‘Uncharted’: Tati Gabrielle Researched ‘What It Means to Be a Psychopath’ in Preparation for Her Role as Braddock
Nathan Drake and Victor “Sully” Sullivan are matched with quite a ruthless opponent in the Uncharted movie. The adaptation of the hit video game franchise introduces a new villain named Braddock, who will stop at nothing to make sure Nathan and Sully stay away from a $5 billion fortune. According to Tati Gabrielle, the actor behind Braddock, her Uncharted character is a “full-blown psychopath.” Here’s how she prepared herself for such a relentless role.
Tati Gabrielle plays a ruthless mercenary named Braddock in ‘Uncharted’
Uncharted tells the origin story of treasure hunter Nathan Drake (Tom Holland), who works alongside his new mentor, Sully (Mark Wahlberg), to find a gold fortune worth $5 billion. However, someone else is also after the treasure: Santiago Moncada (Antonio Banderas), whose family allegedly found the gold years ago but lost it in a betrayal. Nathan, Sully, and Moncada enter a dangerous and deadly race to reach the fortune first.
Enter Braddock, a mercenary who aids Moncada in his search for the gold. Together, Moncada and Braddock are a ruthless pair. Uncharted’s trailers don’t reveal too much about Braddock, but one scene (below) shows her sending an army of men with guns after an unarmed Nathan on a cargo plane mid-flight. Elsewhere in the film, Braddock goes up against Sully in a vicious battle.
Braddock did not appear in any of the Uncharted video games. However, as Gabrielle told IGN, she took inspiration from two characters in Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End — Nadine and Rafe, the main antagonists.
“I started with the fourth game since I was told that most closely aligned to what we were doing in the film,” the You star said. “So I did get to meet Nadine and Rafe that way. That is kind of where I got my inspiration for Braddock, sort of bringing Nadine and Rafe together into one [character].”
Tati Gabrielle says Braddock is a ‘psychopath’ who lacks empathy
Apparently, no one should ever mess with Braddock. In her interview with IGN, Gabrielle said she researched the behaviors of a psychopath before stepping into her role.
“I did a lot of research into what it means to be a psychopath,” she said. “I believe that Braddock is truly a, like, clinically diagnosed psychopath. It was [a lot of ] trying to understand what it actually looks like to meet somebody that has no empathy and has zero regards for their fellow human being and sometimes even themselves.”
On the other hand, Gabrielle doesn’t think people should mistake Braddock for simply a killing machine. Speaking to EUR, she explained that her favorite part about Braddock is the character’s “perfect combination of class and danger.
“She can go to the cocktail party, she can turn heads, but if you cross her, you’ll have a knife across your throat in an instant,” Gabrielle explained. “So most of the time, when you think of someone so vicious, you think brutish. You think they’re going to be a bit more rugged. But the fact that she’s like, ‘No, I can be classy and spill blood on the floor,’ was my favorite part of her.”
Braddock might be Gabrielle’s last villain role for a while
Aside from her role in Uncharted, Gabrielle has become known for playing Marienne in You and Prudence in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Her career has involved plenty of darker characters, but after Uncharted, Gabrielle hopes to take a break from that. She told IGN:
I don’t think I’m going to take another role like this for a while because I’ve done it twice in a row already. I definitely want to move into more hero roles or just even unconventional ones. Something that I may not have even seen before or can put in as simple of a box as hero or anti-hero or villain. I really want to challenge myself to go as far as I can.
Uncharted hits theaters on Feb. 18.
