How 'Call of Duty' Found 'Modern Warfare 4' Cast, From Villain Mads Mikkelsen to Ri Jo Young Prisca Kim

Aside from bringing back Captain John Price and Ghost, Infinity Ward story director Jeff Negas only had a rough idea of what he was looking for when he decided to pick up Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 for Xbox. "I think our process is pretty unique in that way. I know some games do that […]

"I think our process is pretty unique in that way," Negas told Variety. "I know some games do it that way, but we often start with a character design rather than anything too specific." "We'll have maybe more concept art in terms of how we style them. But as far as the specific person goes, we do a one-to-one simulation using our recording process, and often the persona we get to play the character is heavily influenced by the acting. It's very, very similar to the movies. Sometimes they find more or less exactly what that person is looking for, and we get exactly that." We find what the person is looking for. RELATED STORIES Hillary Clinton co-hosts James Murdoch's Vox Media podcast on the 2026 midterm elections with Cara Swisher.

With the launch of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in 2007, the Modern Warfare storyline marked the first CoD game to break away from the original World War II franchise. Infinity Ward's Modern Warfare games take place primarily in the Middle East and follow the story of Captain John Price (voiced by Barry Sloan) and Task Force 141's mission to defeat terrorist Vladimir Makarov. The story will continue with the fall release of Modern Warfare 4, which will feature a war between North and South Korea. Popular in Variety

Cast by Negas and his team at the Activision-owned studio, Modern Warfare 4's cast is a broad mix of CoD vets and several newcomers to the franchise: Sloan as Captain John Price, Mads Mikkelsen as Archer (pictured above), Samuel Rokin as Simon "Ghost Garry," Kyle Garry as Simon "Allow Knight" Mazzino as Private Park/Jon Park, Luke Tenney as Lt. West, Warren Cole as Commander Philip Graves, Ria Kielstedt as Kate Laswell, Maria Eliza Camargo as Valeria Garza, Kaiji Tang as Zhiqiang "Zimo" Wong, Daniel J. Kim as Cullen Joseph Ma, Daniel J. Lee Kim as Calton Joseph Ma. Corporal Joseph Dan and Prisca Kim as Ri Joo-young.

A veteran of Naughty Dog's "Uncharted" and "The Last of Us" PlayStation studios with a background in live-action film and television, Negas has been working with Infinity Ward for more than a decade. Since 2022, he has been working as a story director in the Xbox "Modern Warfare" franchise and has been in charge of the second and third games.

"A long time ago, when we were casting Samuel for Ghost and trying to find that right character, his voice is so low," Negas recalls of Rokin's casting as the iconic masked character Ghost. "It's something that I think with a different person or a different way of playing it, it might not feel as much. But he kind of walks that line between those two things."

When Negas and the Infinity Ward team were shaping the main storyline of Modern Warfare 4, when an actor was found who had "extra features that we didn't know we wanted, they rewrote parts of the character."

"When Prikka came in, the actor who plays Ri Joo-young, who plays the North Korean regime, there was a way that she played it that I think wasn't necessarily what we were expecting," Negas says. "I think in the beginning we were thinking about bigger gestures and things like that, and he played it so small and focused, that it really became more of a quiet power than something that needed to be much bigger and more expansive."

The process also required a balance between finding the right fit for a part and avoiding typecasting, such as when Mikkelsen, an actor known for playing great villains, was cast as the game's main villain.

"It's a delicate balance with someone like Mads Mikkelsen because, as you say, she's very recognizable in that way. But that's what we were looking for in the character." "Price wants to kill him and he's willing to go to great lengths to do that, and I think we needed something that the audience could identify with, the wider audience could identify with as quickly as possible," Negas says. But at the same time, he is a killer actor. We also knew he wasn't bringing exactly what he's done in other roles so we could shape it together and maybe find a new way to do it. Discover that common thing that people have seen before. So what it came down to was that he was the right person for the role."

While Xbox, Activision and Infinity Ward to release Modern Warfare 4 on October 23rd (early access begins October 16th), Taylor Sheridan and director Peter Berg are prepping their Call of Duty for Paramount Pictures. The film is set to take place in the "Modern Warfare" world, but Negas says he's not sure if that means there will be a crossover between the "Modern Warfare 4" voice actors and the film's cast.

"That's a great question," says Negas. "Unfortunately, to answer that question, I'm removed from the whole 'Call of Duty' thing. But I think the simplest answer is that whenever we cast, we try to find the person who can best play the role and have a symbiosis of who that person is and who they are, so it's a very simple calculation for us."

Above: Mads Mikkelsen as Archer in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4