 The team drew upon game protagonist archetypes during the scripting of the characters . Michael was considered to embody greed , Franklin ambition and Trevor insanity . Houser felt the team characterised Michael and Trevor as juxtapositions of each other . He said , " Michael is like the criminal who wants to compartmentalise and be a good guy some of the time and Trevor is the maniac who isn 't a hypocrite " . He considered that having three lead characters would help move Grand Theft Auto V 's story into more original territory than its predecessors , which traditionally followed a single protagonist rising through the ranks of a criminal underworld . Ned Luke portrayed Michael , Shawn " Solo " Fonteno portrayed Franklin and Steven Ogg portrayed Trevor . Fonteno first became aware of the acting job through his friend DJ Pooh , who worked on San Andreas and was involved in Grand Theft Auto V 's music production . When Luke 's agent advised him of the casting call for Grand Theft Auto V , he initially did not want to audition for the part because it was in a video game . After reading the audition material and learning more about the project , Luke became interested in auditioning . He reflected , " I went immediately after reading the material from ' I 'm not doing it ' to ' nobody else is doing it ' . It was just brilliant " . During the initial audition process , Ogg noticed an on @-@ set chemistry between him and Luke , which he felt helped secure them the roles . Ogg explained , " When [ Luke ] and I went in the room together we immediately had something " . While the actors knew their auditions were for Rockstar Games , it was not until they signed contracts that they learnt they would be involved in a Grand Theft Auto title . 
