A few weeks ago, a viral video went around when Aerith’s actress from Final Fantasy 7 Remake posted her reaction to seeing her character in the game for the first time. That was Briana White, actress and content creator, who shared this wholesome and inspiring moment with her existing fans as well as the gaming community around the world. And like many other creators around the world, she is streaming her first full playthrough of the game to her many fans.
While Briana White’s content creation career skyrocketed as a fantastic byproduct of Final Fantasy 7 Remake’s immense popularity, she’s been doing content creation for a lot longer than that. Not only that, she’s seen great success in her primary career as an actress long before she took on the role of Aerith.
Her First Video Game Role
Long before her role as Aerith, Briana White’s career began like any other budding actress. She made the move to L.A., worked her side job as a waitress while she get more roles in films and television. White was the leading actress in the independent film Occupants, as well as lead role in short film Summer in the Waters. White also had a supporting role in Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, but her part was cut from the theatrical release of the film. From there, she also had a supporting role in television with an episode of Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders, as well as starred in various commercials for high tier brands.
What’s unique about White is that she had never acted or lent her voice for a video game prior to Final Fantasy 7 Remake. As was the case with a majority of the cast in Final Fantasy 7 Remake, many of the voices for the iconic characters were brand new to the roles and the series. Featuring veteran voice actors such as Erica Lindbeck and Max Mittleman, White was in good company for Final Fantasy 7 Remake. And even though both Aerith and Cloud’s actors had not acted for video games previously, White specifically had an even stronger connection to the character like many other fans did.
Explosion of Community Support
Along with her primary acting career, Briana White has focused a lot on her career as a gaming content creator. Her channel, Strange Rebel Gaming, amassed a great following on both YouTube and Twitch even before her championing the iconic role. White was well on her way to 100,000 subscribers on YouTube prior to her announcement last year of booking the Aerith role. Since then, Strange Rebel Gaming’s YouTube channel has amassed an even greater following of around 147,000 subscribers. While her main content varied between all sorts of games, her most recent content has surrounded Final Fantasy 7 in general, like a playthrough of the original game alongside some of Remake’s new voice cast.
In particular, the Strange Rebel Gaming Twitch channel has seen massive growth ever since her reaction went viral. White’s Twitch channel, which hovered just under 200 subscribers prior to the reaction, recently climbed to a massive sub count of almost 5,000 subscribers (as of April 29). Since the game came out, she’s been doing a blind playthrough of Final Fantasy 7 Remake, from which her viral reaction came from as well as the reaction above. Fans from all over have contributed to an outpouring of support for her channel ever since that clip, and have continued to tune in as she completes the game.
An amazing feat indeed, considering her first outing as Aerith’s actress has been met with so much praise. In her 2019 reveal video on YouTube, White expressed how so many devoted fans of the game had reached out to her about the impact Aerith had on their lives. Even as Remake has come out to massive success and settled with fans and players around the world, she’s received overwhelming support for her work in Final Fantasy 7 Remake. For those who are curious, White’s still continuing her run through Final Fantasy 7 Remake on Twitch at twitch.tv/thestrangerebel. Hopefully fans will get to see even more wholesome moments as the Remake marches on to the next episode, whenever that may be.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake is out now for PS4.
