The Real Reason Why Cullen will NOT be in Dragon Age

I don't know where to begin except with a big facepalm. It's been nearly two years since this incident, and I'm surprised that none of the Dragon Age content creators have responded or recounted the events.

Disclaimer -

Please do not attack or harass people involved in this video, I want to make it clear that I do not condone that type of behavior. A lot of this is in the past, meaning many fans in the community have already addressed this situation and there isn't any need to usher more harassment on the issue. This is solely to document the events of what happened to the voice actor of Cullen Rutherford and Anders in Dragon Age: Awakening.

Therefore, it is advisable to make your own decisions based on this information, keeping in mind your thoughts on Ellis' recent actions. People are capable to change within a decade, however if there is a person that has had recent problematic opinions and actions, then we are able to determine if an actual change has taken apart in their life or not...

So here we have it, a full-fledged documentary about Greg Ellis, the voice actor for Cullen Rutherford. What became of this actor? And why are Dragon Age fans so dissatisfied with the actor who played a prominent role in the Dragon Age series?

Why Cullen will NOT be in The Next Dragon Age-

Denial

Greg Ellis is not his real name, he actually goes by Jonathan Ashley Rees, he renamed himself to gain legal rights for his acting. When he reached the age of sixteen, he applied to become an adult member of the actors union equity and discovered that there was already an actor named Jonny Rees. Johnathan was born on March 21st, 1968, in Lancashire England.

Greg began his acting career in the 1990s, mostly in live-action roles, and even went on to be an extra for Titanic in 1997. And although his acting was mostly known in film in the beginning, he also worked in animation and video games.

Of course, many people knew him from his roles in Pirates of the Caribbean and Star Trek, which boosted his career and established him as a renowned British actor of his time.

Ellis was also known to be a producer - Greg founded the production company "Monkey Toes" in 2014. When Ellis’ first son was born he nicknamed him Monkey Toes which inspired the production company name. Greg's first project was the Sky television drama "Marked," which he produced, wrote, directed, and starred Kiefer Sutherland and Stephen Fry.

Aside from his professional accomplishments, his personal life and family problems were not excused. Ellis was keeping something from the public that finally came to light in 2015.

Although Greg Ellis’ ex-wife’s name hasn’t been revealed on the internet (unless you really look for it), the couple was said to have been married for nearly 20 years. Married somewhere in the 1990's, this, was the breaking point for Ellis' world.

On March 25th, 2015, Johnathan's wife filed for a divorce in the Los Angeles County Court. Media spurred on the moment of this case, while the wife was not made public with her statement on the separation, Ellis took the ground to show his disappointment with the decision.

Greg, according to reports, has spent the last five years fighting to clear his name after his ex-wife claimed he was violent, drug-stricken, and mentally ill.

Ellis was reported missing from his North Hollywood home on May 11, 2016. The Bioware forums had information about his disappearance and contact information for the LAPD missing person unit.

An article quotes -

"Ellis was last seen on May 12th in a severely manic episode. He has been suffering from Bipolar Disorder and has refused treatment which has led loved ones to believe that his disappearance may be related to a manic episode. Details that have emerged shown that he left his ID, keys, and phone at home with all of the doors open, no social media updates since the 12th, and was officially reported missing when he did not show up to meet his kids." - https://thenerdstash.com/voice-actor-greg-ellis-missing/

4 days later, there was an update from Ellis' friend Jeff Rosenthal who tweeted that the actor has been found safe and is currently at his own home.

There were reports that Ellis had been a cocaine addict for some time and went into rehab in 2016, however, I could not find any sources to back that claim of going into rehab... His use of cocaine was documented in his book called 'The Respondent', he admitted that he was afraid his sons would discover it one day.

Ellis quotes -

it continues on -

'I took the phone from Charlie, [his son] placed it in my pocket. In my other pocket was a wallet. A wallet that I'd used to store the tiny amounts of cocaine that I'd kept in a folded-up piece of white paper. There was no more cocaine in the wallet or the piece of paper, but being the drug novice that I was, I was paranoid about throwing it away anywhere for fear that the children would get hold of it.'

So again, it is undetermined to claim Johnathan got proper care for rehab for his use of drugs, and as much as his own words described he did, there is a bigger sense that he got his refuge in philosophy through the Tomkins Institute.

Anger

The Tomkins Institute, is a non-profit organization that applies the foundational work of an award-winning psychologist called Silvan S. Tomkins. Greg Ellis belonged to this group and was a student there for some years with Ph.D. Gary David, a professor at Bentley University & co-founder of The Tomkins Institute.

According to Ellis' website, '[he] is a student of the dialectical approach to the Phenomenology of Feelings and currently, studies affect theory'. The Tomkins Institute provides resources for those who seek to understand the biological system of innate human effect displayed on the face from infancy through adulthood, and its role in the motivation of feeling, cognition, and action.

You learn and teach others how these biological processes transform into patterns of emotion, perception, and actions that shape us, our relationships, and our world.

Silvan S. Tomkins does have writings about smoking and addictions that were published in the 1960s as articles. Giving answers to how and why addictions occur in the mind. So perhaps Ellis took a liking to his writings and consoled in them. However, that does not make one an expert to teach others in faith & philosophy...

Later that year in 2016, Ellis went off to India to teach at the Ashray Orphanage (a well-known orphanage that even Paris Hilton went to) including other slum-defined schools in Udaipur and Jaipur. Ellis taught phenomenology-based learning to these children and claims it was an unforgettable journey.

Magic City Con -

On June 30th, 2017, Magic City Con, located in Birmingham, Alabama, invited Greg Ellis, the voice actor of Cullen Rutherford to be a VIP guest.

Three Dragon Age fans purchased tickets for this con, eager to attend events that included Greg Ellis'. The two events were a Trivia night and Q&A session, as well as a poetry reading/hangout session.

This post was asked by an anonymous and finally answered which resurfaced the event on Sep 1st, 2020.

Quoted from the Tumblr post -

the fan continues on to say -

Surprising to the fans, many were intrigued, but it didn't stop there -

(the fan began to say they were a survivor of a cult, so it did not sit right with them physically)

In the podcast, he discusses how his parents desired a daughter and how this shaped a significant portion of his emotional life. He also discusses emotional baggage and how it can limit us in our lives, as well as how we must open up and allow ourselves to feel these emotions in order to move forward. He talked briefly about childhood trauma and teased the remainder of the podcast. This went on for at least 15 minutes, and most likely longer.

This was the philosophy of Silvan S. Tomkins pushing onto fans at Magic City Con.

and it did not work out as planned as he would like to think, because these views were not applicable to every individual, only to him personally -

The fan bullet-pointed the speech Ellis gave to the fans in the room,

The fan goes on to say that this was a mixed room, many people were going through their own mental issues and had an already negative weighing stigma behind taking medication at all.

Unfortunately, this affected people in the room deeply, stating -

Weeks passed, and BioWare fans from the Conference attempted to make sense of what had happened via an MCC Bioware Facebook Page. Eventually, some of the Cullenites in that group decided to contact (tweet) Ellis, showing him screencaps of the conversation, and had to express our concern for him, in the end, the only response he had was to vaguely blog about the experience.

This even included a trained counselor who was present at the conference and tagged him on Twitter, claiming that telling people not to take their medications is very dangerous and deadly advice.

Greg Ellis eventually had the counselor blocked on all of his social media accounts.

Bargaining

Let's begin to talk about a parasocial relationship. The definition of this term Parasocial relationship is a one-sided relationship in which one person expends emotional energy, interest, and time while the other party, the persona, is completely unaware of the existence of the other. Celebrities, sports teams, television stars, and content creators are the most common subjects of parasocial relationships, fans can get emotionally intact with these types of people, and even prop them up on a pedestal thinking they can do no wrong.

Of course, video game characters are not excluded, especially when fans can romance that specific character. The issue with this dynamic is that even actors and creators use this dynamic to gain sympathy and or relevance to any related issue.

It's pretty psychologically damaging for fandoms when they form a parasocial relationship because when any of these celebrities do something bad, it affects the fandom as well.

And the Dragon Age fandom is no different, Ellis was already disappointing fans throughout his past tweets on political issues and opinions about America.

Greg Ellis has shown support for Donald Trump, on Jan 5th, 2016 he tweeted about being 'very proud of the @POTUS'.

Again, many fans knew of the problems and opinions Ellis had, and brought it up to him, a lot of times he would not address it but really stand his ground. Fast forward in time, is where things continued to get heated between fans of Cullen and Ellis' tweets.

There were many problematic tweets Ellis had in 2018, for instance, in one tweet he tagged (most of whom were alt-right ppl, meninists, known trump-supporters, and anti-trans & anti-LGBTQIA+ people)

Many fans from Dragon Age replied to this tweet explaining the danger of these people he supports. While Ellis claims these are people who think 'outside' of the box, free-thinkers. Ellis begins to bully his fans calling them a 'trolling SJW who can't separate me from my work'.

Then less than an hour later Ellis tweets -

One fan replied -

Ellis replied -

As expected, much discourse among Dragon Age fans began to grow against Ellis, but this was definitely not the end...

Depression

Ah yes, the traumatic year of 2020, a raging pestilence that kept us inside our homes, fearing for our lives what is next. And the horrific murder of George Floyd, on May 25th, 2020.

Greg Ellis started The Respondent podcast on February 27th, 2020, this was primarily to start up marketing for his new book, which has the same name. Ellis at times, even calls himself the Respondent; from his Twitter handle, his YT channel, and later on, his store.

Greg posted a video titled 'The States of America' on June 2nd, 2020. It's made up of footage from the summer 2020 protests, some of which he shot himself and some of which he got from news sources, and it starts with a photo of a platform spray-painted with the words 'I can't breathe,' which has since been doctored to read 'we can't breathe.'

-Source

In the video, Greg Ellis uses a photo of Devonte Heart hugging Portland Police Sergeant Brett Barnum in 2014. Devonte Hart and his five adopted siblings were murdered by their adoptive parents later in 2018 after the photo was a known fact to be staged. That is an extremely inappropriate photo to be circulating during the protests of 2020 to promote the idea of purported unity.

Greg Ellis then went on to tweet, which is now deleted, using the hashtag #AllLivesMatter towards the event of George Floyd, he mentions the hashtag many times later on in the month of June.

The #AllLivesMatter is, at best, an alt-right dog whistle that refuses to acknowledge that black lives and the lives of other people of color have been so marginalized and undervalued in society as a whole. Instead of accepting responsibility, that statement internalizes and flips the conflict to victimize white people as well.

Of course, many Dragon Age fans were telling Ellis to delete this video and the tweet, as it was very offensive to the black and POC community, and especially to the Black Lives Matter movement.

A fan posted on that same day -

The fan's thread continued on, saying -

Ellis then replied many times, saying -

Another fan chimed in, telling Ellis - (read aloud)

It seemed like Ellis was projecting many times, tweeting about his political opinions, some seemed unfinished, and even random ramblings according to some.

And unfortunately, his tweets did get worse...

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Dutch-American activist, feminist, and former politician of Somali origin. She gained international attention as a critic of Islam and an advocate for Muslim women's rights and self-determination.

Greg Ellis quote retweets Ayaan Hersi Ali's tweet about J.K. Rowling

Ayaan's tweet says -

During this time, Rowling was saying a lot about the trans community, including a tweet about 'People who menstruate,' implying that only women menstruate as a joke in order to ignore the fact that trans people exist.

Ellis quote tweet says -

Acceptance

At this point, Ellis' actions were gaining traction in the DA community; knowing that Cullen Rutherford had appeared in all three games, many assumed he would appear in the fourth. So many fans began to tag BioWare developers for their thoughts on this controversy.

One fan tweeted -

Mark Darrah, Executive Producer for Dragon Age at that time bulked replied to many of these types of posts saying-

'Like you, it's important to us that the people we work with are aligned with our BioWare values. This will be apparent when we're ready to announce which actors will be lending their voices to the game.'

A relief to many fans, A month later, Ellis replied to Mark saying -

While Mark Darrah was still currently working on Dragon Age: Dreadwolf at that time, he did not reply to Ellis' remarks and bashes during the fall of 2020.

Greg Ellis then tweets -

'Don't the loyal #Cullenties [Cullenites- misspelled] & @dragonage fans have a right to know? Don't u have a responsibility to them?'

On BioWare's website, you can see BioWare's values clearly, it states -

Creating worlds

of adventure, conflict, and companionship

that inspire you to become the hero of your story.

Showing bullet points of

• Humility & Integrity

• Courageous Creativity

• Passion for Excellence

• Amazing Storytelling

• Achieving as a Team

And for Ellis, his values were not aligning with BioWare.

At this point, Ellis had another podcast called 'The Voices in My Head', talking to many people in the acting industry, political beliefs, and the society quote 'problems' we face.

He was also interviewed for an article titled 'Modern Male Experience', to which Ellis quoted

"Little Boys play with different toys than girls. They fight with clenched fists not sharp fingernails. When boys run to climb a tree and play, their mothers have a concern about the possible dangers involved. Whereas dad sees it as a necessary adventure of boyhood learning.

How the matriarch and patriarch negotiate these differences of opinion is vital."

Revenge

On December 3rd, 2020, Mark Darrah resigned his position as Executive Producer for the next upcoming game Dragon Age: Dreadwolf, of course, it was just assumed to be called Dragon Age 4 then.

Mark tweets about his leaving -

Ellis replies by saying -

Of course, Ellis tweets about celebrating Mark's leaving of BioWare, telling people how Mark hid behind a corporate veil to support bigots who defame their employees.

Then, 3 minutes later, as if Ellis' tweets weren't enough, says

Ellis continues to suspect that Mark was 'forced' out of BioWare, due to his behavior or whatever, Mark's post on the BioWare blog states:

This has been a very difficult decision for me. The team of amazing developers on Dragon Age, make my life fuller and better. They have taught me so much. But the strength of the team is also what makes this possible. I know that Dragon Age won’t just survive without me, it will thrive.

Of course, Ellis, assumes Mark's leaving had to do with Ellis' behavior with fans, and somehow 'pandering to bigots'...

Ellis states that Darrah did not respond to his questions 3 months ago publicly and privately.

Naturally, December 4th is known to be #DragonAgeDay, so while the sad news of Mark and Casey leaving, Ellis' tweets did not help on such a day to celebrate Dragon Age.

That is when Mark decided to finally reply to Greg Ellis once and for all, it starts by saying -

continued-

Many current BioWare developers retweeted and liked Mark's response, indicating that they, too, agreed with Mark's sentiment. To conclude on his tweet -

Ellis will not be hired for the next Dragon Age game, and many others in the future...

The 'Video'

Let's talk about the video, Greg Ellis posts a live pre-recorded video about the Dragon Age fandom on Dragon Age Day, December 4th.

The video is 37 minutes and 55 seconds long. It consists of Ellis voice acting Cullen while speaking about Ellis in 3rd person. Using a character from a game he was hired to do. Manipulating the parasocial relationship, now Ellis' was contributing to it maliciously...

The beginning of the video states -

Dear Cullenites,

Recently, a small, vocal mob of social justice warriors attempted to have me, and my voice actor Greg Ellis tossed into the cancel culture wastelands. An ignorant few bigots made wild aspersions, outlandish misrepresentations, and slanderous, vulgar claims of transphobia and racism, and shared them loudly with a few impressionable more. This is my response to the mob's inquisition of me, and my voice actor, Greg Ellis, and how we attempted to understand the resultant blight it spread across the fandom.

Throughout the video, Ellis shamelessly promotes his Respondent's website. And explains 'how and why' he was canceled. He dubbed those who responded Corporate Wokeism. Ellis claims to have spent over a decade working on Dragon Age. Continuing to use Cullen's character to explain the situation, Ellis declares that this is a cancellation of Cullen Rutherford...

Greg and Cullen were summarily lumped together and generalized due in part to the coincidence of skin pigmentation. The racist trolls came out of the woodwork to cancel Cullen... once and for all.

- Ellis from video

Cullen Rutherford appears in a variety of roles throughout the Dragon Age franchise. Cullen appears in all three games, and while his character arc is heavily focused on Inquisition, there are mixed feelings about him in the fandom, which is understandable given that this is a choice and consequence game. Many fans will have different world-states for Cullen, just as they do for Solas or Vivienne.

Cullen's story, as we know throughout the games, is all about growing into a better person after an upbringing that taught him to despise mages, or what we call a centrist viewpoint. Most fans will agree that his arc in Trespasser was completed and full of redemption.

In the video, Ellis quotes Cullen Rutherford's bio from the Dragon Age wiki, which was still another example of how disconnected Ellis was from his fans, he barely remembers the character he acted on for 10 years...

One fan replied to Mark about Ellis' using Cullen for his benefit, stating -

Mark replied, saying - (read aloud)

The video then went private on Greg Ellis' channel...

Conclusion -

Presently, Greg Ellis has been interviewed many times with DarkHorse Podcast and Jordan b Peterson.

His YouTube and Twitter are mostly about the Amber Heard case, and even before this case got mainstream, he supported Johnny Depp from the start. But some still question Ellis only talks about Johnny's case to stay relevant in the acting industry.

I believe this is what the fandom wanted to say to Ellis, Ellis once you publish these types of views, you jeopardize your brand and, as a result, your job. Maybe he knew this was his way out and decided the risk was worth it, but it appears to be an unintelligent decision because it could jeopardize his future prospects in the video game industry.

Is it acceptable to hire someone based on their religious beliefs? No. But that is an idealistic point of view. The reality is frequently in sharp contrast. People hire those who follow their values, and Ellis definitely does not value the same ideals as Bioware.

I want to be transparent that the voice actor for Cullen is NOT Cullen; you can still romance him and be disappointed in a voice actor. But if we separate them from their roles, we can be in a better position, and I understand the struggle to separate the two.

But fans should never have the right to gatekeep who someone likes due to the voice actors' dangerous actions that took place in the fandom.

I want to add that there is an underlying issue that Ellis faces, and it stems from losing his family. I won't go into detail, but only use the sources provided:

According to 2020 studies, the family court favors fathers in contrast to mothers, which is due in part to the fact that very few fathers seek custody during divorce.

I will admit that Ellis appears to feel personally attacked by these movements of Metoo and feminism, that he feels unheard by them, and that he seems to desire an apology for that.

The MeToo movement was not intended to be limited to women; men need to feel heard and seen as well. However, as in many movements, there will be people who are the wrong voices in these organizations, and I wish those people whose voices were raised weren't always the loudest.

I agree that the legal system has it's flaws; my family personally dealt with the custody of my own sister for years. It is a system that likely relies on exploiting horrific situations, such as a father losing their child in divorce...

But the way Ellis goes about it does not have to require tearing down women while elevating men in any context. Pushing women down on issues such as sexual assault, divorce, and child support in order to elevate men does not benefit anyone, especially victims of any gender.

According to his book, Ellis seems to really not explain the family law thoroughly, but rather just quotes them drop blank, and moves on to the next. There's a lot of resentment pinning on women who speak out about men's abuse and mistreatment of them.

His reviews on Amazon for Ellis' book summarize it well -

Thank you for taking the time to read, and would appreciate it if you would reblog/share this for more BioWare fans to know about this situation.

- Saria