It was a tough Thursday for IO Interactive and ol' Jimmy B, as the reveal of 007 First Light's first villain, played by singer Lenny Kravitz, leaked ahead of its intended drop during The Game Awards. Sometimes the contents of these things can't be contained by YouTube scheduling tools or, in the case of Kravitz's villain Bawma, human-made fabrics—as Andy noted in our initial news story, Bawma's "spectacularly chiselled abs" are on prominent display in the trailer.
And yes, they're the real deal.
Earlier in the day Kravitz showed up in person to an event held by IO Interactive to spend a few minutes talking about his first videogame role and his famous workout routines. "You look like an awesome videogame character already," the host said, singling out his abs.
"I try," said Lenny Kravitz, far more humbly than I would if I was 61 years old and in fact looked like Lenny Kravitz.
Resident Evil actor Milla Jovovich, who was also on stage to promote her role as the next Hitman Elusive Target, had to get in on the abs talk, asking "they are based on reality, right?"
"Yes they are," Kravitz said. "That's not a body double."
It turns out that 'based on reality' is actually underselling IO Interactive's commitment to authenticity with 007 First Light. In an interview with art director Rasmus Poulsen, I confirmed that Kravitz lent not just his voice and motion capture to the role of Bawma, but a body scan as well.
"It is a scan," Poulsen confirmed. "Lenny's abs are renowned, as they should be."
IO worked with Kravitz to define the look of the character and his fashion, too.
"He's larger than life, and when we were designing Aleph, this dangerous cesspool of crime and shady dealings, among these husks of rotting corpses of ships, a very dangerous but adventurous place, we knew we needed a character with a vibrant personality who could feel larger than life. He brought that, and you'll see it with the costume: he feels like a rockstar leader of this place, and we were refining the character and designing costumes with Lenny over a few months to land this larger than life moment for the game but also for us as a studio."
