Actor Earl Baylon has portrayed the lovable Māori best friend of Lara Croft for over a decade. He’s portrayed Jonah since the 2013 remake of Tomb Raider along with Rise of the Tomb Raider, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and now co-stars in the new Netflix animated series TOMB RAIDER: THE LEGEND OF LARA CROFT.
Serving as the heartfelt center and big brother of the Tomb Raider franchise, the character of Jonah has been the center of reason and togetherness to Lara and friends at both their best and worst moments. Now, Baylon reprises the role in the new Tomb Raider Netflix adapted series starring Hayley Atwell by showrunner Tasha Huo.
We sat down with actor Earl Baylon to talk about his role in the new series.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
CHRISTIAN ANGELES: Alright so tell me about this show and where this story takes place in the timeline.
EARL BAYLON: Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft continues the wily escapades of everyone’s favorite archaeologist, as she attempts to track down a stolen artifact and the thieving thief that thieved it. With a little help from her friends, some shadow work, and a whole lot of asskickery will she save the day? Who knows? The show takes place pretty soon after the events of the last game, Shadow of the Tomb Raider!
ANGELES: Your character has always been the faithful compatriot and weirdly, the heart of the series now for a decade. What’s it been like getting to play Jonah all these years?
BAYLON: It’s been a blast. I consider myself extremely lucky to be able to play this role over the course of more than a decade – really, how many people get the chance to do that? Part of it, too, is that playing a character for so long, you get the chance to kind of organically make discoveries or come to realizations that you can later bring into your performance. I’m so grateful, because not only has working on Tomb Raider given me the opportunity to play a kind of role I probably wouldn’t have been able to play on camera, considering the climate of the industry at the time, it’s helped create so many opportunities to work on other really cool projects.
ANGELES: Do you find any similarities between the Māori and Filipinos?
BAYLON: I do – our peoples have a common ancestor, and thankfully some things endure despite thousands of miles of distance and hundreds of years of colonization. Things like guest hospitality, respect for our elders, and importance of community have endured. In our languages, though quite different – some words are still definitely cognates. The one that always trips me out is the word for the number five. It’s pretty much the same from Taiwan to Rapa Nui. Lima in many Filipino languages – rima in Māori. Also, while the practice of tattooing was lost to many cultures in the Philippines, it never left the folks in the Kordilyera region of the country – batok. Same with the Māori tā moko.
ANGELES: I heard you read the comics by Rhianna Pratchett and Gail Simone. Tell me what you thought of it and how did their run affect your characterization all those years ago?
BAYLON: Oh yes, I’ve read all the Dark Horse comics – the run you’re referring to between TR 2013 and Rise of the Tomb Raider, and the ones by Mariko Tamaki and Colin Kelly/Jackson Lanzig that take place before Shadow. I really enjoyed all of them. It was great to see what kind of adventures Lara got into between games. As far as characterization, I think every little bit helped to better inform and enrich Jonah’s backstory in my head, gave things an anchor for motivation. It makes things easier for me – you have to invent less. So yeah, haha, I scooped up every floppy on release day, digital if I had to. I’d like to get them all in trades at some point.
ANGELES: Jonah and Abby are engaged in this one their upcoming wedding is a recurring arc this season about families. I like what the story does with the theme of family. How important is family to you and did you pull from any experiences in your voice work portrayal?
BAYLON: Family is very important – both blood and found. Family helps keep you grounded in situations where you find yourself adrift, lost. And definitely, Jonah being so family-oriented, that tends to find its way into every part of my portrayal of him. I think this all rides a fine line. While I don’t think it’s necessarily emotionally healthy to fully tap into emotions from your real life to get yourself to a headspace acting-wise, you can dip into them a little. Can’t just fully immerse yourself in them, all the time – you’ll find yourself sinking into a pit of despair, I think. In my self-talk I refer to it as “touching the real,” which sounds funny when I say it out loud. But yes, it’s a tool I use sometimes. Specifically, I remember in Shadow of the Tomb Raider there’s a scene at the campfire where Lara and Jonah are opening up about loss and their families. I had just lost my mom a year before we shot that, and I remember consciously pulling a little bit of that into the scene. There may or may not have been another scene in that game on a rooftop after a tsunami that was influenced by a situationship gone awry in my real life. Who knows?
ANGELES: There’s a bit spoiler mid-season twist but without saying it I think your character is easily felt when he’s missing from the scene. What was it like taking how you say… a ‘different’ approach to Jonah?
BAYLON: Haha, I think it was cool – variety is the spice of life, and shaking things up here and there to keep folks guessing, while staying true to the base reality is always fun. I shant continue lest I unleash a spoiler upon this hapless world.
ANGELES: Was the recording different this time around? What’s it like working with Hayley Atwell instead of Camilla Luddington?
BAYLON: The process of recording the show differs from the games quite a bit. For the games we did quite a bit of performance capture – all of us actors together in a big motion capture volume with the reflective suits and head-mounted cameras. There was also a significant amount of work in the recording booth, but at least for the main games, majority of the work was done in the volume. For The Legend of Lara Croft, it was exclusively solo recording in the vocal booth, especially considering we started recording at the height of Covid protocols – which leads into the second part of the question. I actually haven’t had the chance to work directly with Hayley or any of the other actors on the project – but that is kind of the norm with most animation and video games these days.
ANGELES: At the heart of it you understand him best. Who is Jonah to you and to the franchise?
BAYLON: Jonah is a guy that’s lived in my head for the last decade – seriously though, I think he kind of represents the best aspects of me. He is me at my most patient, my most empathetic, the most caring version of me. He’s definitely the better cook. To the franchise, I think he’s become one of the pillars of this house whose foundation is Lara Croft. And I’m grateful to have been able to play my part in it all.
You can stream TOMB RAIDER: THE LEGEND OF LARA CROFT on Netflix right now
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