Matthew Lillard will be best known to many of you for his iconic roles in Scooby-Doo and Scream, but he's also the co-founder of Beadle & Grimm, one of the world's preeminent creators of premium boxed editions for tabletop games.
Now, though, the actor and Dungeons & Dragons/RPG mega-fan is gearing up to release Quest's End Whiskey, a super-premium whiskey targeted to fantasy fans. Joining him are screenwriter Justin Ware and Blue Run Spirits co-founder Tim Sparapani. They've also enlisted fantasy illustrator Tyler Jacobson (Magic the Gathering) and renowned game designer Kate Welch (Dungeons & Dragons).
The whiskey itself is a super-premium blend of aged barrels from Kentucky and Indiana, but what makes it really unique is the fact each bottle features artwork designed by Jacobson alongside an all-new fantasy saga written by Welch. It's not just a drink; it's an experience.
You can learn more by clicking here, but earlier this week, we had the opportunity to speak with Matthew about both this passion project and his upcoming D&D show, the imaginatively titled Faster Purple Worm! Kill! Kill!
During the course of our conversation, which you can check out in its entirety below, the actor talks in detail about his fandom, what led to the creation of this unique new super-premium whiskey brand, and what RPG fans can expect from the company's upcoming drops.
Rather than being one of those celebrity brands with an actor's name slapped on the site, Quest's End Whiskey is clearly made by fans for fans, and that alone makes it unique. With the SAG-AFTRA strike ongoing, we didn't get a chance to ask Matthew about his extraordinary career, but if you're a fan of whiskey, RPGs, or both, then you'll love this...
Before we get to Quest’s End Whiskey, for our readers who will know you best from what’s proved to be an awesome acting career, what was it that led to you co-founding Beadle & Grimm’s and getting involved in this RPG world?
Beadle & Grimm’s is a high-end Dungeons & Dragons accessory company we created about 5 years ago. We’ve now branched off and are doing all different kinds of games and RPGs and are expanding into other board game areas. It was a little bit of a mid-life crisis. I’m an actor and, as such, I tend to wait for other people’s permission to do my job. I’ve been an actor since I was a little kid. I started acting when I was 13, not professionally, but that was when I started doing it in high school and then college.
I’ve been doing the same thing for a long time and then five years ago, four of my best friends…we’ve been playing Dungeons & Dragons since we were 21 and we’re now well over 50 and we had this moment in life where we decided to try and do something different. We started out with one SKU and we’re now up to 250 and ever-expanding. All my partners have now left their careers to work full-time in the company and the goal is to feed their families and grow old with it. That’s not where I wanted to be in the day-in, day-out position there, so I decided to start something different and that’s how we came up with the idea of Quest’s End. For people who don’t know, it’s a high-end premium spirit experience for different fandoms and with Find Familiar Spirits, Quest’s End will be our first drop.
When it came to this whiskey, did you look at this as a means of merging two of your passions into a dream project of sorts?
It’s definitely a dream project. We’re an RPG-inspired whiskey and I’m a grown-ass man who certainly drinks his fair share of spirits, but that’s not my passion. My passion really is fandom. I saw an opportunity, similar to Beadle & Grimm’s, where we could deliver a premium experience to specific fandoms that I think people love. The way to celebrate the thing you love most in the world can often be celebrated with a glass of champagne, a beer, or a whiskey. It just made absolute sense, so for me, my connection to it is about the fandom. It’s about creating premium experiences for niche communities. The RPG space is a $2.2 billion-a-year industry so it’s not niche, but not a lot of people are out there creating luxury goods for geeks. I think there’s a real sweet spot there.
Of course, this isn’t just a great drink to enjoy while playing, it includes artwork and even its own fantasy quest; can you tell us a little more about what to expect from those?
You can go out and buy, direct to consumer here in the United States, a bottle of whiskey that will come wrapped in bubble wrap and stuffed in a big brown box, right? It can be a $200 luxury good and it comes like a normal package. I always thought, ‘That’s great, but we can definitely deliver a high-end whiskey experience and, on top of that, create an unboxing moment. A saga that went along with the brand.’ Right now, I have the first bottle sitting on my desk because I stare at it every day as we’re building the company, but every single time we deliver a bottle, we want to give something else to that community which makes it feel like a special moment.
There are sixteen drops planned. There are sixteen different bottles coming to market and each of them has a different character and a continuing chapter in the ongoing saga. For example, this is our Paladin bottle and, as we come into the world, we meet one of our heroes, and she’s a Paladin fighting for her freedom in the Gladiator pits. That’s how we first find this world and we start to journey with her as she goes through it. The next drop is Rogue. The drop after that is Warlock and then comes Dragon. Each one of these drops has a different chapter of the story, a different flavour profile, and a whole new whiskey experience.
I’m really intrigued as well by the fact you’ve tweaked the blends of each whiskey release to match the characters - beyond the fun of sampling those, what did that process involve?
Great question. The reality is [Laughs], we’ve assembled an incredible team. It’s myself, my partner Justin Ware, and Tim Sparapani who just sold his company, Blue Run, and he’s great. The three of us brought together a collection of advertising professionals to help us build the brand and the company and then we brought together this collection of incredible icons in the RPG space. Kate Welch is the writer of our story. She’ll continue the journey all the way through. And Tyler Jacobson, who is a modern master of fantasy art, is doing all the illustrations and art. He helped design the bottle. The two of them and us as a group are telling this story and it’s an incredible artistic collaboration. We’re all working together to shape the story before Kate goes off and writes it and then Tyler illustrates it because each whiskey comes with, not a graphic novel, but a story and art book.
The third piece of that trinity is Alé Ochoa, our Master Blender. She’s a rising star in the spirit world and is very gifted. This is her passion. Very early on, once we established who our first character was and explained what a Paladin is and her spirit and what she’s about, and then Alé went out and curated all these samples from the wholesale whiskey market and from that, blended what she felt is an articulation of this character. That’s Paladin. With Rogue, she again went out and curated her taste for that. That’s going to continue. Warlock isn’t until the second quarter of next year, but we’re already building that and are talking about barrel ageing and stuff. As we move forward, we’re building a journey of flavour and a journey that’s just as diverse as our heroes.
Even the shape and design of the bottle I thought was really cool - how long was it from this being an idea to making it a reality? It looks like you all really wanted to get this right.
It’s been maybe a year and a quarter. We just started blending the whiskey last week. Our bottles, which come from France, landed yesterday. We’re still waiting on stoppers from Portugal. There are all these moving parts and putting them all together has been exhilarating. It’s a different side of my brain and I’ve been using a different set of tools as a person to try and lead and collate all these things to happen. We have an incredible team on board. Everyone is super passionate about it and we’re all excited. We’ve gone all over the place, making mistakes and figuring things out as we go but one of the exciting things about the company is that both Justin and I come from the filmmaking industry. He’s a screenwriter and I’m an actor. Our whole idea is, ‘Can we utilise the movie studio model?’
So, Quest’s End is our fantasy-themed whiskey and we believe you can make different spirit experiences with different fandoms. So, like a movie studio, you’ll have your blockbuster, your Academy Award nomination, your horror movie…all these different pictures. We intend to do the same thing, finding different fandoms and creating spirit experiences to directly appear to that fan. I think there are a lot of brands out there who are using fandom as a mechanism to sell units and they’re capitalising on people’s passions to make money. We are as well, but it’s different. We’re speaking specifically and directly to fandoms in a way that’s authentic and trying to provide them not only a premium whisky experience but also deliver something else on top of that. That’s what we’ll continue to do. We’ll continue to add depth and speak to fandoms in authentic ways to create premium experiences so they can experience however they want with a spirit that’s built for them.
I can tell from speaking with you and from the details released that this isn’t one of those drinks that’s just slapped a celebrity name on it, it’s a true passion project. How important was it to you to make this not just a drink, but an experience for RPG fans?
It’s funny because it’s such a thing right now in our industry. When you see the success of George Clooney or Ryan Reynolds…the celebrity list goes on and on. There has been a push in the press or with these conversations that this is another one of those celebrity brands which is hilarious. I am, by no means, Ryan Reynolds or George Clooney in terms of being a worldwide icon. It’s scary for me that my name is associated with it in any way because if we were building it just on my name or reputation, we’re doomed for failure [Laughs]. Maybe not doomed for failure, but it’s a very different thing. What we’re constantly holding on to and our north star in this endeavour, from day one, has been the fandoms. How do we authentically scratch an itch for those fans? And how do we make it exciting in an authentic way?
There is no experience without the fans. We’re not just going to go and make a $50 bottle of whiskey to sell it. If you go to one of these big alcoholic beverage stories in the US, there’s 150 yards of whiskey, floor to ceiling. We can’t compete with that. We can’t compete with the giant names and juggernauts of the space. Our only way to create, not an identity, but to make this entity profitable is to find fans, hone in, and continually build something for them that speaks to the fandom that resonates. Within that, we can find success. We don’t want to be the whiskey in the world. We want to be the biggest whiskey in the RPG space. We want to continue to do that across multiple platforms, and multiple verticals. You know, maybe we’ll do you a Spider-Man vodka!
To grow up a fan of D&D and now be an ambassador for that franchise and to take an active role in fleshing out an RPG world of your own…how does that feel from not Matthew the actor and businessman’s perspective, but Matthew the fan?
It’s so good. I started playing as a kid and, for me, there was a real element in my life of being an outcast. I was an obese teenager with a severe learning disability. I had braces, glasses, and my life wasn’t that awesome. There’s something about the RPG space and geekdom and the universe we’re living in…in general, you’ve been considered an outsider in life and then something comes along that you attach to that ends up having more value and meaning to you than other things.
I think fans, like me, of the Manchester United football team, when you see another fan, there’s a fellowship there. You go to a bar and high-five a fan who likes the same team, but in geekdom, and in fandoms where you’ve been considered an outsider, there’s a depth to it that’s different to other fandoms. I’ve been an outcast to someone who is celebrated in my chosen passion, I’m super proud. It’s very different from being the guy from Scream. That’s great but that’s my job. I’m proud of that movie and my career and I love it, but I’m not connected to…well, I am connected to Scream as it’s my identity in a lot of ways, but it’s not as emotional. Not like how I’m connected to this space.
And finally, something I’m sure a lot of our readers will be wondering - what’s your go-to race or class and do you have any dream opponents? I know a lot of your fellow actors really love this world...
[Laughs] So, my class of choice is always a Druid. I’m not somebody that likes adding damage or blasting from afar. I like to play cunning moves or shrewdly by being a little sneaky. Doing simple things instead of just adding damage. For me, I like Druids and I like to shapeshift and I like that, something I’m passionate about, they’re connected to the Earth. There’s a passion there and a moral code you can live to. I like that a lot.
My company, Beadle & Grimm’s, has a new TV show which I can talk about even though we’re striking as it’s not a struck company so I’m allowed. This show, Faster, Purple Worm! Kill! Kill!, and there are 20 episodes of TV coming out and we invite all kinds of people: Patton Oswalt, Seth Green, and more, and it’s an incredible cast that’s incredibly diverse. The whole human tapestry is at the table. Each episode is one hour long. It’s Whose Line Is It Anyway? meets Dungeons and Dragons, so it’s super fun and oddly emotional at times. It’s an incredible opportunity for people to find the game and a great ambassador for the game. You can fall in love without playing. Each table is different and each game is different, but at the end of the day, each show is unique. Our hope is that the show continues to find success and we’ll continue to open the door for the world to find this incredible game.