San Andreas voice cast and the actors behind each character

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004) put Samuel L. Jackson, James Woods, Peter Fonda and Ice-T in the same recording booth as a then-unknown South Central rapper named Young Maylay. This is the full cast file: who voiced CJ, Big Smoke, Tenpenny, the girlfriends, the radio DJs and the bit players, plus what each actor did before and after Los Santos.

The short answer

Carl Johnson is voiced by Young Maylay, a Los Angeles rapper who had never acted before. His brother Sweet is comedian Faizon Love, Big Smoke is character actor Clifton Powell, and Ryder is Compton rapper MC Eiht. Sergeant Frank Tenpenny is Samuel L. Jackson, flanked by Chris Penn as Pulaski and Armando Riesco as Hernandez.

Beyond the Grove Street core, the headline names are James Woods (Mike Toreno), Peter Fonda (The Truth), Ice-T (Madd Dogg), Charlie Murphy (Jizzy B.), David Cross (Zero), William Fichtner (Ken Rosenberg), Danny Dyer (Kent Paul), Shaun Ryder (Maccer) and Frank Vincent (Salvatore Leone). The radio dial adds Chuck D, George Clinton, Axl Rose and Michael Bivins as DJs.

Everything below applies to every version of the game. Rockstar has never re-recorded a line, so the voice you hear in the Definitive Edition on a PS5 is the same take captured in 2003 and 2004.

How Rockstar built the cast

The approach was deliberate. Rockstar North had already proven with Vice City that film actors (Ray Liotta, Burt Reynolds, Dennis Hopper) could carry a GTA story. For San Andreas, set in a fictional 1992 Los Angeles, the studio wanted the Hollywood weight plus people who had actually lived the era the game was parodying.

That second half of the equation came largely through DJ Pooh. Mark Jordan, better known as DJ Pooh, was an established West Coast producer who had worked with Ice Cube and co-written the 1995 film Friday. He also directed The Wash in 2001 with Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre. Rockstar brought him on as a co-writer alongside Dan Houser and James Worrall, and his contacts reshaped the casting.

Young Maylay is the clearest example. Christopher Bellard was a working rapper from South Central with no screen credits. DJ Pooh put him in front of Rockstar, and the studio cast an unknown as the lead of what would become the best-selling PlayStation 2 game ever made. Take-Two’s own figures put lifetime sales at more than 27.5 million copies by 2011.

The rest of the Los Santos cast follows the same pattern. MC Eiht, Yo-Yo, Kid Frost, The Game, Ice-T and radio host Big Boy are all real figures from LA hip-hop and radio. The film actors (Jackson, Woods, Fonda, Penn) handled the authority figures and the conspiracy plot. It is a casting split that mirrors the game’s own tension between the streets and the people who control them.

Grove Street Families: the Johnson family and the core crew

Character	Actor	Known for	First mission
Carl “CJ” Johnson	Young Maylay	Rapper, San Andreas was his acting debut	In the Beginning
Sean “Sweet” Johnson	Faizon Love	Friday, The Replacements, Elf	Sweet & Kendl
Kendl Johnson	Yo-Yo	Rapper, Boyz n the Hood	Sweet & Kendl
Melvin “Big Smoke” Harris	Clifton Powell	Menace II Society, Next Friday, Ray	Big Smoke
Lance “Ryder” Wilson	MC Eiht	Compton’s Most Wanted, Menace II Society	Ryder

Young Maylay as Carl “CJ” Johnson

Maylay’s performance is the reason CJ reads as a person rather than a mouthpiece. He under-plays the big moments, lets the humor come out dry, and sounds genuinely tired during the long middle act when CJ is exiled to the countryside. That restraint was not an accident. Rockstar wanted a protagonist who could be likeable without being soft, and a rapper who had grown up in the actual neighborhoods being fictionalized gave them that for free.

He never returned to the series in a voice role, which still surprises players who assume CJ shows up in GTA V. He did release a 2005 album titled San Andreas: The Original Mixtape and has continued recording since. The lines “Ah shit, here we go again” and “Grove Street. Home. At least it was before I fucked everything up” are his, and they remain two of the most quoted pieces of dialogue in gaming.

Faizon Love as Sweet

Faizon Love was already a recognizable face from Friday, where he played Big Worm, and from The Replacements in 2000. He recorded Sweet the year before Elf came out, so his GTA role landed just as his film profile peaked. Sweet is the moral center of the Grove Street Families, the brother who refuses to leave the hood or touch drug money, and Love plays him with an edge of resentment that makes the reunion in “The Green Sabre” sting.

Yo-Yo as Kendl Johnson

Yolanda Whitaker rapped as Yo-Yo on Ice Cube’s AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted and broke out with “You Can’t Play with My Yo-Yo” in 1991. She had a small part in Boyz n the Hood the same year. Kendl is the character who pushes CJ toward legitimate business in San Fierro and keeps Cesar in line, and Yo-Yo delivers her as the sharpest voice in the Johnson family.

Clifton Powell as Big Smoke

Powell is the veteran of the Los Santos cast. By 2004 Powell had played Chauncey in Menace II Society, Pinky in Next Friday and Friday After Next, and Jeff Brown in Ray, which released the same week as San Andreas. Big Smoke’s betrayal only works because Powell makes him warm and funny in the opening hours. The “Drive-Thru” order (two number 9s, a number 9 large, a number 6 with extra dip, a number 7, two number 45s, one with cheese, and a large soda) became a meme almost 15 years later, and the delivery is entirely his.

MC Eiht as Ryder

Aaron Tyler, performing as MC Eiht, fronted Compton’s Most Wanted and played A-Wax in Menace II Society. His catchphrase “geah” ended up in the game. Ryder’s constant insults toward CJ (“busta”) and his water-and-dirt haircut jokes come from a rapper who had been talking that way on records since 1990. Ryder dies in “Pier 69” after switching sides with Big Smoke.

C.R.A.S.H.: the cops

Character	Actor	Known for	Fate
Sergeant Frank Tenpenny	Samuel L. Jackson	Pulp Fiction, Star Wars prequels	Dies in the fire truck crash in “End of the Line”
Officer Eddie Pulaski	Chris Penn	Reservoir Dogs, Footloose, Rush Hour	Killed by CJ in “High Noon”
Officer Jimmy Hernandez	Armando Riesco	Stage and TV actor	Shot by Pulaski in “High Noon”

Samuel L. Jackson as Sergeant Frank Tenpenny

Jackson was fresh off the Star Wars prequels and had Kill Bill: Vol. 2 in cinemas the year San Andreas shipped. Tenpenny is a corrupt Los Santos cop who frames CJ for a murder in the first five minutes and spends the rest of the game using him as a disposable asset. The character is a composite of the Rampart-era LAPD scandals and the officers at the center of the Rodney King case, and Jackson plays him as someone who genuinely believes he is keeping the city from burning.

The performance picked up Spike TV’s Video Game Award for Best Performance by a Human – Male at the 2004 ceremony. His scenes with Pulaski are among the few in the game recorded as a true two-hander, and you can hear the difference.

Chris Penn as Officer Eddie Pulaski

Chris Penn, Sean Penn’s younger brother, was Nice Guy Eddie in Reservoir Dogs and had a long run of supporting roles including Footloose, True Romance and Rush Hour. Pulaski is Tenpenny’s attack dog, more openly racist and more openly stupid, and Penn plays the final confrontation in “High Noon” for pathetic comedy rather than menace. He died in January 2006 at 40, less than two years after the game released.

Armando Riesco as Officer Jimmy Hernandez

Hernandez is the junior officer with a conscience, and Riesco gives him a nervous decency that makes his death at Pulaski’s hands land. Riesco is primarily a New York stage actor, and Rockstar’s New York recording setup pulled in a number of theater performers for the mid-tier roles.

Los Santos supporting cast

Character	Actor	Background	Key missions
Cesar Vialpando	Clifton Collins Jr.	Traffic, Capote, Westworld	Cesar Vialpando, Farewell My Love, Los Desperados
Catalina	Cynthia Farrell	Also voiced Catalina in GTA III	First Date, Tanker Commander, Small Town Bank
OG Loc (Jeffrey Cross)	Jonathan “Jas” Anderson	Actor and musician	OG Loc, Life’s a Beach, Madd Dogg’s Rhymes
Madd Dogg	Ice-T	Rapper, Law & Order: SVU	Madd Dogg, A Home in the Hills, Cut Throat Business
B Dup	The Game	Rapper, pre-fame	Beat Down on B Dup
Big Bear	Big Boy	Power 106 radio host	Beat Down on B Dup
Emmet	Eugene Jeter Jr.	Actor	Nines and AK’s
Denise Robinson	Heather Alicia Simms	Stage actress	Burning Desire

Clifton Collins Jr. as Cesar Vialpando

Collins was a known quantity from Traffic and would go on to play Perry Smith in Capote a year after San Andreas, then Lawrence in HBO’s Westworld. Cesar is the Varrios Los Aztecas leader who dates Kendl and becomes CJ’s most reliable ally. Collins voices him without the cartoon accent you might expect, and Cesar ends up the only major male character who never betrays Carl.

Cynthia Farrell as Catalina

Farrell is the connecting thread between San Andreas and GTA III. She voiced Catalina in both games, which is why the character’s voice sounds identical whether she is robbing a liquor store in Dillimore or shooting Claude in Liberty City nine years later in the timeline. Her four robbery missions in the Badlands are the game’s most unhinged stretch of dialogue.

Ice-T as Madd Dogg

Ice-T had been on Law & Order: SVU for four seasons by the time he recorded Madd Dogg, and he had the credibility to play a West Coast rap superstar because he essentially was one. The character arc, from robbed and discarded celebrity to suicidal gambler to comeback, gives Ice-T more range than most cameo roles get. “Madd Dogg’s Rhymes” has you stealing his rhyme book for OG Loc; “Madd Dogg” has you talking him off a Las Venturas casino ledge.

Jas Anderson as OG Loc

Jeffrey Cross wants to be a gangster rapper and has no talent, so he builds a career on Madd Dogg’s stolen lyrics and a fake prison record. Jonathan Anderson, credited as Jas Anderson, plays him so convincingly as a fraud that the character is almost painful to listen to, which is the point. The OG Loc track “I’m Gonna Get Mine” exists in the game as proof.

The Game as B Dup

Jayceon Taylor recorded B Dup before his debut album The Documentary hit number one in January 2005. In October 2004, when the game shipped, he was a Compton rapper with a mixtape following and a 50 Cent co-sign. B Dup is a former Grove Street member turned Ballas-affiliated dealer, and the voice work is brief but recognizable once you know.

Big Boy as Big Bear

Big Boy hosted the morning show on Power 106 in Los Angeles from 1997 and moved to Real 92.3 in 2015. His character, Barry “Big Bear” Thorne, is B Dup’s addicted servant who CJ helps clean up. It is one of several roles filled by LA radio personalities, which fits a game whose soundtrack was itself a tribute to early 90s LA radio.

Heather Alicia Simms as Denise Robinson

Denise is CJ’s first girlfriend, rescued from a burning Vagos crack house in “Burning Desire.” Simms is a New York stage actress, and her Denise is more grounded than the other five girlfriends, most of whom are written as broad comedy.

San Fierro and the countryside

Character	Actor	Known for	Where you meet them
The Truth	Peter Fonda	Easy Rider, Ulee’s Gold	Leafy Hollow, “Body Harvest”
Wu Zi Mu (Woozie)	James Yaegashi	Broadway and TV actor	Badlands races, “Wu Zi Mu”
Zero	David Cross	Mr. Show, Arrested Development	Zero’s RC Shop, “Wear Flowers in Your Hair”
Jizzy B.	Charlie Murphy	Chappelle’s Show	Pleasure Domes, “Jizzy”
T-Bone Mendez	Kid Frost	Rapper, “La Raza”	“T-Bone Mendez”
Mike Toreno	James Woods	Casino, Hercules (Hades)	“Mike Toreno”, unmasked in “Monster”
Jethro	John Zurhellen	Rockstar Games staff	“Wear Flowers in Your Hair”
Dwaine	Navid Khonsari	Rockstar Games cinematic director	“Wear Flowers in Your Hair”
Su Xi Mu (Suzie)	Richard Chang	Actor	Woozie’s betting shop
Ran Fa Li	Hunter Platin	Rockstar Games staff	“Ran Fa Li”

Peter Fonda as The Truth

Casting the star of Easy Rider as a paranoid aging hippie who grows weed in Leafy Hollow and lectures CJ about Area 69 is the single most on-the-nose piece of casting in the series. Fonda, who had been Oscar-nominated for Ulee’s Gold in 1997, plays it completely straight. The Truth connects CJ to Zero, Jethro and Dwaine in San Fierro, and later drags him into the “Black Project” and “Green Goo” jetpack missions. Fonda died in August 2019 at 79.

James Yaegashi as Wu Zi Mu

Woozie is blind, runs the Mountain Cloud Boys Triad and the Four Dragons Casino, and insists he is simply lucky. Yaegashi, a stage actor with Broadway credits, makes him the most charming figure in the game. Rockstar wrote the character to invert every Triad stereotype in the earlier GTA titles, and the performance carries the Las Venturas heist arc from “Architectural Espionage” through “Breaking the Bank at Caligula’s.”

David Cross as Zero

Cross had just started playing Tobias Fünke on Arrested Development when he recorded Zero. His RC shop owner is a neurotic engineer locked in a feud with a rival named Berkley, and his three missions (“Air Raid,” “Supply Lines…” and “New Model Army”) are the most notoriously difficult in the game. “Supply Lines…” in particular, with its fuel-limited RC Baron on the PS2 original, is the reason a generation of players learned where the mission skip option was not.

Charlie Murphy as Jizzy B.

Charlie Murphy was in the middle of his Chappelle’s Show run, where his Rick James and Prince stories had made him a star in his own right. Jizzy is a San Fierro pimp who runs the Pleasure Domes club under the Gant Bridge, and Murphy plays him with the exact cadence of his stand-up. CJ kills Jizzy in “Ice Cold Killa.” Murphy died in April 2017 at 57.

Kid Frost as T-Bone Mendez

Arturo Molina Jr., known as Kid Frost, is credited as a founder of Chicano rap thanks to “La Raza” in 1990. T-Bone is the San Fierro Rifa leader working with Jizzy and Toreno. The character gets limited screen time but anchors the “Pier 69” shootout alongside Ryder.

James Woods as Mike Toreno

Toreno introduces himself as a drug dealer and is revealed in “Monster” to be a government agent running off-the-books operations from a ranch in Tierra Robada. Woods, two years removed from playing Hades in Disney’s Hercules and already a two-time Oscar nominee, is the only actor in the cast who sounds like he is enjoying every single line. Toreno’s rants about Latin American coups and the end of the Cold War are the closest the game gets to overt political satire, and Woods makes them funny.

Rockstar staff in the booth

Jethro and Dwaine, the two mechanics CJ recruits for the Doherty garage, are voiced by John Zurhellen and Navid Khonsari, both Rockstar employees at the time. The pair had already appeared as background characters in Vice City. Khonsari was Rockstar’s cinematic director on the game and later co-founded iNK Stories. Hunter Platin, another staffer, voices Ran Fa Li, the Triad boss who communicates only in grunts. Richard Chang handles Woozie’s assistant Su Xi Mu.

Las Venturas and the Vice City returnees

Character	Actor	Known for	Previous GTA appearance
Salvatore Leone	Frank Vincent	Goodfellas, Casino, The Sopranos	GTA III (2001)
Ken Rosenberg	William Fichtner	Heat, Armageddon, Prison Break	Vice City (2002)
Kent Paul	Danny Dyer	Human Traffic, EastEnders	Vice City (2002)
Maccer	Shaun Ryder	Happy Mondays frontman	None
Johnny Sindacco	Casey Siemaszko	Stand by Me, Young Guns	None
Millie Perkins	Orfeh	Broadway (Legally Blonde)	None

Frank Vincent as Salvatore Leone

Vincent is the actor Joe Pesci beats to death in Goodfellas (Billy Batts) and the man Pesci’s character works for in Casino. He voiced Salvatore in GTA III and returned for San Andreas, where the Leone don is the muscle behind Caligula’s Palace. Rockstar used him again in Liberty City Stories in 2005. Vincent later played Phil Leotardo on The Sopranos. He died in September 2017 at 80.

William Fichtner as Ken Rosenberg

Fichtner carries Rosenberg over from Vice City, where the cocaine-addled lawyer worked for Tommy Vercetti. In 1992 he is fresh out of rehab and managing Caligula’s for the Leones, and Fichtner plays the panic attacks beautifully. His missions “Intensive Care,” “Fender Ketchup” and “The Meat Business” are a tour of a man coming apart. Fichtner went on to Prison Break and a brief but memorable turn as the bank manager in The Dark Knight.

Danny Dyer as Kent Paul

Kent Paul is a Cockney music manager who also returns from Vice City. Danny Dyer had just made The Football Factory and would become a household name in Britain as Mick Carter on EastEnders from 2013. His scenes with Maccer and Rosenberg in “Don Peyote” are essentially a three-man British comedy sketch dropped into a game about Los Angeles gang warfare.

Shaun Ryder as Maccer

Maccer is a Manchester musician with an uncontrollable habit, and he is voiced by Shaun Ryder of Happy Mondays, which means the character is roughly a self-parody. Ryder had no prior acting credits. The Maccer and Kent Paul storyline is Rockstar’s affectionate send-up of the Madchester scene and its reputation for excess.

Casey Siemaszko as Johnny Sindacco

Siemaszko was Billy Tessio in Stand by Me, Charley Bowdre in Young Guns and 3-D in Back to the Future. Johnny Sindacco runs Caligula’s for the Sindacco family and has a heart attack after CJ kidnaps him in a meat truck. The character later dies in “Intensive Care.” A solid Hollywood supporting actor in a role most players barely register.

Orfeh as Millie Perkins

Millie is the Caligula’s croupier CJ dates to steal her key card for the casino heist. Orfeh is a Broadway performer who later earned a Tony nomination for playing Paulette in Legally Blonde: The Musical in 2007. Her mission “Key to Her Heart” is the one that drags you into the gimp suit.

The six girlfriends

Girlfriend	Actor	Where she lives	Unlock condition
Denise Robinson	Heather Alicia Simms	Ganton, Los Santos	Complete “Burning Desire”
Millie Perkins	Orfeh	Prickle Pine, Las Venturas	Complete “Key to Her Heart”
Katie Zhan	China Chow	Avispa Country Club, San Fierro	High sex appeal, found at the golf course
Michelle Cannes	Vanessa Aspillaga	Downtown San Fierro	High fat stat, found at the driving school
Helena Wankstein	Bijou Phillips	Flint County farm	High sex appeal, found at Ammu-Nation in Blueberry
Barbara Schternvart	Danielle Lee Greaves	El Quebrados, Tierra Robada	High fat stat, found at the sheriff’s station

China Chow, who voices Katie, was a model and actress who appeared in The Big Hit and later hosted Work of Art on Bravo. Bijou Phillips (Helena) had just made Bully and Havoc and later starred in Hostel: Part II. Vanessa Aspillaga and Danielle Lee Greaves are both New York theater actors. Each girlfriend delivers a gameplay perk at 100 percent progress: Katie keeps your weapons after a hospital visit, Barbara keeps them after an arrest, and Michelle offers free Pay ‘n’ Spray.

Radio DJs: the celebrity layer most players miss

Station	DJ character	Voiced by	Why it matters
Radio Los Santos	Julio G	Julio G	Real LA radio DJ playing himself
Playback FM	Forth Right MC	Chuck D	Public Enemy frontman on a classic hip-hop station
Bounce FM	The Funktipus	George Clinton	Parliament-Funkadelic leader hosting a funk station
K-DST	Tommy “The Nightmare” Smith	Axl Rose	Guns N’ Roses singer hosting classic rock
CSR 103.9	Philip “PM” Michaels	Michael Bivins	New Edition and Bell Biv DeVoe member on a new jack swing station
Master Sounds 98.3	Johnny “The Love Giant” Parkinson	Ricky Harris	Comedian and Snoop Dogg collaborator on rare groove
SF-UR	Hans Oberlander	Lloyd Floyd	House music station
K-Rose	Mary-Beth Maybell	Riette Burdick	Country station
Radio X	Sage	Jodie Shawback	Alternative rock station

The casting here is as pointed as the main story. Chuck D hosting a golden-age hip-hop station and George Clinton hosting the funk station are musicians presiding over genres they helped build. Michael Bivins on CSR 103.9 is a Bell Biv DeVoe member running a new jack swing playlist.

Axl Rose is the odd one out. He hosts K-DST, the classic rock station, while his own band’s “Welcome to the Jungle” plays on Radio X. His Tommy Smith character is a washed-up rocker with a grudge against the grunge era, which makes the whole arrangement a joke Rockstar built for people who read credits.

Ricky Harris, the comedian behind Johnny Parkinson, played Malvo on Everybody Hates Chris and had a long association with Snoop Dogg’s records. He died in December 2016 at 54. Lazlow Jones, a Rockstar writer and the voice of talk radio across GTA III, Vice City and later GTA IV and V, hosts WCTR’s “Entertaining America” segment under his own name.

Cast members who have died

Five of the credited San Andreas actors have died since the game released. Chris Penn (Pulaski) died in January 2006 at 40. Ricky Harris (Johnny Parkinson) died in December 2016 at 54. Charlie Murphy (Jizzy B.) died in April 2017 at 57. Frank Vincent (Salvatore Leone) died in September 2017 at 80. Peter Fonda (The Truth) died in August 2019 at 79.

This matters for the game’s future as much as its history. Any genuine remake with new motion capture would have to recast five roles, including two of the story’s most distinctive voices. It is one reason the Definitive Edition kept the original audio intact.

Definitive Edition: same voices, new faces

Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition launched on November 11, 2021 for PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Series X|S, Nintendo Switch and PC via the Rockstar Games Launcher, with a mobile release through Netflix following in December 2023. Grove Street Games, the studio that previously handled the 2013 mobile port as War Drum Studios, rebuilt the character models and lighting in Unreal Engine.

The voice track was not touched. Every line from Young Maylay, Samuel L. Jackson and the rest is the original 2004 recording, remastered but unchanged. That is why Big Smoke’s new model lip-syncs to the same “Drive-Thru” order, and why Tenpenny still sounds like 2004-era Jackson rather than the 2021 version. No cast member was invited back to record, and Rockstar has not announced any plan to do so.

The upside is that the cast list in this article applies to any copy you own. PS2 disc, Xbox original, 2005 PC release, the 2013 mobile version, Xbox 360 and PS3 digital re-releases, Definitive Edition: identical recordings, identical credits.

Not that San Andreas: the 2015 film

A large share of searches for “San Andreas actors” are actually looking for the 2015 disaster movie, which has nothing to do with Rockstar. That film was directed by Brad Peyton and stars Dwayne Johnson as a Los Angeles Fire Department rescue pilot, with Carla Gugino, Alexandra Daddario, Paul Giamatti, Ioan Gruffudd and Archie Panjabi. It takes its name from the San Andreas Fault rather than from the game, and no GTA cast member appears in it.

If you landed here looking for the movie, the quickest tell is the year. The game is 2004 and features CJ, Grove Street and Los Santos. The film is 2015 and features a collapsing Hoover Dam.

What the cast meant for the series

San Andreas was the last GTA to lean on recognizable Hollywood names. From GTA IV onward, Rockstar shifted to relatively unknown actors (Michael Hollick as Niko Bellic, then Ned Luke, Shawn Fonteno and Steven Ogg in GTA V) and has said publicly that celebrity voices can pull players out of the fiction. GTA V’s Franklin, voiced by Fonteno, is the clear spiritual descendant of Maylay’s CJ, and Fonteno has acknowledged the comparison.

The 2004 cast still holds up as the most star-heavy in the series. Jackson, Woods, Fonda and Vincent give the conspiracy plot a weight that unknown actors could not have, while Maylay, MC Eiht, Yo-Yo and Clifton Powell make the Grove Street scenes feel lived in. Both halves were necessary, and the DJ Pooh connection is what made the second half possible.

FAQ

Who voices CJ in GTA San Andreas?

Carl “CJ” Johnson is voiced by Young Maylay, real name Christopher Bellard, a rapper from South Central Los Angeles. San Andreas was his first acting job, and he came to Rockstar’s attention through co-writer DJ Pooh. He has not voiced CJ in any later Rockstar game.

Is Samuel L. Jackson really in GTA San Andreas?

Yes. Jackson voices Sergeant Frank Tenpenny, the corrupt C.R.A.S.H. cop who frames CJ at the start of the game and dies in the fire truck crash during “End of the Line.” The role won him a Spike TV Video Game Award in 2004.

Who was DJ Pooh in GTA San Andreas?

DJ Pooh (Mark Jordan) is a co-writer of the game’s script alongside Dan Houser and James Worrall. He is a West Coast hip-hop producer and filmmaker who co-wrote Friday and directed The Wash. He did not voice a major character, but his involvement is why so many real LA rappers and radio figures ended up in the cast.

Who voices Big Smoke?

Melvin “Big Smoke” Harris is voiced by Clifton Powell, known for Menace II Society, Next Friday and Ray. The “Drive-Thru” fast food order that became a meme is Powell’s delivery.

Which Vice City actors return in San Andreas?

William Fichtner returns as Ken Rosenberg, Danny Dyer returns as Kent Paul, and the Rockstar staffers John Zurhellen and Navid Khonsari return as Jethro and Dwaine. Frank Vincent returns as Salvatore Leone from GTA III, and Cynthia Farrell returns as Catalina from the same game.

Did the Definitive Edition re-record any voices?

No. The 2021 Definitive Edition uses the original 2004 recordings for every character and radio host. Rockstar has not re-recorded any San Andreas dialogue, and several cast members, including Chris Penn, Peter Fonda, Frank Vincent and Charlie Murphy, have since died.

Who are the celebrity radio DJs in San Andreas?

Chuck D of Public Enemy hosts Playback FM as Forth Right MC, George Clinton hosts Bounce FM as The Funktipus, Axl Rose hosts K-DST as Tommy “The Nightmare” Smith, and Michael Bivins of New Edition hosts CSR 103.9 as Philip Michaels. Real LA DJ Julio G hosts Radio Los Santos as himself.