An epic, livestreamed “Dungeons & Dragons” game has again become the basis for a new animated show.
“Every step of this journey has been unexpected,” said Sam Riegel, original “Critical Role” cast member who reprised his role for the new series, “The Mighty Nein.” “The best thing we’ve ever done in our lives is making these shows and telling these stories and inspiring other people to play games like we do.”
“The Mighty Nein” premieres on Prime Video Wednesday — the second animated “Critical Role” adaptation on the platform.
“It took several years for us to even dream up this potentially becoming an animated series, and it’s only because of the support of our audience from a crowd-sourcing campaign,” said Travis Willingham, cast member and CEO of Critical Role Productions. “Because of that, we get to go out and find true nerds like [showrunner] Tasha Huo that have a perspective on how we can economize and change things up not just for our existing audience, but for anybody that’s coming to ‘Critical Role’ for the very first time.”
Huo, a “Critical Role” fan known for her animated adaptation of the “Tomb Raider” video game franchise, had her work cut out for her. Thankfully, her team had plenty of experience condensing hundreds of hours of a livestreamed role-playing game into a TV series.
“We know how the process works and we know storywise what does and doesn’t work,” said Huo. “I think we’re perfecting our craft in ‘The Mighty Nein,’ which is awesome to see.”
Where did the name “The Mighty Nein” come from?
Travis Willingham: “‘The Mighty Nein’ is a beautiful play on words. We have a character in the show, Caleb Widogast, who speaks Zemnian. And because his creator, Liam O’Brien, was a foreign exchange student and a fan of the German language younger in life, he decided to make Zemnian in our world a more classic or old version of German.
“And we have to tip our hat to the amazing Sam Riegel, who on a text thread famously shared amongst the cast, he said, ‘What about The Mighty Nein?’ And it’s so trollish. It doesn’t make any sense. There certainly aren’t nine of us, and it causes just enough eyebrows to go up when people say it that we knew it was perfect.”
Sam, you play Nott the Brave, a female goblin thief. It seems obvious that you’re not a goblin.
Sam Riegel: “Oh. Does it? How many goblins have you met?”
Well, I guess that’s kind of the beauty of roleplaying here! It’s kind of easy to have cover to play someone of a different gender. I just was curious how you think your voice fits the character, now that you’re in a different medium?
Riegel: “You really hit the nail on the head. It’s fun to play these games and also to do animation because voice actors like me and Travis, we get to play characters that we would never get to play in live action television or in film. I’m playing a little goblin girl. Travis is playing a half-orc green guy with huge pecs. Now, he does have huge pecs in real life also, but that’s beside the point.
“It really gives us a chance to explore different characterizations that we would never get to otherwise. The character of Nott is really special to me because she’s a ball of nerves and she is a bit crazed. But she also has some deep secrets and some reveals that come later in the series that really humanize her in some unexpected ways.”
You mentioned Travis’s character, who has swole pecs. He’s a stranded sailor named Fjord. Throughout the early episodes, this character is called weak. But, Tasha, you gave him a lot of muscles. Are you playing on this dissonance for laughs?
Willingham: “A little bit. I think it’s more of an origin from the livestream episodes years and years ago. There was a great undercurrent of Sam’s character, Nott the Brave, the little goblin girl, loving to poke at Fjord, being a half-orc and being a stronger-looking guy. But he seemed to classically fail at strength checks over and over and over.
“Something about the character of Fjord is that he’s really trying to figure out who he is in this world after being separated from his crew and captain. I think we can say he’s probably overcompensating and trying to show off not just his muscles, but his ability to lead or make decisions or act like he knows what’s going on in the world. So I think Nott senses that and is using any opportunity to humble him”.
Tasha Huo: “I think that gets to something too that makes the show so special, even though it is a goblin girl and it is a half-orc. We’re looking at characters that aren’t human at all. There is something very human about all of them.
“Nott is dealing with a serious issue of alcoholism. A lot of her story is about where does that come from? And with Fjord, something that’s really fun to explore is insecurity, where it can come from, whether it’s real or not. You have people around him who don’t see that, and he sees it in himself. That’s always the biggest battle, right? It’s amazing that it’s a D&D high fantasy show, but everything is just really very human and relatable.”
Tasha, what is it like for someone who was a fan who saw this in your head, to bring it to life and now to actually see it live in the world?
Huo: “It’s fan fiction, basically! They’re just letting me write fan fiction, thanks, Sam and Travis! Having fallen in love with all the characters and the story for so many years already and desperately trying to get all of my friends to watch the show, and then they look at the time code, and it says 4 hours per episode, and they run the other way. This is a chance to say this is why I was obsessed with this.”
The way you just described that, it’s almost like an interpretation? You have this thing that you love and then you’re putting it through your lens and then sharing it with the people that you love.
Huo: “It’s a totally different format, right? What these guys have done is create a live improv show because they are very talented voice actors. What we had to do in the show is tell a more contained, linear story. And if you’ve ever play a tabletop RPG, it’s absolutely bonkers. What you expect to happen in a given game never actually happens, and you go in crazy directions. With the show, we had to find some rails and find that common narrative that does exist in the show.”
We’re living in a kind of a golden age for fantasy media for adults. “The Mighty Nein” is dark, it’s raunchy sometimes. It’s often super funny and catches you off guard. I’m curious what media inspired you as you went to work on this and to build this world?
Riegel: “We’re sort of in the golden age of adult animation right now, too, with shows like ‘Arcane’ and ‘Blue Eye Samurai’ and ‘Invincible’ and our other show, ‘The Legend of Vox Machina.’ There’s a lot of interest and excitement around animated series that can transport you to other worlds and look at serious themes and also have nudity and poop jokes, but tell compelling stories. It’s just another way that everyone is discovering they can enjoy stories like these. It doesn’t always have to be $10 million episode budgets starring film actors who are between films. It can be smaller productions with voice actors as stars and homegrown stories like ours.”
Huo: “I’m just so proud of this show, guys. To come at it as a fan nerd girl and to then produce something that is just such a great story. It’s so compelling. People who have never even heard of D&D will watch it and love it. And that is my greatest joy.”
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James Perkins-Mastromarino and produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Todd Mundt. Perkins-Mastromarino adapted it for the web.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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