Neil Newbon says the dateable clothes dryer he plays in Date Everything sounded too much like Astarion from Baldur’s Gate 3, so he had to base his performance off a fictional sex symbol from an ’80s British sitcom

Neil Newbon can’t quite un-sound like Astarion from Baldur’s Gate 3, his own vocals being inseparable from the character, so when he faced the prospect of voicing a sentient tumble-dryer in Date Everything he hunted for inspiration in Rik Mayall’s swaggering Lord Flashheart from the classic ’80s Britcom Blackadder. What an opening sentence, right?

The performer recently confessed that his immersive, method-heavy style often leaves lingering tics from the roles he inhabits, admitting that Astarion’s vampiric titter still slips into his real-world laugh. Understandably, he and the creators of Date Everything—a rom-com where household objects become smokin’ singles—were eager to stop Drysdale the dryer from turning into Astarion-with-a-vent.

The fix? Newbon borrowed swagger from another flamboyant posho—one played by the late comedy great Rik Mayall in a vintage BBC sitcom only true tea-drinkers still quote. (Yanks like me pretend we’re not missing half the joke.)

“It was delightful riffing as Drysdale,” Newbon shared during a chat with Luality. “They’ve both got variations on RP, yet Astarion is ultra-refined while Drysdale leans broader. The accents sit in adjacent neighborhoods, so we wanted a firewall.”

“Cue Rik Mayall’s Lord Flashheart,” he continued. “The character’s so bombastic there’s genuinely no room for Astarion-esque haughtiness.”

If you’re flabbergasted that a game about courting your own cookware deserves this many paragraphs, sorry—there’s no dialing it back. You star as an unfortunate hero recently replaced by AI, until magical spectacles transform every mundane item into 100-plus romanceable companions.

Your bed metamorphoses into Betty the bombshell, a chair answers to “Chairemi,” existential dread collects itself into Doug, and the Brit-ified telly flirts back as Telly. Critics and punters adore it—witness the 95 % positive Steam user score. Even if the romance mechanics don’t reel you in, hearing Newbon mould his pipes into a spandex-ego dryer only faintly reminiscent of his fanged noble is worth the entry fee, if you ask me.

Baldur’s Gate 3 star Neil Newbon rejects roles that clone Astarion because he “wouldn’t necessarily enjoy” the repetition—yet says he’d leap at the chance to reprise the iconic vampire.

After finishing an English degree at ASU, I toiled in corporate copy-editing by day while freelancing for SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG by night. My big break arrived in 2019 via a freelance news spot, and by 2021 I’d landed a staff-writer desk on GamesRadar’s west-coast office—also known as my living room—where I pen chronicles about horror games I’m too chicken to complete.