Fearless forecast from Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves producer Jeremy Latcham: Michelle Rodriguez’s Barbarian warrior Holga Kilgore is “going to be someone fans will really fall for.”
MICHELLE RODRIGUEZ (HOLGA THE BARBARIAN)
Famed for her work as Letty in the Fast & Furious films, Rodriguez possessed the charisma and the athleticism to play an unstoppable warrior who is supremely skilled in combat. On the battlefield, Holga’s inner rage takes over, giving her almost superhuman strength and resilience. “Michelle has this inherent toughness that she brings to the table,” Latcham says. “She’s just a badass.”
Although Holga is formidable, lethal, and intimidating, above all, she is deeply loyal to those she loves. When the film opens, Holga and her best friend, the bard Edgin (played by Chris Pine) are locked away in the notorious prison Revel’s End. Although the duo had once been the leaders of a merry band of well-meaning thieves, their circumstances changed dramatically after a heist had gone wrong.
“He’s like her brother in a sense,” says Rodriguez of her character’s relationship with Edgin. “She’d never admit it, but when you’re shunned by the world and you find acceptance somewhere, it’s a beautiful thing.”
The two lead a scrappy band of unlikely heroes – including a paladin (Regé-Jean Page), a sorcerer (Justice Smith), and a Druid (Sophia Lillis). Together, they undertake an epic heist to retrieve a lost relic, but things go dangerously awry when they run afoul of the wrong people.
SOPHIA LILLIS (DORIC THE DRUID)
As a Tiefling, Lillis’ character Doric has curved horns that sprout from her skull and as a Druid wields magic derived from nature. “Her go-to forms of combat are her slingshot gauntlet and turning into different animals,” explains Lillis.
She’s also the group’s truth-telling shapeshifter. “With all these people who blow things up and make horrible plans, you really need one person there who’s just completely deadpan, saying, ‘This makes no sense,’” Lillis says. “Doric, the way she was written, she’s a really fun character to work with because I got to be that deadpan person.”
Although Tieflings are typically loners, Doric was taken in as a young child by a group of wood elves, a race now under threat by Edgin and Holga’s nemesis Forge (played by Hugh Grant). And that is the thing that ultimately motivates her to sign up with Edgin, Holga and the rest of the gang. “She would do whatever she can to protect them because they helped her when she was a kid,” says Lillis, herself an experienced D&D player. “Tieflings usually are independent, but she really wants a family. She wants a home. So when these bunch of idiots come to her and say, ‘We want to take down Forge,’ she goes along with them, and it ends up being something more.”
THE HEART OF IT ALL
Pine, who is also one of the film’s executive producers, has nothing but high praise for the characters and cast of the film. At the heart of it all, Pine notes, is the camaraderie and comedy that develops among a memorable group of characters who truly come to care about one another as the eclectic members of a found family. “You have a story about a ragtag group of people that are going up against immense odds and immense nemeses and very much looks like they’re not going to be able to succeed,” he says. “This is a fun film. This is big, emotive great old-fashioned moviemaking.”
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, distributed in the Philippines by Paramount Pictures through Columbia Pictures, opens nationwide March 29. Connect with #DnDMovie and tag @paramountpicsph.