Do we like Ray Porter?
Our score: 7 out of 10. Nothing harmful or dodgy turned up and there are small signs of decency, but the public record is thin, so he doesn't get a top score.
Ray Porter is the voice a lot of people already know without knowing the face. He's an American actor and audiobook narrator who built a long career in voice and screen work, and he's best known for reading Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary.
Drama? Honestly, there isn't any. We searched for court cases, lawsuits and allegations and found nothing against him, so there's no scandal to retell. That's a clean result, but a search that finds nothing isn't proof of a saint, so we're saying so plainly.
On the harm check, we found no posts or statements from him attacking LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the planet, and no sign he's slid into conspiracy talk. His work leans sci-fi and thriller, and we found no repeat collaborations that raised a flag. The honest gap is that he doesn't seem to say much about politics in public.
The recent thing is a nice one. After Ryan Gosling praised the Project Hail Mary audiobook in a clip, Porter shared it and wrote, “Such kindness. I am humbled and grateful.” The film ended up with James Ortiz voicing Rocky, so Porter's version was a rejected voice, and he's still telling people to go and see it.
There's also a gracious streak in the Snyder saga. When director Ava DuVernay decided not to recast him as Darkseid for her planned New Gods film, Porter defended her decision rather than stirring up his fans, and she thanked him for it.
So: a working actor and narrator with a good name among listeners, no scandals we could find and a bit of grace when things didn't go his way. We'd happily keep him in the earbuds, with the caveat that we know less about him than we'd like.