Lots of famous people have proclaimed their love for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, including Brie Larson, Brendan Fraser, and St. Vincent. None of them were even set to appear in a live-action adaptation of Zelda. So what’s Link actor Benjamin Evan Ainsworth’s excuse for not having played the seminal Switch game at launch?
“I can’t speak too much on the film itself, but I remember vividly when Breath of the Wild came out—and it might show my age—but I remember being quite young at the time when it came out, and so I didn’t have a Switch at the time,” the House of the Dragon actor recently told GamesRadar. “And so, I was watching gamers play it, and watching playthroughs, essentially.”
Ainsworth, who will play the fairy-less warrior of light in Nintendo and Sony’s 2027 The Legend of Zelda movie directed by Wes Ball, is currently just 17. That means he would only have been eight years old when Breath of the Wild debuted along with the Switch in 2017. It was just one year later that Ainsworth would make his first-ever onscreen appearance as a schoolboy in the UK soap opera Emmerdale. I guess his parents didn’t buy him the new Nintendo console to celebrate.
It remains unclear if Ainsworth ever went back to play Breath of the Wild, or if his trip through four decades of Zelda has taken place primarily on YouTube. “And then, upon being fortunate enough to play this role, such an iconic character, going back and realizing the 40 years of legacy and history, and the varied tones, the varied stories, the varied renditions and vocal performances of this character as well,” he continued. “Yeah, I’m a big fan, and just really excited, because it was an awesome thing to shoot. New Zealand is a wonderful place. But yeah, can’t say too much more.”
Link is one of gaming’s most iconic characters, but also one of its most shallow. There’s no right or wrong approach to take to preparing for an acting role, but I doubt burning Moblins in the tall grass fields of Hyrule or solving puzzles inside Divine Beasts would have shed much additional light on the character’s psyche.