It’s still great acting. As I said, it’s one of my favorite shows. And there are so many ridiculous, over-the-top moments in that anime, but nothing is ever fabricated; the emotions are never fabricated. It’s just, what level are we putting it at? Are we keeping it heightened so it fits the animation style and this world? Or are we bringing it down and almost subverting those expectations to, I think, hurt people a little bit more?
So what’s one takeaway that you’d want fans to have from the second season of Cyberpunk?
I mean, I can speak from Omi again and say that revenge is going to get you nowhere is the biggest takeaway. You’re wasting your time with revenge. But I also think, more than anything, that this season of Cyberpunk really embodies the idea that, no matter how crazy things get with technology and cyborg-ing out, for lack of a better word, you’re still human. And I think that plays really well between Talia and Roman, because Roman is this little boy who’s entirely organic still. And Talia’s got all of these upgrades, even though she’s still young.
The end of season two had a deeply emotional conversation between Roman and Talia that really shows off the profound bond they share. It’s a beautifully heartbreaking scene about holding onto your humanity. I think that right there embodies everything of “Go and live.” Stop wasting your time with all this heartbreak and petty revenge and death and destruction, because that’s never going to go away.
That’s always going to be a part of Night City. But you don’t have to be part of it, and I think living is the most important thing.
So can you tell me a little about the YA thriller Wake Up, which I believe you wrote?
Yeah, that script means a lot to me. I’ve been writing since I was 15. I’ve written probably 40 movies. And a couple of years ago, I think it was 2023. I finally sat down and wrote this movie that had been in my head, with drafts, for a very long time, but I never did it because I was so scared of taking the parts of myself that were maybe not completely worked through and putting those on paper, for lack of a better word.
It’s the story they tell you to write in screenwriting classes from day one, where they’re like, “Write the story no one else could write, that only you can write,” right? That’s how we ended up with real doctors working on The Pit who are writers. That’s how we ended up with real lawyers who are now writers on CIS, and stuff is that because they went and wrote a script, it’s like, well, here’s something from my perspective that any other writer in LA could write.
So I wrote Wake Up, which is all about my delve into teenage alcoholism that got wildly out of control, growing up autistic, coming out, and all of those crazy things that did embody my teenagehood. I wrote it and gave it to everyone I knew. And right after that, it landed on the desk of two lovely agents at UTA, one of the biggest agencies in LA. They read it and said, ” We’d love to sign you. We think this is amazing.” And we’ve been trying to get it made ever since.
Things are getting closer and closer by the day, especially thanks to Obsession, Backrooms, and all these things that I think are pushing Gen Z voices a little more into the light. But I just know people are going to love it because lucid dreaming specifically is one of the most visited subreddits of all time. And it very much takes, like, imagine you’re reading this story on a subreddit like r/LucidDreaming.
Someone’s like, so this happened, and I completely lost touch with reality. And I didn’t know where I was. And I didn’t know if I was dreaming. It’s really cool. Every time I give it to someone new, I get a call from them like two or three days later. And it’s like, Hey, so I can’t remember if I woke up or went to bed. And I’m really pissed off at you for doing that to my psyche. But I’m like, I’m sorry, but I’m glad it works. That means it’s good.
That sounds really cool. I really hope the film gets made eventually. What else are you currently working on right now? Are you a member of the Environmental Media Association’s Young Hollywood Board and a shark conservationist?
I am. Yes. Those are two things that never cease, though. The work on those continues every day. Yeah, I’ve been on the Environmental Media Association’s Young Hollywood Board for about three or four years now.
They asked me to be part of it because I’m not only an actor in the Young Hollywood sphere, but also because I was so vocal about shark conservation. Basically, our entire goal with the Young Hollywood board is to promote hope in Gen Z, because I think so many people think there’s no point in doing anything anymore because we’re so far past the point of return. And while I completely get those feelings because everything is horrible and the news just keeps saying worse stuff every day, we’re trying to promote, like, hey, you don’t have to do everything.
Picture: Analesa Fisher – Photo by Storm Santos
In fact, if you try to do everything, you will burn yourself out. If you try to only shop sustainably, you know, never buy from fast fashion, never use Amazon, never eat fish, help save the oceans, go vegan. You know, if you try to do everything, you’ll maybe survive a week before you’re like, I can’t do this anymore. So our whole thing is that every single person on the Young Hollywood board has their own platform, and mine is shark conservation. So I don’t eat any fish. I go and give talks about sharks.
I’m like the shark expert, which is great because I have people who come up to me at conventions with questions about sharks, and they know they can trust me, that I’m not just speaking out of my ass. Like, I know these things, and we have someone else on our board whose whole thing is public transportation and someone else whose whole thing is wild organic farming you can do at home. And it’s, it’s been really inspiring to see so many other young people going out and doing, doing things and doing things that I never even thought about.
I didn’t know what wild organic farming at home was until, you know, until Peyton List came onto our board and was like, ” Let me tell you all about it. And Hayden Begley, whose whole thing is public transportation. It’s, it’s just been like a fun little group to be a part of to help kind of build each other up. And so yeah, the work there never ceases. We keep giving talks and going all over the place to raise awareness for our different platforms and hopefully make a difference.
Have you watched Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 2 on Netflix? Let us know in the comments below!
