Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 interview: Frank Woods and Russell Adler’s actors detail their best scene

Here’s why you don’t want to sleep on this year’s CoD campaign

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 / Activision

In Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Frank Woods and Russell Adler are back. To discover more about the latest chapter in both characters’ incredible journeys, we spoke to their performance actors, Bruce Thomas and Damon Allen.

At the start of the campaign, we find Woods and Adler down but not out. The former, a Vietnam veteran who debuted in 2010’s Call of Duty: Black Ops, is now paralyzed and bound to a wheelchair. The latter, who first featured in 2020’s Call of Duty: Cold War, is being relentlessly hunted by the CIA. Together, they must break up a clandestine force called the Pantheon that plans to deploy an apocalyptic weapon.

Bruce Thomas (L) and Damon Allen / Activision

The relationship between them forms a huge part of Black Ops 6’s narrative. “It’s the human connections,” says Thomas, who has previously provided performance capture for Master Chief in Halo 4, Halo 5: Guardians, and Halo Infinite.

“For example, as simple as when Adler pulls out a pack of cigarettes and remembers his buddy and lights him a cigarette, he’s in the wheelchair. Just that added love that he has for his fellow soldier. Those kinds of things are the most memorable part.”

That moment wasn’t in the script. Instead, developer Treyarch allowed its cast a little slack on the leash. “We tend to do that,” says Thomas, looking at his co-star. “We’ll play around during rehearsal, find moments, and then they’ll either kick it out or keep it, and it seemed like something that you and I would have created.”

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 / Activision

The stars were allowed to go further in another mode: Zombies. Where the campaign more or less followed a tight script, Treyarch’s undead survival mode is much looser.

“There’s more improvising when we’re doing lines in the VO booth, especially for Zombies,” says Allen. “So there are a lot of times we get to come up with things off the cuff and improvise. There’s a lot of time for that, with colorful humor, colorful language.” If a particular line isn’t quite hitting, Allen will throw in a f-bomb and miraculously make it work. 

Read more: Activision introduces Call of Duty Black Ops 6 Zombies’ Terminus team

Despite their contentious exchanges in the game, the two are friends outside it, regularly meeting on the golf course for a few rounds. That explains the pair’s undeniable chemistry.

There were tough times on set, too, though. For Allen, it’s the day he met Dave Krause and Omar Milan, two former soldiers who lost limbs from explosives. They provided vital context for Woods’ condition in Black Ops 6.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 / Activision

“We built an obstacle course for me to get used to navigating rooms in a wheelchair, going up a curb and down a curb, and getting upstairs where you have to physically lift yourself out of the wheelchair and pick yourself up stair by stair and drag the wheelchair with you.”

Despite appearing in multiple Call of Duty games, the pair continue to be amazed by the scale of the production. “When you see the product come out at release time,” says Thomas, “now you start to see all the money that’s been put into it and the weight behind the machinery that drives this brand, this thing. Unrelenting.”

Read more: Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 – preload and release times

Call of Duty’s multiplayer might be the most popular mode, but don’t sleep on the story. From building up the chemistry between its two wildly charismatic legacy characters to grounding their stories by consulting real-life war heroes, it’s clear Treyarch is committed to making the campaign better than ever.