SPOILERS ahead for Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, now playing in theaters.
I don’t know about you, but the last thing I expected from the Dungeons & Dragons movie was seeing Bradley Cooper as a three-foot-tall halfling and the ex-husband to Michelle Rodriguez’s barbarian character. While Cooper’s appearance certainly isn’t the only celebrity cameo in the fantasy adventure, it’s a curious one, and it actually has a sweet story behind it about two former co-stars reuniting!
Co-writer/director of Dungeons & Dragons, John Francis Daley, is also an actor who has played memorable characters on TV shows like Freaks and Geeks and Bones. When speaking to Variety alongside co-writer/director John Goldstein, about getting Bradley Cooper in Dungeons & Dragons, the filmmaker shared their connection to the actor with these words:
I did a show [in 2005] called Kitchen Confidential with Bradley that only lasted 13 episodes. We had so much fun on that show because the stakes were so low. We all kind of assumed that we were going to be canceled. And, you know, he became a massive, prolific, incredible movie star-slash-filmmaker.
Early in Cooper’s career, the actor starred in a short-lived sitcom on Fox based on Anthony Bourdain’s bestselling book of the same name. Cooper played a character inspired by Bourdain while Daley was a commis chef. The series was not a big hit for either of them, especially since it only lasted one season, but it did mark the beginning of their relationship, and it's what led to them reuniting on Daley’s massive fantasy movie. As Daley continued:
We had thought about a really fun cameo for this part. It was sent to his agent, but I sent him a letter saying like, ‘It’d be fun to play again.’ I got a text from him from a number I didn’t recognize saying, ‘Yo, is this still John?’ And I said, ‘Who’s this?’ Because I’ve gotten weird texts before from strangers. He said, ‘BC from KC.’ I’m like, ‘What?’ ‘Kitchen Confidential!’ I’m like, ‘Oh, shit!’ I immediately called him. He had just seen the film. He called it a triumph, which almost made me cry, because it had been a real long process working on this thing. And he was like, ‘I’m on board. Sign me up.’
Cooper signed on to the film after the movie itself had wrapped production in Belfast, Northern Ireland already. As Daley shared during the interview, it would have been a whole ordeal for Cooper to come on the actual set for a day of shooting with COVID-19 policies in place. Therefore here’s how it went down:
We rebuilt the chair, which was massive. Then I acclimated myself to Holga’s performance. We didn’t want to change too many takes on her side, because we’re really happy with how she played it. But we also wanted there to be some chemistry and rapport between them. And so it was Bradley’s idea that I’d read with him for old times sake. So that’s what I did.
Cooper plays a character named Marlamin, who has a hilarious scene with Michelle Rodriguez’s Holga that involves his character’s feet dangling off a chair as her contrastingly muscled-up frame speaks to him about their dissolved relationship. It sounds like the chair Cooper sat in was huge and blue screens were placed behind him as Daley stood in for Rodriguez for the first scene he shared with Cooper in nearly 20 years. What a sweet cameo story!
While you certainly don’t need to be a fan of the popular tabletop role-playing game to enjoy Dungeons & Dragons, with this cameo in mind, it does help to know that halflings are a fictional race that one has the option to be in the game. They are often likened to hobbits in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings universe.
Now that you’ve seen Dungeons & Dragons, you can check out CinemaBlend’s exclusive interviews with the cast including Chris Pine, Regé-Jean Page and Michelle Rodriguez, also check out our breakdown of how the ending could be setting up a Dungeons & Dragons sequel.
We’ll continue to keep you updated on details about 2023 new movie releases throughout the year.
