Brennan Lee Mulligan and Celia Rose Gooding on EXU: Divergence

Brennan Lee Mulligan and Celia Rose Gooding answer some burning questions about Exandria Unlimited: Divergence, the latest mini-series from Critical Role. With Critical Role‘s third season now wrapped, Critical Role has turned to a new Exandria Unlimited miniseries to help bridge the gap and fill in holes about Exandria’s history. The latest miniseries is set during the Divergence, an era shortly after the gods themselves were sealed away from interacting on the mortal plane in the aftermath of a great calamity.

Recently, EN World (via the Above the Table YouTube channel) had the chance to speak with DM Brennan Lee Mulligan and cast member Celia Rose Gooding (also of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds fame) about recent EXU: Divergence events. Due to the limited time available for the interview, we chose to dive right into some of the big questions about recent episodes and also the upcoming finale. Below is a transcript of the interview, with some edits made for clarity and conciseness. A full version of the interview can be seen on YouTube:

EN World: So what do you think Nia thinks about the Gods being reborn as mortals? What would she think about that?

Celia Rose Gooding: We see in the third episode of our series how shocked and confused she is. I think we’re coming off of a point where Nia has been given a lot of information about the world that she’s inherited after coming off of a really, really just chaotic and apocalyptic time. So to hear that the Gods can be found and form relationships in mortal form, I think it’s in time. I think Nia will find the beauty of it. But where she is right now in our story, she’s still just trying to take it all in.

Brennan, we’ve done the math and we’re like 99.5% positive that you’ve played the most gods of anyone on Critical Role. Do you have a favorite?

Brennan Lee Mulligan: My favorite is Asmodeus and it’s not close. Wrap it up.

No, I think that I love the Gods. They’re so fun to play. The price you pay for infinitude is singularity. Meaning that the thing about the gods that is so fun to play them is the idea of to be infinite, you have to be a single aspect. So what your infinite truth is singular. The moon weaver is love and moonlight and trickery and that only exclusively, infinitely forever, right? And so it’s fun to play these gods in aspect because it allows you to examine facets of the human experience to their utmost. And in the same way that it’s good for you to isolate muscle groups when you’re working out, it’s good for you to isolate parts of your personality when you’re meditating. You’re thinking about self-improvement, you’re thinking about being a more ethical person.

So there are parts of the gods that I love because it’s focus on that to the exclusion of all else and see what revelations come to you, which is just the way of talking about archetype. It’s tarot, it’s all of it. It’s archetype. This only but forever. And the devil, the good ol’ Lord of the Hells, there’s something in this game that I love.

I’ve talked to Matt a lot about this. Matt doesn’t play favorites, but if he did, I think he loves the Chained Oblivion. I think Matt’s mind goes towards the alienness and the evil of the giant roiling void. The thing that is beyond comprehension. And for me, I feel like I’m back to back with Matt and my eyes are on a very different thing, which is the intimacy and humanness of the evil represented by the devil. Ooh, it’s so human. He hates you because he sees what you and he see each other in the other and it’s not good.

Brennan, you’ve done three stories now that talk about how the gods caused chaos and death and destruction when they’re present on Exandria. Do you think that forcing them all back to becoming Exandria’s mortals who will eventually regain their memories, do you think that’s a happy ending or do you think that’s a nightmare scenario or both?

Mulligan: I will say that what I think it is above all else is an incredible story choice. Doing something new is always frightening because what if it’s different from how it was before? And to reference the devil again, we prefer the devil we know to the devil we don’t often to our own great expense because in the same way that the grass is always greener, the brimstone is always redder on the other side of the fence, on the other side of the lava pit.

But it’s very fascinating to me is what we see in aspects of the gods throughout this. And I think for me, the different ways you see them in these chapters. The Prime Deities are almost totally absent from the story of Calamity. Calamity is really about how mortals can absolutely naughty word up the world. Obviously the Betrayers are the cause and fault of the Calamity unfolding, but certainly mortals helped it get back there. We see the choices that mortals make to unleash those evils back on the world.

Downfall to me is a meditation on if the horror of the Betrayer’s success in Calamity and the horror of the Prime’s failures or inability, getting to a point where one by one other choices are peeled away from them. And that for better or for, and to me, the ultimate criticism of the Primes within Exandria is their refusal to turn their back on the Betrayers.

I know that there are many different beautiful, well-argued points on every side. That’s how you know you’re making good art is if there’s different perspectives on it. For me, the term I always come back to is children. The gods refer to mortals as their children and they refer to their other deities as their siblings, including the Betrayers who are siblings. As a father, let me tell you, if my brother threatened to torture my child forever, I’d kill my brother. And I can be definitive about that in terms of my own relationship to the Prime Deities.

But then we get back to Divergence where we see, if there’s a point or something about it, especially through Nia and Liana and the Moonweaver, that’s almost like the healthiest relationship I can have is to be in my context. If I’m going to be infinite and idealized, let me be in a realm of ideals. Where this gets messed up is when the ideal comes around and has real hands and real feet in a real world.

This world makes you complex. This is the real world where complexity reigns. You can’t be what your ideal self is while you are crushing stuff with your big feet. There’s almost a beauty in, and this is my interpretation, everyone, including Celia, including you, Christian, everyone’s going to have a different take from it. That’s what art is. But for me, the beauty is I came to the world to be real, to show that the eternal could love the finite. And now as I go back to the eternal, this bond remains as far apart as we are. I’m thinking about an American Tale, literally singing to the same Moon.

Celia, what was it like you got a Critical Role t-shirt after making one appearance, that’s got to be a new record? How does it feel to be embraced by the Critter community and to really get the coronation treatment on day one, so to speak?

Gooding: I feel really, really spoiled. Truthfully, it is a theme of my life. If you look through my career where a lot of experiences that I just didn’t think I was going to have access to fall into my lap. And then I have to do the really hard thing of learning on the job as the things are going. The audiences that see me are often seeing me learn and process and understand what’s happening just as they are at the same time.

I remember the quote on the t-shirt “change is coming and I am change.” I remember going home and being like, there were so many different ways I could have raised that. Then, to turn around and to see that it was so well received, I thought this is so much bigger than me. And it goes back to the themes that we’re talking about of infinite and finite.

As an actor, all I want to do is tell stories that sit with people and stand the test of time. But in Critical Role, we don’t get many takes like you do on tv. You do it once and that one time is finite. And I just feel really fortunate and really lucky to have a one-off choice that I made in an environment in which I only want to do well and keep up with my peers. I feel super honored. The Critical Role community, the Critter community. They are so open and friendly and creative. The fan art that’s coming out of it, I’m blown away. I am just really awestruck and soaked in gratitude. That’s exactly how I feel.

We have time for one more question for each of you. Celia, what type of D&D character do you think Uhura (her character from Star Trek) would play?

She’d be a bard, but I think as she gets older she’d probably get some rogue energy in there. I think she gets very playful and very sneaky and she has a lot of these hidden talents that I think rogues often do. I mean she backhanded George Takei/Sulu on the bridge of the enterprise. I don’t know if that’s bard behavior. That’s definitely rogue-ish.

Brennan, final question for you: What do you think has happened to all the souls that were in the god’s realms now that they’re gods are mortal and back on Exandria? Are the souls still floating out there? Are they existing somewhere else?

Mulligan: Check it out. Poké Balls, okay. All the souls, they all become spheres. They’ve been captured and now you have to go in. Obviously the souls of mortals, your family would want to go collect those and keep them in a nice place in their house. Who’s that Pokémon? It’s grandma. And so there’ll be shrines with the Poké Ball version. But the celestial servants, so angels and then devils. Those also have to go somewhere. And I think those are the ones that people start to catch with Poké Balls and then have them fight each other. And that is the next great chapter of Exandria.

The finale of Exandria Unlimited: Divergence airs this week on Critical Role’s various streaming and video platforms.