Wonder Woman of the Week: Melissanthi Mahut
This week's Wonder Woman is an actress who has lent her voice to the collective pop culture movement of the 21st Century aiming to give strong female characters more voice. Melissanthi Mahut is a Greek Canadian actress who spent the first half of the 2010's working small parts in television and film- mostly as either minor characters or as an extra. In 2017, Mahut lent her voice to several minor characters in the video game Assassins Creed: Origins. Unbeknownst to her, the gig would end up paying off big time. After lending her voice to the game, the game creators ushered Mahut in for several auditions for a new role they were keeping under pretty tight wraps before revealing Mahut would be voicing the first ever female main character for the Assassin's Creed franchise.
Melissanthi Mahut mastered her new role for the game- portraying a strong female character set in Ancient Greece. The game creators wanted to hire Greek voice actors for the game to avoid the classic Hollywood act of having actors with British accents playing Greek characters- and Mahut was a breakout star. Not only did she lend a more historically accurate accent, Mahut gave depth to the character and a voice for women in video games as an object of empowerment rather than sexual desire. Mahut's performance in the role garnered overnight fame as a talented voice actress and her character from the game became a symbol of women's empowerment among the gaming community.
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