Chris Pine, Regé-Jean Page, Michelle Rodriguez & More | 'Dungeons & Dragons' Interviews
The cast and filmmakers behind the “Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” movie, including Chris Pine (Edgin), Regé-Jean Page (Xenk), Michelle Rodriguez (Holga), Justice Smith (Simon), Sophia Lillis (Doric), John Francis Daley (Writer/Director/Executive Producer), and Jonathan Goldstein (Writer/Director/Executive Producer) join CinemaBlend’s Sean O’Connell to nerd out about the fantasy adventure. Watch as they discuss, delivering a DnD movie fans can be proud of, learning all of the game’s jargon, and… a “Fast and Furious” crossover?!
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00:00Hello, boys, how are you?
00:01Hey, Sean.
00:02Good to see you.
00:03It's going pretty good, Sean.
00:04How are you?
00:05It's going good.
00:06Really good.
00:07Now that I have this croissant.
00:08Yeah.
00:09Wonderful.
00:10So I saw Tom Morello's name in the credits, and I'm a huge Rage Against the Machine fan.
00:22I know he's a huge player, but I didn't see him.
00:24You didn't see him.
00:25Is he in there?
00:26Is he on your sink?
00:27What happened?
00:28It's a bit of a blink and you miss it.
00:29That was something that came together through our amazing producer, Jeremy Latcham, who
00:33worked with him on Iron Man back in the day.
00:36We knew that Tom was a huge fan of D&D, and we thought it'd be fun to put him in the movie.
00:40He's in the stands, and there's a single of him at one point.
00:44Is it really?
00:45Also, the boy from Belfast is in the stands as well, but you couldn't miss him as well.
00:48Well, that's what I was going to ask.
00:49Did you get approached by a bunch of celebrities who loved playing, that just wanted a part?
00:54Not so much, because I don't think they knew yet what it was going to be, and they're so
00:58worried about somebody doing the wrong version of their beloved game.
01:02Defiling what they have, and it is a fair concern, I think, among the D&D community.
01:11It's such a beloved franchise, such a beloved world, and we knew that we had to take it
01:17seriously, and it was our responsibility to do its service.
01:20I will not be complicit in the immense abuse of ill-gotten booty.
01:24Your character has what I can only describe as jargon.
01:27So much technical jargon.
01:30Was it harder to learn than just normal dialogue?
01:33Ridiculously hard to learn.
01:34This was Jonathan absolutely sending me-
01:36Have you retained any of it?
01:37No!
01:38It went straight in one ear and out the other.
01:39There's no way I'm holding on to that in my soul.
01:42They can't burden me with those pages and pages of jargon text.
01:45Follow me to the orifice.
01:49The orifice?
01:51They hit me.
01:52I remember that bridge scene that we've put out, where I'm just kind of hitting jargon
01:55for like a minute.
01:56And I remember sweating through that because they made me do it in a one ear.
02:00The bridge is protected by an ancient trap.
02:02We must not trigger the mechanism.
02:03And I remember paying it straight back because I remember Justice was really enjoying watching
02:07me sweat.
02:08And so there's a death stare that I give him right at the end when he sets this trap off.
02:13I may have triggered the mechanism.
02:16And that was just kind of- that was me enjoying myself as payback for all the jargon.
02:21It's just like, well, I gave you the answers and you didn't listen.
02:24So now let's see if you can get through this take without laughing while I'm right here
02:28at you a meter away.
02:29I had to do it in an accent, which was crazy.
02:34It was actually- it was actually fine.
02:37It wasn't that hard.
02:39My jargon specifically was on my spellcasting.
02:44And the beauty about the spellcasting was that the words actually had a grammatical
02:51structure to them.
02:52Our dialect coach, Brandon Gunn, he invented this language and it had consistency throughout
03:01as well as the Thayan language that Safina uses.
03:04Like places and names of people and yes, that was- that was quite difficult to do.
03:12Specifically hither thither staff is a tongue twister.
03:15Hither thither.
03:16I didn't have to say it much so I was off the hook.
03:18Hither thither staff.
03:19Hither thither.
03:20Staff.
03:21There you go.
03:22Hither thither.
03:23Hither thither.
03:24Hither thither staff.
03:25Hither thither.
03:26Hither thither.
03:27Hither thither.
03:28What is that again?
03:29This movie is full of movie moments, which I love, where you're reading it and you know
03:33exactly- you've seen it a bunch of times or you know what the camera's going to do and
03:39some actors chafe at that.
03:41I happen to really love it because it- it's a meta moment when I'm an actor doing it reminding
03:48myself of all the actors I remember watching growing up doing the same moment and much
03:53is due to my fascination and supplication before the- the man that is Harrison Ford.
04:01So I- I own a tribute.
04:04You know, Edgen is very much of an archetypal type of hero.
04:09He's Mr. Positive most of the time and you know, I always come back to the moment of
04:13like, where Harrison is faced with a guy that's doing all sorts of fancy knife work
04:18and then he shoots him.
04:21It's akin to that, you know?
04:22Yeah, absolutely.
04:23I'm out of time.
04:24Oh dude, I totally see the Indiana now.
04:26Oh, I'm not going to get that out of my head.
04:28That's awesome.
04:29That's what I've been saying!
04:31It helps when it's Chris Pine doing it.
04:33Or Jesse Plemont.
04:34The guy is a master and we would not have had the film that we are so proud of if Chris
04:39Pine weren't at the helm.
04:42Not at the helm, but.
04:43He was at the helm at the forefront.
04:44He also plays the lute.
04:46Not relevant.
04:47Michelle, you can only greenlight one of these pitches.
04:50Do you write Letty into the next Fast- next D&D movie or do you drop Holga into the next
04:56Fast and Furious film?
04:57I'd say drop Holga into the next Fast and Furious.
05:00It's a lot more interesting.
05:02I don't like that.
05:04Oh, we got him now!
05:06I think- I think she would be lost without her crew, man.
05:10I think we need to open a portal from the Dungeons of world into one of these franchises.
05:18I think there's nowhere to go once you reach the top in these ten poles than to merge.
05:23Yeah, exactly.
05:24You know, it's just like-
05:25Well, how do we pull that off?
05:28Uh.
05:29Figure it out over a drink?
05:30Probably best.
05:31I was really impressed with the visual effects.
05:32I can't believe how good that they look.
05:34I didn't expect going into this somewhat comedy to be as impressed as I was by the different
05:38set pieces.
05:39I want to know which one you spent the most time on in the editing room.
05:43Which one do you think you just toiled over to make sure that it looked as good as it
05:46possibly could?
05:47I think that would be the Doric one-er where she's changing into different animals and
05:51being chased out of the castle.
05:53Yeah, it was similar to the one-er that we had in Game Night where they're chasing the
05:58Fabergé egg.
05:59We knew we wanted this like fully immersive moment in the film and nothing better than
06:05through the sort of perspective of this character that can turn into different animals depending
06:10on what environment they're facing.
06:12And is it one of those situations where the visual effects really weren't coming together
06:15until the very, very end on this picture?
06:17In some ways.
06:18I mean, some of them were good early on.
06:20Some of them it took right up even past the point where we were supposed to be done and
06:24we were like, give us another week.
06:27And you know, we're real sticklers for that stuff.
06:30And so we would always want even more time.
06:33That said, I mean, it was, you know, visual effects community is such a hardworking group
06:38of people that are underappreciated.
06:40So we just have to tip our hats to the hundreds of people that spent hundreds of hours bringing
06:47this thing to life and making it, you know, the epic that it is.
06:51This is unlike anything we've ever seen.
06:53So I was watching a lot of interviews that you guys have been doing in the run up to
06:56the release of this movie.
06:57And you said something about the game where you said you're not doing it right unless
07:00you get it wrong, which I thought was really interesting, because I'm wondering if that
07:03applies to acting as well, too.
07:06One hundred percent.
07:07One hundred percent.
07:08You're not doing it right unless you get it wrong.
07:09I remember my professors when I was training used to tell me off for this.
07:13They'd be like, your first instincts are strong, but you're never going to get to the magic
07:17stuff unless you break from that and play around in the risky things where things can
07:20go really wrong.
07:21So that's one of the strongest lessons I ever learned as an actor, because if you hang on
07:26too tight to just what's correct, you miss out on all the really fun, magic, unexpected
07:32stuff.
07:33That's very much, I think, half the joke with Zank, half the joke of playing like the shiny
07:38armoured perfect knight in this movie, is that he holds on for dear life to just what
07:43is right, what is in a straight line towards righteousness.
07:45And he misses out on all the glorious chaos and pathos and heart that's happening around
07:52him.
07:53And I think that's part of the lesson.
07:54It's about the fact that plan A is never the whole world.
07:58You've got to go through plan A, B, C and D to discover who you are and who your friends
08:02are and how to really be a hero, you know?
08:05Sounds lovely.
08:06Quite the opposite.
08:07I know I was being ironic.
08:08I find irony is a blade that cuts he who wields it most especially.
08:12You're not a lot of fun, are you?