GTA fans might be on the edge of their seats waiting for the game’s sixth entry, but one person prefers to sit back and read a book instead.
Steven Ogg, the actor behind the legendary Grand Theft Auto V character Trevor Philips, recently admitted in an interview that he has never played the game he appears in, and thus “feels nothing” ahead of Rockstar’s long-awaited release. He also confessed that when confronted about this by a fan, he told them to read Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment instead.
Commenters across X and Reddit were divided on the unexpected reveal, especially as hype builds for GTA 6 ahead of its release in May next year. Some labelled Ogg pretentious and disrespectful towards the industry that built his career, while others took a more nuanced response towards actors not always watching the content they star in.
What did Steven Ogg say in the interview?
The controversial video clip was first posted to X on Sept. 20, by GTA 6 Countdown—an account collating news about the upcoming game. As of Sept. 23, it has over 4M views and hundreds of comments and quotes.
In the video, which takes place at a gaming convention, YouTuber Harrison Shipp attempts to ask Ogg a handful of questions about GTA.
“Are you excited for GTA 6?” he starts, to which Ogg immediately responds, “I feel nothing inside.”
“Really?” the interviewer continues, prompting Ogg to clarify, “I’m not a gamer. I’ve never played video games”, before admitting to never playing the previous entry in the series, for which he recorded voice acting and movement.
Instead, Ogg pivots the conversation somewhere entirely unexpected. “Someone said yesterday, ‘at some point you should play GTA5.’ I said ‘Why?’, they said because it’s so great. And I said ‘well one day you should read Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment’, and he went completely blank,” he reveals.
He then asks the interviewer if he knows Dostoyevsky. “So there you go. Why don’t you read that?” he says, after the interviewer admits that he does not.
“Books are my thing,” Ogg concludes.
Fans punish Ogg for his reaction, but is it really such a crime?
Multiple outlets quickly picked up the clip. On X, hundreds of commenters flooded in to deride Ogg, with many calling him “unlikeable” and “a clown,” as well as referencing the Simpsons meme, “old man yells at clouds.”
“He always seems so salty about it, get a grip and play the games old man,” @csKereka commented. “Condescending and rude,” commented @youwishmusic.
“It’s actually incredibly pretentious lol,” added @42laam.
“This seems weird to me from an actor’s perspective,” one confused commenter wrote. “Why wouldn’t you want to see the game your work went to, even if it’s just for a few hours? No one’s asking you to convert to gamerism but this hostility seems unnecessary.”
Others mocked his choice of literature. “I like him being mean to a dumb YouTuber but the book choice sounds like he googled ‘famous book a smart person would read’ and picked the first result,” user @PixalPixal said.
Though not everyone was so disparaging.
“I feel a lot of actors don’t watch themselves in movies or shows they are in,” @JCalabration6 wrote. “This is no different. He did a great job in the game and that’s all you can ask for.”
Some ironically likened Ogg’s behavior to his character Trevor, or compared the plots of the two pieces of media. Others, like @realchipman, took the rarely seen position online—that things don’t always have to be so black and white and diametrically opposed.
“Crime and Punishment and GTA V are both profound pieces of media people should take the time to consume. This interview – not so much.”
The discourse continues on Reddit
Discourse around Grand Theft Auto VI has been heating up in general recently, as fans worry a second delay may unfortunately be in store. The game’s release date was already pushed back to May 2026 earlier this year, but after the release of a new trailer, many are calling into question whether this deadline will once again be extended.
With development beginning back in 2018, GTA 6’s lengthy production time has been a popular meme for years, with the format, “We got X before GTA 6” now widely referenced across the internet.
And it seems Ogg’s recent interview has fuelled the mockery even further. The video was also posted to the r/GTA subreddit, where over 5.3K users interacted with it, sharing similar opinions to audiences on X.
Its arrival onto Reddit, however, also spurred on the creation of another post, titled, “It would be fun,” referencing a previous article from Screenrant where Ogg admitted, “it would be fun if Trevor appeared in [GTA 6] just to be killed at the beginning.”
Some fans laughed at Ogg’s clear ongoing contempt or disinterest towards his character, while others discussed what a shame it was.
u/hamfist_ofthenorth via Reddit
“Unlikely we’ll ever see that character again. That man absolutely despises everything about it, which is a little mind-blowing to everyone,” wrote u/hamfist_ofthenorth.
“It’s really ironic considering in my 37 years of gaming, his performance is in my mind, one of the greatest modern video game characters across console generations. He’s just a perfect madman, the agent of chaos. Trevor is GTA incarnate.”
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