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There are MASSIVE spoilers ahead for The Mighty Nein Season 1!
First, unlike The Legend of Vox Machina, The Mighty Nein begins with a substantial amount of backstory for these characters before they even form a party, which is something we didn't see in Campaign 2. How exciting was it to get to show stuff that you only got to allude to in the campaign, comic books, and more?
Travis Willingham: It's so exciting. I think from an animation perspective, half of the early developmental and adaptation process is going, Okay, we have these wild ambitions. Can we draw this stuff? Is this possible to do? Then, of course, our amazing partners at Titmouse Animation look at us and go, "Bet fam! We got you. Let's go," which is great.
I think more than anything, it's a chance to jump back in time several years to characters that we've been with all of this time, and give them a fresh look, figure out where they start from square one, and set up a world that's going to be introduced very slowly, very methodically, but in hopefully a very interesting way for fans that not only know everything about the Mighty Nein but are coming to it for the very first time.
Marisha Ray: There's this thing that acting teachers will teach you in like Acting 101, where they go, when your character walks in on the stage, or they walk into a scene, you should know where they're walking from. Like, what's the room? What just happened to them? Where are they walking from? In a way, it feels like these early episodes are that.
Sam Riegel: Our big plan with this whole series was to make sure that we showed the audience these characters before they became a team, because so much of who they are is based on where they've come from, and the mistakes they've made in their past and things they've suffered through. So we wanted to show some of that, and not just have to rely on people saying, like, "Oh, I had a really rough childhood." We wanted to see it. And with extra-long, hour-long episodes, we got a chance to do that. The first three episodes of the season are just laying the groundwork for the rest of the series, and it is so exciting to see these moments of the characters meeting or finding their path or pivotal decisions that they made that will lead to the entire story.
Liam O'Brien: Speaking about Caleb and Nott specially, we really got to flesh it out in a lot of ways, but some of it did come over from a lot of conversations that Sam and I had way back when, before the campaign even started. Not in this intricate detail, but it all lived in rough sketches in our minds. It's also no secret to Critters, and people who are familiar with us already, that Sam and I go way back, and so this is really just putting a goblin and hobo wizard skin on our long-lasting relationship, and it was very fun to explore together.
We also get to explore more Exandrian lore and show the vastness of the world that you've all created through three campaigns. What was your favorite deep lore that you got to add into this season?
Matthew Mercer: One of my favorite things about doing the animated series is being able to bring in facets of the world that are only alluded to in the campaign. Being able to see more of the Kryn Dynasty and the Empire, and get to see their machinations and build up the war, especially, personally, for Essek stuff. Also, bringing in a certain Calamity Era pirate. To bring in Nydas was a really, really fun idea we had in the writers' room when we were fleshing out the narrative of the story, because some things that work well in a D&D campaign aren't as narratively interesting as, like, a small little side quest, or a little dungeon delve for the party.
So, we asked, how can we plus that? And now, since we've played the campaign, and Exandria's history and lore have expanded so much in very cool and meaningful ways, this was one of those opportunities to tie a facet of that in. I loved watching that all come together.
Sam: There is another character in this season named Owelia, who's a Volstrucker, and she does exist in the lore and is a real character that Matt invented. We just never really got to see her in the campaign, and now she becomes a major part of the story. Fleshing her out was super cool, and it was also a challenge because she's a halfling, so she's small of stature, but she's so threatening and evil. And we were a little nervous because we didn't want it to look like a kid was fighting against us, but the way they animated and drew her, she's just so sick and twisted and evil.
Travis: Calamity. Getting Nydas and his ship in there is so dope. And, of course, the Gilmore of this world, Pumat and the Invulnerable Vagrant, I think all of us just sort of...our shoulders relaxed, and we're like, "Oh my god, Pumat! We love you!"
Marisha: What was it in Episode 7 where there are a couple of guards walking by the parapet, and they're like, "No, I'm telling you, man, it was four of them. They had a big, scary name, like the Chroma Crew or something." I was like, "That's so good." And also, like, I think, is a very succinct way to demonstrate how big Exandria is.
Laura Bailey: Something so big in Vox Machina, and these guys are just gabbing about it.
Taliesin Jaffe: Just knowing that Residuum is a problem everywhere. It all comes back to Whitestone is the problem. It's the damn de Rolos.
Do you have favorite Easter eggs or details that are hidden in Season 1?
Ashley Johnson: It's not really hidden, but the inclusion of Yasha's flowers.
Travis: There are little plushies of Vox Machina and the carnival. There will certainly be relics and vestiges that you can find in the Invulnerable Vagrant, Pumat's shop.
Laura: Oh, and then in Marion's performance, one of her duplicates is dressed like Percy.
Travis: That's a level 10 secret, actually. If you look at when the duplicates jump out into the audience, the one that's facing away from the camera in the far background is actually in a Percy coat.
Taliesin: It's the little Spirit Halloween costume, sexy Percy.
Laura: I also really love the illustration of Tusk Love. I love the cover. It's so beautiful.
Liam: Definitely "mascot bear."
Matt: Mascot bear was a big point in there.
Sam: In the episode where Fjord and Jester are at the carnival, competing for games, some of our Critical Role merch is on the shelf there. A little Trinket doll is up there on the shelf.
Matt: I was gonna say, watching Fjord and Jester walk past magic mirrors in the mirror maze and seeing Laura and Travis in the reflection is such a nice little touch.
Marisha: The Laura and Travis cameo is pretty great.
Liam: It's a smaller one, but I always laugh when I hear the Van Der Fluit School for the Performing Arts.
Sam: There's also a shop in Episode 1, called McGlynn's Fineries, which is after our voice director, Mary Elizabeth McGlynn.
Matt: What I'm excited for is people who have only watched Legend of Vox Machina, watching The Mighty Nein and picking up on some of the threads between the two, or noticing that the creation of the Volstrucker's initiation ritual, the painful one, involves Residuum being placed beneath the skin. It's a tie to Whitestone. Fun little bits of crossover.
One of my favorite Easter eggs is that Braius from Campaign 3 makes an appearance in Episode 7. What went into adding him into the show?
Laura: Braius came later in the development process, didn't it? Because Sam revealed that far into Campaign 3.
Sam: That was added in at the very, very last second. I think we had to add it very, very quickly. That episode was already being animated when Braius first came around in Campaign 3. So we had to quickly send new designs to the animator. We were like, "Change this guy! Give him horns, go!" So it was great. I love it.
Travis: Yeah, we will change stuff at any opportunity. Unless it's locked and shipped, it's NOT DONE.
Ashley, everyone has been begging for more Yasha in Season 1, and in the finale, she finally intersects with the Mighty Nein. This is obviously different than how Campaign 2 started, too. What went into changing Yasha's story arc for the animated show?
Ashley: In sort of breaking how we were going to narratively tell this story, and in early discussions of talking about what we really want for our characters, what we want to be shown in the series, we ultimately made some changes for Yasha, specifically. Something that we didn't need was Yasha's absences going in and out, because had I not been working at the time [on Blindspot], I would have been there fully at the table. So we didn't need to have that in the show. Yasha is the Orphanmaker. She is a killing machine who is being used for those skills that she has, and is trying to get out of it.
I think we were just able to retell her introduction. I think that is everything. I think it just gives more of an impact for her and into the rest of the story that we will eventually tell with her.
Another difference from Campaign 2 is that we get to see Essek's backstory and what he was up to before he meets the Mighty Nein. Matt, how was it getting to showcase stuff that had only been alluded to or briefly mentioned in terms of Essek's history?
Matt: So fulfilling. It's backstory that didn't really find a way in other than just him expressing it himself. Essek, by nature, was a complicated character when I designed him, and I had originally anticipated him to be an antagonist character for the campaign, though a complicated and relatable one. So based on where his story went and how we wanted to adapt to this animated series and bring his story a little more to the forefront this early in, since it is intrinsically tied to the events that lead to this war, it allowed the opportunity to show all these moments of his life behind the scenes that lived in my imagination up to that point. To perform it, get to step into, and actually show it in the series has been really fulfilling and really exciting.
Hopefully, it gives people a deeper glimpse into who he is. For instance, when we were playing in the campaign, people were like, "Essek's wonderful. He didn't do anything bad." I'm like, "No, he's a war criminal who's done some bad stuff." Like, here! Look at it now. You get to see the reasoning why I've been so insistent that he is a very complicated character. I'm not saying he's beyond redemption. In fact, his story, in the main campaign, was dynamic in showing that. But it is important to see where he started and what he has gone through to get to that point. And I love that we get to do that now in the animated series.
Laura: I mean, getting to see how bad of a hot boy Essek really is is really great.
Laura, the show saves the reveal of the Traveler until the very last episode. For fans who hadn't seen the campaign, it probably left them questioning whether Jester was really talking to a god. How was it planting those seeds of doubt with the audience, but also with Jester?
Laura: I love creating that doubt in herself and in the audience. You know, people coming into this for the first time, not knowing if the Traveler is a real entity or not. You know, she has a very powerful imagination, so the best payoff in Episode 8 is just the relief when he finally appears and getting to see that relationship finally unfolding. He's so wonderful and so terrible at the same time, and I think Matt's performance and the animation of it just really sell the duality of the character.
Taliesin, we get to see a lot of Molly in Season 1, and you're able to really begin to lay out storylines that didn't happen until much later in Campaign 2, like Vess DeRogna. How was it getting to add pieces of his story to the very beginning this time?
Taliesin: It was really so nice to be able to start planting things from the get-go. It was really, really exciting. I mean, there is deep lore hidden in some of that, in very, very quiet ways. And it is very exciting for the people who know that we can literally start from day one, and, like, the inevitability of that awful, awful, awful thing is just hiding in the background. It's rough in the campaigns when you think you have plenty of time to put stuff into a story, and then suddenly you're like, Oh, I should have gotten to that way quicker.
Travis: Vess DeRogna, who is this incredibly powerful archmage, another member of the Cerberus Assembly, in addition to Trent Ikithon, who's just wretched, by the way, like, holy crap. And he's not even really trying. But you know that Vess has to be able to hold a candle to him, and T'Nia Miller just absolutely shines. Just a voice to die for and to hear her early explorations of going after the book, after Aeor, going for things that didn't even reveal themselves to us until several years down the line in the campaign, it's just such great fruit on the tree. So we've just enjoyed planting those things and setting up these powerful characters that, like an inevitable pinball machine, our characters are going to crash into at some point. That's just some of the best stuff.
Taliesin: She's terrifying.
Laura: And all of the interactions between her and Trent. Their convos are JUICY!
You have such an impressive voice cast that got to join you this season. From Mark Strong to Lucy Liu, so many fun people got to come lend their voices to some pretty iconic characters. Who were some of your favorites or just "Holy shit, they said yes?!" people?
Laura: I mean, Mark Strong. I couldn't believe that he said yes. I think it was you, Travis, wasn't it? Where you were like, "God, listen to his voice. Do you think there's any way?" And we were like, "Probably not." And then he did, AND he spoke German.
Travis: That was the thing for Trent Ikithon, and for a lot of the Volstruckers, we were hoping to find actors that might be fluent in German, and we were just absolutely thrilled to find those that could actually rock it. And they have.
Taliesin: Nathan Fillion really, really brought that character to life for me. Less surprised, he said yes, but god, he's good. I didn't know what that character was going to sound like. The Gentleman was a mystery to me, and he just hit every note for me.
Sam: Nathan Fillion playing a very Nathan Fillion character.
Travis: Lucy Liu is absolutely incredible as the Bright Queen. Tim McGraw came in and just crushed it. Ming-Na Wen is obviously just such a powerhouse every time, and makes Dairon the mystery spy overlord that she should be. And I think the thing that I love is that there's a character named Verrat, played by Rahul Kohli, who we have the biggest vocal crush on. I mean, his gravity and gravitas are just amazing. So it's an amazing thing when these folks come in and lend their voices. But damn, they just ran with them.
And of course, we have to shout out the amazing Felicia Day, who plays Cree, one of the early members of the Tomb Takers, who will certainly be back. And Felicia was instrumental from our earliest years for Critical Role, even getting to be what it's become now. So it was so wonderful having her in. And she was like, "What's my character look like?" We showed her the art. And she was like, "OMG!" People have so much fun with this stuff.
Travis: We made such a nerd wish list. I mean, Jonathan Frakes. When he came in to record, I won't mind telling you, Laura was like, "I'm gonna go to the recording session. I'm gonna be there and hide in the corner."
Laura: LISTEN, I got to record with him. He wanted somebody in the booth with him, and I was like, "I'll do it. I'll do it for you. I will go in there."
Travis: He was like, "Do you mind reading me in for this line?" And Laura's like, "I'll go!"
Liam: Every guest cast member that we have is incredible. I will just say Alan Cumming only because I'm a theater kid, through and through. I saw him in Cabaret three times in the early 2000s. He was brilliant. That production still stands in my memory as one of the greatest productions I've ever seen. His performance was incredible.
Sam: I can honestly say, I assume, this will be Tim McGraw's only appearance in a fantasy property ever. We knew we needed someone strong and a bit country, and we thought, that's Tim McGraw. So we went to his team, and they read the material, and they were like, "Yeah, he wants to do this." So we recorded him from Nashville, I think, and he was a gentleman, and he was so excited to learn more about the property, and he had all sorts of great questions about Fjord and their relationship. It was really great to work with him.
Disney princess and overall badass, Ming-Na Wen plays Dairon, who is crucial to Beau's story. Marisha, what was it like working with her specifically?
Marisha: I mean, just hearing it, like, come back on screen at me, and I'm like, Oh my God, I'm talking with Ming-Na Wen. No, I'm not, like, it's not me. It's my character, but it is me. It's so cool. She is exactly that type of stoic. She has her shit together, badass that you need to perfectly be that counterbalance to Beau, who's still, like, a big, clumsy wreck of a person right now. Dairon is obviously so much of what Beau kind of starts trying to shape herself to be more like and to emulate. She crushed it.
Ashley: Ming-Na Wen! Being a badass!
Liam: I've loved Ming-Na's work my whole life.
Matt: The fact that she knew who we were beforehand. I got to run into her at New York Comic Con, and we talked. She gushed about the show and about Critical Role. I was like, What is happening?!!
Ashley: She asked to take a picture together, and I was like, "Yes! Of course!"
Sam: So wild!
Aimee Carrero makes a brief appearance as Yasha's wife, Zuala, in the season finale. Ashley, how was it getting Aimee to play such a key character in Yasha's past?
Ashley: Aimee Carrero is such an incredible actress, and we were trying to find any space for her. And I was like, "Maybe she could be my wife? (laughing) I don't know, throwing it out there." I love that we get to see that. And when you're first introduced to Yasha, you're like, Who is this creature that we keep seeing that is so terrifying? and then to see that soft side of her is so important. And for those of us who know her story, we just get to see little glimpses of it in the beginning. But I love that it's there, and it will lead to fleshing out Yasha's story even more."
Sam: That is our fourth Disney princess, too.
Tim McGraw voices Vandran, who is so important to Fjord's backstory, especially the Uk'otoa plotline. Travis, what was it like getting him to join the cast, as well as getting to actually see this part of Fjord's backstory play out on screen?
Travis: It was amazing. Fjord is so incredibly special to me. And like a lot of other characters in the Mighty Nein, there were aspects of him that were hidden in the beginning. We had similar things with Caleb. We had similar things with Nott the Brave, obviously. But in this one, we were very intentional about not utilizing flashbacks or things where the characters talk about their past, it wasn't as impactful as the idea of actually being able to see it, see who they were, see where they came from. For Fjord, he's very unique in that when we first meet him, he is just an average person in the world. There's no magic. There are no powers. There's nothing that really stands out. And because of the calamitous circumstances around him, he finds himself all of a sudden washed up on a beach with powers he doesn't understand.
We thought that was a great opportunity to see how someone could stumble through this world, try and find knowledge. Sort of bumper car off of the characters that he comes across. And, of course, he finds a very stable personality in Jester (laughs). Someone who's definitely going to keep him out of trouble. And you know, that's exactly what we wanted to see. Tee up a moment for the audience to see into who these characters are, regardless of what they're putting forward. So the audience is a bit smarter than the characters themselves, and that's just, I think, a great way to experience Fjord's story.
Caleb has a significant episode in Season 1, revealing his traumatic and brutal backstory with Trent. Liam, how was it working on that episode?
Liam: It was intense fleshing that out in the writers' room. It really goes there. And it's one thing, as Matt was saying, to have rough sketches or glimpses of things in your mind as you're role-playing in the character's present moment. But, we really took an entire episode to look, with no blinders on, at his past. And it's a tragic past, and he's a product of abuse and trauma. He has been traumatized and caused trauma.
I'm thankful every day that we have the level of attention and care in this show to really strike the balance with his story, because he's dripping in sin, but he's one of our main characters, and we have to want to follow his story. And luckily, we are gifted to work with each other and with so many talented artists, writers, musicians, and composers that it was just finely, finely tuned. I can't wait. I'm dying to see the world's response to it, to the show, and to this story.
And finally, the magic in The Mighty Nein is something that really sets it apart from what we see in The Legend of Vox Machina. How was it bringing the magic from the campaign to life in the animated series?
Taliesin: It was absolutely necessary because a huge chunk of the story of the Mighty Nein is about a brand-new magic. And so, if there's brand-new magic, you have to know it's brand-new. You have to see it. You have to hear it. And we didn't have a ton of complicated magic users in Vox Machina, and suddenly we have wizards, and we have different schools of magic. It was delightful going through and just figuring out what it looks like animated. Jester's amazing magic. I keep calling it, like, the Sailor Moon magic because I loved it so much. And then just every time Travis as Fjord pulls his sword or teleports, you just hear him, like, literally diving into the ocean and then jumping out. It's amazing. It's so beautiful, and it adds so much beauty and color to the world of just allowing magic to be that vibrant and alive and different.
Travis: The animators were like, "What do you want to see in this?" And we're like, "Fjord's very underwater themed. If he could just disappear into droplets of water." Or, as Taliesin said, because he's also very interested in how the sound design for the show is achieved, "Can we have him bursting out of the water or explore, like, waves rolling up on the sand when they crash?" Can we pull certain elements of that even though that's not what it looks like on screen, your ear tells your brain something else when those two things are married, and so getting really granular in that has been some of the most fun stuff.
Matt: We knew at the outset, because magic has such a large role in this story, like the intricate role we have between the introduction of Dunamancy as a force of primal power in the world that's still being understood, Caleb, as a very specific type of learned wizard who is acquiring power with purpose. The Cerberus Assembly and their involvement and their machinations. Magic just plays a very big role in this world. And so from the outset, we were very intentional with how we wanted to express that and how unique it is based on each source of magic and how it interfaces and how people interface with it. So, it was something that we collaborated with the design team and the artists on to realize the visual language of magic in this world.
I also wrote out all the incantations and specified the language for each incantation to each type of magic as it's being done. So they all sound and feel like they live in their specific pockets of arcana. It was a really, really fun puzzle for all of us to put together and work on together. And then to your point, seeing it finally all realized in animation with sound and effects. It's so cool!
Also, for Caleb, Liam set up a lot of it in the main campaign. He was so intentional and so descriptive with how Caleb approached his magic. How could we not honor that and continue that tradition with everything else that we're expressing in this series?
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