"When you hear all those hard breaths and tones in the game…those are real." When Nadji Jeter received the call from PlayStation to take on the role of Miles Morales, it was an easy yes for him. From stepping into the mo-cap world to all the physical training it takes to bring the stunts to life, Nadji truly went "full-blown" for his role. Nadji breaks down his entire process for the 'Spider-Man' videogame, from the mental preparation for the role, working alongside Yuri Lowenthal and so much more.
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00:00 When you're playing Miles Morales,
00:01 you're doing a lot of physicality.
00:02 So whether it's on the mo-cap stage, I'm giving my all.
00:06 Or whether it's in the booth, I'm actually swinging,
00:08 I'm actually punching, and I'm actually doing
00:11 all the motions that are required into Miles.
00:14 When you hear all those hard breaths and tones in the game,
00:18 those are real.
00:19 Hey, what's going on, you guys?
00:20 I'm Najee Jeter, and this is how I became
00:22 Miles Morales in Marvel's Spider-Man.
00:25 [dramatic music]
00:28 [dramatic music]
00:31 Character Miles Morales came about in my life,
00:36 and I wanna say 2017, but I was maybe around 19,
00:41 18 years old playing Miles as a 13-year-old on Disney XD.
00:46 It's me!
00:46 Friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.
00:50 PlayStation called me over saying,
00:52 "Hey, we're doing a reading for Spider-Man.
00:54 "Do you wanna join?"
00:56 And I said, "Heck yeah."
00:57 I wanna say it wasn't too long of an audition.
00:59 We had fun, it was Yuri and I.
01:02 I believe it was the reveal,
01:05 me telling him something is changing,
01:06 and me not knowing that my man Pete
01:09 already had the same situation going on.
01:11 He kinda came at it as a big bro, thought it was puberty.
01:14 - All starts in the pituitary gland.
01:15 - Nope, nope, mm-mm.
01:16 - Mm-mm.
01:17 - No, that's not what I'm talking about.
01:20 What's so crazy, Yuri was actually on that TV show with me
01:23 on Disney XD.
01:25 Well, the relationship between Pete and Miles, man,
01:27 it's a heartfelt one 'cause that's big bro,
01:29 and he's big bro on and off camera.
01:31 He kinda guides me with just advice
01:33 and just acting skills that he has incorporated for Pete
01:36 to have with the Spider-Man and Miles.
01:38 My performance in video games,
01:45 man, starting off with The Last of Us, I was a kid.
01:48 Playing Sam, I was maybe like 13 or 14.
01:50 Stepping into the mo-cap world as a kid, that was shocking.
01:53 What if they're trapped in there
01:54 without any control of their body?
01:56 Scared of that happening to me.
02:00 Remember when they flew me to Serbia
02:02 and they had to scan my face, I kinda felt like,
02:05 okay, this is gonna be, it's gonna be something different.
02:08 Getting your face scanned is crazy.
02:10 You know, you're sitting in a chair
02:12 and you have maybe like 90 cameras around you in a sphere.
02:15 You're just sitting there and then you're just,
02:17 they're flashing away, and you're making
02:19 different facial expressions here and there.
02:21 So that, going through that was mind-blowing.
02:25 - I think he was right.
02:26 Your friend picked up a signal from this satellite.
02:29 Let's see what we're working with.
02:30 - Miles is way smarter than me, I'll tell you that.
02:32 Miles is a tech genius and he knows what he's doing
02:36 when it comes to the science and the arts.
02:39 So man, Miles is ahead of his time
02:41 when it comes to his mentality.
02:43 Miles and I have a strong, similar connection
02:46 of our background.
02:47 Just little situations that we go through.
02:49 He's lost his father, I was raised by a single mom.
02:51 Just took from my personal experiences
02:53 when it came to emotion and losses
02:55 that he has to go through.
02:56 I'm also Jamaican.
02:58 His culture background too, with his mom, is amazing.
03:02 So, and shout out to Jackie.
03:03 I love you, mama.
03:04 When you're playing Miles Morales,
03:11 you're doing a lot of physicality.
03:12 So whether it's on the mo-cap stage, I'm giving my all.
03:16 Or whether it's in the booth, I'm actually swinging.
03:18 I'm actually punching.
03:20 And I'm actually doing all the motions
03:21 that are required into Miles.
03:24 When you hear all those hard breaths and tones in the game,
03:28 those are real.
03:29 For the training of Miles, we had a pamphlet
03:37 that we had to go through.
03:39 And it was of different poses.
03:40 You had the aggro pose, you had the idle pose,
03:43 and then you had the perch pose.
03:45 They gave me some homework and I went home with it
03:47 and tried to do all the stretches that I could possible.
03:51 But we have a great stunt team as well.
03:53 'Cause you know, when you have a camera
03:55 attached to your face, it's only so much you can do.
03:57 So we did do a couple of flips and some tricks
04:00 at the parkour studios.
04:02 Couldn't go too much, too much with it
04:05 with the camera attached to your face.
04:06 But it's fun, man.
04:07 When you really get into it, you get to be a big kid again.
04:15 The script for an open world is, you know,
04:18 like a typical film script.
04:20 We don't really change too much.
04:22 We try to keep everything just, you know, straightforward.
04:24 We do a full table read when we first start.
04:27 And then we kind of jump into it.
04:29 We have our cinematic scenes where we are doing
04:32 the physicality in it and we're acting it out.
04:35 We have our tables, we have our chairs,
04:37 we have our cars, and we have the open world.
04:39 And then we get in the booth and we track
04:41 some of those scenes or we add on to certain things
04:45 that have been filmed already.
04:46 I'm a sound effects guy, you know.
04:48 I need my sounds, I need my imagination to be on point.
04:53 So they kind of laugh at me on set
04:55 'cause when we're doing mo-cap and when we're in the volume,
04:57 I'm making the web sounds when I shoot, you know.
05:00 (imitates web sounds)
05:01 I'm doing all that, I'm going full blow.
05:03 But when we're in the booth, we kind of have to switch
05:05 that up and just do the motion.
05:08 We kind of have to get the joints in how you are running.
05:11 You know, when you're talking and running,
05:13 you're in a whole different pace of tone and your breath.
05:17 So we kind of try to focus on getting that element
05:21 of just the breathing, you know, in the booth.
05:24 (fighting sounds)
05:27 We have fun on set, man.
05:31 They give me a lot of leverage.
05:32 They let me know like, hey, this is something
05:34 that you can do, this is something that you can't.
05:35 Essentially, like I said, we have a camera
05:37 attached to our face.
05:38 So if that camera breaks, whole scene is done.
05:41 Cinematic's over.
05:42 So our cinematic days, oh man, those are amazing
05:45 'cause we have nothing but fun eight to five
05:48 in the volume on set.
05:49 We have our crew, we have our cast.
05:52 We're all in our suits, walking around
05:54 looking like complete aliens.
05:55 We have our stunt team on there
05:57 and they make us look amazing too.
05:59 (fighting sounds)
06:02 Any of the crying scenes, oh man.
06:07 Any of the emotional scenes get crazy.
06:09 (crying)
06:12 Is everyone okay?
06:15 We kinda go method and we take our time.
06:17 People give us our space.
06:19 So if I see somebody needs to have that emotional impact,
06:22 I let them, you know, get there.
06:24 I'm typically in the trailer getting my head right,
06:27 going out and giving 100%.
06:28 You could've died.
06:29 When I read that Miles was fighting Venom,
06:36 I was like, damn!
06:38 I know Venom's background.
06:39 We kinda all have Venom in us
06:41 and we all have that inner voice.
06:43 So fighting that inner voice and fighting that being
06:45 was kinda like a fight with yourself.
06:48 Fighting Venom was crazy.
06:51 I think the day we met Tony Todd,
06:53 that day was like surreal 'cause we were like,
06:55 okay, this is actually happening.
06:57 He had on some Jordans and I was like,
06:59 how does he have on Jordans with a mo-cap suit?
07:01 Meeting the OG and meeting the guy behind,
07:05 you know, Venom, man, people are gonna go crazy for this.
07:07 So everyone always tends to ask, do the Miles voice.
07:11 Super stressed about my college essay.
07:14 Pete's busy doing other stuff.
07:16 Really the Miles voice is really just
07:19 a couple of octaves higher and just as a kid.
07:22 Getting into his youthfulness is the number one thing to do.
07:25 So yeah, I'm drinking some teas, man.
07:27 I'm drinking some energy juice.
07:29 I'm making sure I'm eating good in the morning.
07:31 I got a hearty breakfast.
07:32 Kinda just thinking about my 16 year old self
07:36 and where I was at mentally with that
07:37 and just going through the changes of my voice.
07:40 But the dope thing about Miles now
07:42 is he's coming into college.
07:44 So he's a college boy now and he's coming
07:46 into his own as a young man.
07:47 So they're letting my natural voice come into play now.
07:51 Miles sits with his chest out all the time, you know?
07:55 Miles has a little, you know, more stocky appearance.
07:58 It is definitely, definitely, definitely
07:59 a change in body movement.
08:02 You know, Miles has a youthful steeze about him
08:06 that he's growing up with.
08:08 And then being around Pete, you have to know
08:11 how to come into the reality of just
08:13 being a regular human being.
08:15 When it comes to Spider-Man, he's not a boy anymore.
08:18 He's running on walls, he's jumping off walls.
08:20 So he tends to move 10 times different
08:22 when he gets from reality into Spider-Man.
08:25 I wanna say the day I felt like Spider-Man
08:27 was the day we had to say I'm New York's only Spider-Man.
08:30 We had to build a set where, you know,
08:32 it was on the edge of a building.
08:34 So they typically, you know, built up a huge, you know,
08:38 rig of tables and poles and put them together
08:41 and made it like a huge cliff.
08:43 I got up on stage, I'm high up.
08:45 I'm maybe like 10 feet from, you know, the floor.
08:48 That's when we had to have that hero pose,
08:51 stick your chest out and have that idol pose
08:53 and say I'm New York's only Spider-Man.
08:55 [dramatic music]
08:59 I'm New York's only Spider-Man.
09:01 And that was a day I was like, wow, yeah,
09:03 this is really happening.
09:04 Like, people are gonna hear my voice say this.
09:06 They're gonna see my face say this.
09:08 My grandkids and kids, they're gonna, you know,
09:11 know their granddad was Spider-Man.
09:14 Being a Spider-Man is kinda just overcoming your emotions,
09:18 your pain, and the struggles that life brings you
09:22 and becoming your own superhero
09:24 because everyone goes through a typical struggle.
09:26 But once you've overcome that struggle and that pain
09:29 in life, you become a Spider-Man.
09:31 [dramatic music]
09:34 What is it like for me to wear the mask?
09:39 It's like a sense of bringing out that inner God in you.
09:44 Just being that loving person
09:46 and being the do what's right type of guy.
09:49 We all have been through struggles and pains
09:51 and we've all had losses and just emotions
09:54 that we've had to deal with our whole life.
09:56 So when we overcome it, you know,
09:59 I think that's the slip on the mask.
10:01 I've gotten kids coming up to me crying,
10:04 just in full happiness, tears of joy,
10:07 letting me know what they've been through with Miles
10:09 'cause we were in the middle of a crisis in the world
10:13 while we were filming Miles and when Miles dropped.
10:16 So it brought a lot of people through a lot of things
10:19 and I'm just grateful and forever thankful for that, man,
10:21 that I could be that person to do that for them.
10:24 Just having that connection with just being this superhero,
10:26 having that love for the community, you know,
10:28 kind of changes everything.
10:30 Number one thing is that anyone can wear the mask
10:33 and I know that sounds like a cliche,
10:35 but no, it is great power and great responsibility
10:39 once you realize who you are
10:42 and what you have to fight through
10:43 and what the world brings.
10:45 So that's all what Spider-Man is,
10:47 is fighting through your pain,
10:49 fighting through the emotion and overcoming
10:51 and becoming that hero in your family,
10:54 you know, in your school, you know, in your surroundings.
10:57 Find that inner God in you.
10:59 (upbeat music)
11:02 you