The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’s Navi actor reprises her role after 28 years, but it was a total accident due to Nintendo’s blind auditions

Nintendo has unintentionally cast the same actor to voice a character in the new Switch 2 remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time as in the 1998 Nintendo 64 game. The discovery came about through blind auditions intended to preserve the original characters’ familiar sounds while giving the remake fully voiced cutscenes.

Nintendo’s director HokWai Ng said the team wanted to avoid changing iconic lines such as Navi’s “Listen!”, and series director Eiji Aonuma said actors were chosen for how closely their voices matched the originals. Nintendo did not name the returning actor or character, but leaked credits confirm that Japanese actor Kaori Mizuhashi, who voiced Navi, is back nearly 28 years later.