A charming thief and a band of unlikely adventurers undertake an epic heist to retrieve a lost relic in the upcoming feature film Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, releasing in theaters on March 31, 2023. You can read my SXSW review here.
The misfit group’s quest sees them taking on a variety of monsters and foes. Still, the most formidable may be the Red Wizard, Sofina (Daisy Head, Wrong Turn), a powerful necromancer.
Bloody Disgusting spoke with star Daisy Head after Honor Among Thieves’ world premiere at SXSW. The actress detailed her research on Dungeons & Dragons for the role, and also discussed developing the unsettling wizard’s spellcasting movements, and how she found humanity in a character who’d given up their soul.
When asked whether Head was familiar with the role-playing game before landing the role, the actress explained how she became a fan through the extensive history and lore uncovered in her research for the part.
“Honestly, I knew very little. I had friends who played it, so I was very aware of what it was and how huge a concept it was,” Head tells BD. “But I kid you not; I had about 17 tabs open in my internet browser as I was doing all this research because it’s what makes it amazing. It goes so far and so deep, and all the characters are just incredible, and it’s still growing. And I did as much research as I could to get into this world because it’s an incredible one.“
To play Sofina, Daisy Head gravitated toward specific elements in her study of the world to build her character – specifically looking into the franchise’s take on wizards.
She explains, “I focused more on my character, so the School of Necromancy and the Living Undead… I thought it was a cool concept. I thought, ‘Okay, but how do I make that? How do I humanize her so she has a depth to it and she’s not just bad?’ So I developed my own backstory based on the fact about the Wizards of Thay and the Kingdom. But I tried to amalgamate the emotional core and her emotional blueprint. I also thought it was an interesting concept. If you are playing someone who is undead and no longer has a soul, does that also mean that they aren’t feeling? Because in the film, she has quite a fiery temper and intolerance of Forge [played by Hugh Grant]. It very much to me suggests that she falls victim to emotional duress. Perhaps she is stuck in one of her emotions that she was most hijacked by as a living soul. That was a really fun thing to play with, too.”
The Red Wizard gives a mean death glare and doesn’t engage in conversation often; her expressions and physicality reveal who Sofina is. That’s especially the case when conjuring spells. Head breaks down how she developed her character’s movement and body language.
“I worked with an incredible movement coach, and we developed the kind of spells specifically, and I wanted it to feel majestic,” she tells us. “But I wanted real strength and power, and it comes from within; it isn’t just a gesticulation with the hands. I wanted to utilize that and embrace a strong core and strong foundation for it to come out. Aside from that, I was like, ‘I want there to be kind of an animalistic quality, just something subhuman about her.’ I know I just talked about it emotionally, trying to humanize her a little bit. But I thought, ‘Well, hang on, how about if I think about this from the perspective of how animals engage with each other?’ I just developed some subtle head movements, and fixed eye contact was something that I tried to achieve.”
Head was so successful at maintaining fixed eye contact that she impressed co-star Michelle Rodriguez.
“There was actually one scene at the beginning. It was my first day on set and meeting Michelle and Chris [Pine]. I was just locking eyes, and I literally didn’t blink for one of the takes at all,” she explains. “Michelle tried to have a staring contest with me, and she was like, ‘I don’t know how you do it. That’s insane. You’re not blinking.’ It was a lot of fun to play around with that stuff.”
The actress also spoke about finding empathy for her antagonist. “I feel like in any character I play, there has to be some redeeming aspect to them,” she notes. “Good and bad, it’s not black and white. There has to be a reason for the reason the way someone is. I leaned into that, and that’s why I developed this backstory, why she’s so focused, and why she’s so intent. I came from a place of not being fulfilled as a child and feeling neglected and alone. So when she decided to become a Red Wizard, she had nothing left to lose, ultimately.”
See the necromancer in action later this month.
The post ‘Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’ – Meet Villainess Sofina the Necromancer [SXSW Interview] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.