“I was a kid running around in the streets of Tustin, California, with buddies of mine. We would play football, war games, make movies, and then at some point, my buddy’s like, we should play this gameDungeons & Dragons,” actor Matthew Lillard tells me. “I started playing when I was like eight or nine, but stopped in high school when being cool mattered.”
Since Matthew Lillard’s self-described “nerdy” childhood, he co-founded the beloved tabletop company Beadle & Grimm’s, starred in one of the biggest slasher series, Scream, played one of the most popular characters in the already enormously popularScooby-Doo, and will soonplay the villain in Five Nights at Freddy’s. I asked what it was like to be on the other end of the fandom world, experiencing it from a new point of view.
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“I don’t really think about myself in the position of these fandoms, I feel like I’m just a fan of these same things,” Lillard says. “I acknowledge and understand the power the original Scream has over generations, and I respect and love it, but it’s not something I ever would have imagined in my life. But here we are, 25 years later, and it’s still relevant. More relevant now than it’s ever been.
“It’s not like I seek that out. It’s just something that happens. And I think there are two ways you’re able to live with that. You are either humbled by it and grateful for it, or you demand more from it. And I am certainly hopeful that I’m the first, not the second.”
Lillard has since branched out beyond acting and directing into the world of entrepreneurship. In 2017, he founded Beadle & Grimm’s with his friends Bill and Charlie Rehor, Jon Ciccolini, and Paul Shapiro. Through this company, the group would collaborate with D&D andMagic: The Gatheringfor Neon Dynasty, Commander Legends: Battle For Baldur’s Gate, Behold New Phyrexia, and Wilds of Eldraine, as Lillard carved out a new community in the world of tabletop.
This year, he’s launching a whiskey for D&D fans under a new company called Quest’s End, which even comes with its own original stories and maps. However, before all of these new tabletop ideas bubbled into their own businesses, Lillard spent decades simply playing D&D with his close friends.
“I started playing again when I was 21,” Lillard says. “I played with a group of guys who I started a company called Beadle & Grimm’s with, and I’ve been playing ever since. I’m 53 now, so from 21 to 53… that’s 32 years we’ve been playing together as a group.
“When I play D&D, for me, it’s about sitting around the table and telling a story with my best friends. I would rather do that than just about anything. That, my kid playing soccer, my other kids acting, going on a date night with my wife. That’s myjoy.”
Much of that joy has carried over into working with Beadle & Grimm’s, as Lillard tells me how much stronger the bond between him and his friends has grown over the years thanks to this collaboration.
“They’re the best,” Lillard says. “We’ve started a theatre company together, we’ve gone through marriages, we’ve gone through losing parents and having kids. These men helped make me the man I am today. I was an actor when I was 13 years old, I starred in plays. I didn’t become a professional until Serial Mom much later, but it’s the first time in my life where I’m using a business acumen I never knew I had. At 53 years old, I’m doing something totally different and new. It’s thrilling and exhausting and exciting, all at the same time.”
In November, Lillard is launching the first Quest’s End product, Paladin, a whiskey with flavours rooted in the characters content director Kate Welch wrote. Beadle & Grimm’s is also launching a legendary edition of D&D’s Phandelver & Below: The Shattered Obelisk adventure that comes with mindflayer figures and a delve intothe Underdark. Perfect timing if you’ve been enjoyingBaldur’s Gate 3.
This all stems from a long, deep-seated love of D&D that stretches all the way back to when Lillard was just eight years old, building on a hobby that has shaped his childhood, adulthood, and now, career. As he puts it, “It’s the best way to spend a life.”
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