Actor Matthew Lillard (“Cross”) has revealed how he got his role on “Daredevil: Born Again.” And it’s the oldest trick in the Hollywood playbook…he plays Dungeons & Dragons with the showrunner.
In a town full of seedy casting stories, leave it to Lillard to have a wholesome one.
“I can talk about “Daredevil” a little,” he told The Los Angeles Times. “I played Dungeon & Dragons with three incredible showrunners. Dario Scardapane, who runs “Daredevil,” Matt Nix, who’s doing the new “Baywatch,” and then Elwood Reid, who does “Tracker.” I’m their dungeon master.”
“We play with Abraham Benrubi, this beautiful actor, a dear friend of mine. … Dario brought me in to play Mr. Charles [on “Daredevil: Born Again”], who’s like a CIA spook,” Lillard explains. “He’s a guy that controls power from afar. He helps nations rise and fall, but he’s very clandestine. He is not impressed by the powers of [Vincent] D’Onofrio’s character [Kingpin] at all. He and I get into this really delicious struggle over power. It’s good. It’s fun.”
D&D and Spirits
The actor is so into the RPG that he founded a spirits company based on the game.
“I started a Dungeons & Dragons company six years ago now called Beadle & Grimm’s,” says Lillard. “Somebody approached me about building a spirits company around Dungeons & Dragons. For me, what I heard in that was like, “Hey, build a luxury item for niche communities that people don’t always respect and know and understand.” My experience with Beadle & Grimm’s was very clear. They will come out and support it.”
“So we created Quest’s End Whiskey,” he continues. “Quest’s End is a 16-bottle drop over four years. Each bottle is a different character class, but each bottle delivers a new chapter of an ongoing saga. We sold out in the first two weeks. In a week, we had 25,000 people on the waiting list to purchase that first bottle.”
“Carrie”
Lillard also talked a bit about his role in the upcoming 8-episode “Carrie” mini-series. The project is being developed by serial Stephen King adapter, Mike Flanagan, for Amazon MGM Studios.
King’s novel has had 3 film adaptations, plus a sequel to Brian De Palma’s first version.
“Everyone knows the story. “Carrie,” pig blood, all that. But that De Palma version only uses certain specific aspects of the book,” Lillard explains. “The thing I’m excited about is that Mike Flanagan pulls in elements of the book that are not necessarily in the first film, and then adds headlines ripped from today’s day and age in terms of bullying and things we’re seeing in social media and all of that. So he’s giving it a new lens to look at what bullying looks like for kids today. I saw the first three episodes — the entire cast gathered at a screening room — and it blew me away.”
Before shifting to gushing about his co-stars.
“Summer Howell plays “Carrie,” and she’s incredible, and Sam Sloyan plays her mother. There’s three basic parties. There’s the kids, there’s the parents, and then there’s the faculty. I play the principal at the school, watching the entire thing fall apart around them,” he adds.
There is no release date set for “Carrie” just yet. But you can catch Lillard on season 2 of “Daredevil: Born Again,” premiering tonight on Disney+.
