Luca Ward in Marvel’s Wastelanders: “This is how I became Doctor Doom”

Audible, an Amazon company, today released the fifth season of Italian podcast series Audible Original Marvel’s Wastelanders
. Featuring the iconic voice of Luca Ward as Doctor Doom, listeners will be transported into a post-apocalyptic world taken directly from the Marvel world. In this desolate scenario, the Superheroes have been defeated and the Super-Villains have taken power, painting a new and disturbing reality. Marvel’s Wastelanders: Doom, the final season, transports the audience to an alternative Earth where Doctor Doom, having defeated his bitter enemies, rules with an iron fist. But when resistance begins to emerge from the shadows, a compelling tale of rebellion, redemption and heroism unfolds. The six-season audio epic originally launched as an English-language series in June 2021, with Marvel’s Wastelanders: Doom written by Mark Waid and James Kim. The sound design and original music are the work of Mark Henry Phillips.

“The character is beautiful, extraordinary, compelling, playing him was a challenge for me,” Luca Ward told Adnkronos Tech&Games. “There is always a bit of fear when tackling certain roles, but this audio series is very well written. The dialogues are splendid, and therefore everything was simpler. I worked with a team of true professionals: the dubbing director It’s Marco Mete, with whom I made dozens and dozens of films, so I felt at home. Today the world of dubbing no longer lives in that aura of great professionalism, as you will have noticed than once, but for this job everything was truly exceptional.”

This is not Ward’s very first experience dubbing a Marvel character, having already voiced Wilson Fisk in 2015’s Daredevil, but Doctor Doom is certainly an iconic character, one of the most famous arch-villains of the House of Ideas. “He’s a scientist, and like a lot of bad characters in the best stories he’s extremely intelligent and very cunning, with an incredible understanding of humanity – that really struck me,” says Ward. “It’s also very interesting, from a social point of view, to see how his tyrannical rule has led to a society where everything works very well, but in reality everyone is very unhappy. Personally, I have never seen the big Marvel films and therefore I was not influenced by the actors who have already played this role, and this is one thing that allowed me to connect better with Doctor Doom. This is why when I have to do remakes, or play roles in the theater in great musicals that have been played by great international actors, I usually don’t go and see them again.”

The audio format of Marvel’s Wastelanders was certainly another big news for the actor and voice actor: “We are more used to the concept of audiobooks, or films and TV series, but this work is a bit in the middle, almost a radio drama of other times. Works of this type are an extraordinary testing ground for the actors because they have to imagine everything, but also for the listeners because they have to let their imagination work, compared to a film or TV series which is somehow a more defined product. I believe that projects like this one from Audible will have a great future, and can also make a significant contribution to cinema and dubbing. To make a podcast series convincing it is necessary to call real actors, it is not possible to rely on influencers and talent who perhaps have never entered a dubbing room before.”