The newest episode of Faster, Purple Worm! Kill! Kill! brings together a group of heroes attempting to prove themselves. However, their desire to make a name leads them down a tragic path, and as level-one characters, they have no chance of escape. The newest episode of Faster, Purple Worm! Kill! Kill! stars Todd Stashwick, Luis Carazo, Xander Jeanneret, and Guy Branum, with Kailey Bray crafting the twisted tale as the Dungeon Master.
Faster, Purple Worm! Kill! Kill! brings together all the great elements of Dungeons & Dragons with hour-long episodes spanning comedy, tragedy, heroism, and a surprising amount of heart in each episode. The series was created by Beadle & Grimm’s founders, Matthew Lillard, Bill Rehor, Jon Ciccolini, Paul Shapiro, and Charlie Rehor. The series also features appearances from David Dastmalchian, Aabria Iyengar, Patton Oswalt, Mica Burton, Skeet Ulrich, Anjali Bhimani, Sean Gunn, and more.
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Screen Rant interviewed Luis Carazo about the newest episode of Faster, Purple Worm! Kill! Kill! He discussed his unique take on what a bard could be and why it’s important to him to lean into the pathos of every character he plays. Carazo also shared his desire to revisit his character from Critical Role’s EXU: Calamity, Zerxus Ilerez, and why he created the deep friendship between him and Stashwick in the episode.
Luis Carazo Talks Faster, Purple Worm! Kill! Kill!
Screen Rant: Luis, you are so phenomenal in this episode, but you’re phenomenal in everything, so that shouldn’t be a surprise.
Luis Carazo: Oh, wow. Thank you.
What were your first thoughts when you heard the concept for Faster, Purple Worm! Kill! Kill!, where it’s first-level players going up against these giant big bads?
Luis Carazo: Wow. Well, interestingly enough, I heard about the concept early on because I was part of the group that did live performances at Guild Hall before we went and recorded the actual show. And when I was invited to do the first of that show, I thought, “How is this going to work? How are you going to play a D&D game in an hour? That is impossible.”
And then I realized, I was told, “But it’s like a Whose Line is it Anyway kind of comedy,” and I thought, “Oh, this is not something I typically do.” And then I was intrigued and terrified, and I said, “Yes, of course. Let me do it,” and then I’ve done so many since. But at first I thought I was impossible, then I was terrified, and now I can’t get enough of it and I try to do as many of those live shows as I can.
Can you talk to me a little bit about how knowing you’re going to have such a short amount of story to really flesh out impacts your character creation?
Luis Carazo: Yeah. Well, I first attempted to find a kind of deeper heart to this sort of setup the second live performance that I did at Guild Hall. I thought, “You know what? This might crash and burn, but I’m curious to see if in such a short amount of time, I can make someone care about what happened to these characters, because they all come to a tragic end.” And it is built in, I think.
The game is inviting you to have that because you have these epitaphs at the end where you’re asked, how might your character be remembered, or different things like that. And all I did was just wonder, “Well, what would they want to leave behind? What might they wish they could have had a chance to do?” I just kind of let that sink in and tried to find something that was appropriate for whatever character I built for that Purple Worm episode.
In this episode, we get to see you play Pip the Fairy Bard. But it’s not the typical interpretation of a bard. Can you talk to me a little bit about that element?
Luis Carazo: Oh, man. I have a lot to say about bards. It’s the class that I’ve played the most of out of any of the classes. And I think a long time ago, back and forth edition, I played my very first bard and I didn’t want to do that sort of typical loot-playing, to me, a cliche of a bard, mostly because I didn’t want them to force me to sing at the table.
So I’ve been coming up with out-of-the-box interpretations of bards for a very long time, and in this particular one, I decided that the bardic implement was a hand mirror. I think you can find art in almost anything, and therefore, almost anything can become a magical implement for a bard.
Can you talk about why it was so important to show a character who really wanted people to see their truest self and fullest potential?
Luis Carazo: Well, one of the things that I really love about this game is the opportunity that you get to play characters that are very different from how you are or how you are perceived. I just really wanted to play a character that reminded me of something about Samwise Gamgee, like an essence of Samwise, but then turn it around and change it up a little bit. If you want to see me cry instantaneously, just have me read a Samwise quote because of the way that he just sees the best in Frodo and believes in Frodo and the true love of friendship that he has.
There’s something really magical in that. So I thought, “Well, there’s a bard in that. There is something really magical about the art of friendship, the art of the bond that you have with someone else, and how you can be a true reflection of the best in them back to them.” So there’s a lot of that kind of curiosity behind the character.
I love that. And then I have to ask, because Guy completely threw me off in the episode, and I was so mad for a second. What does that feel like when you’re at the table?
Luis Carazo: I love being thrown for a loop, and I love feeling like I’m barely holding onto something. It’s exhilarating for me. It’s kind of part of this roller coaster ride when someone throws curve balls at you and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I didn’t see that coming. What is really going on,” and your brain, your gears are just turning so fast. I thought for a second, “Wait a second. Are you the big bad in this episode? Are we supposed to fight you?” So I loved it.
It made me feel like just that kind of confusion of, “Wait, what is really going on here? What are you doing? What’s happening here?” It just was so great. He was such a different kind of energy at the table. I’ve never had anybody, part of their “Yes, And” was such a, “Uh-uh, I don’t think so,” and it was perfect. It was so fun to be met with that curve ball again and again. Yeah, I would play with Guy again in a heartbeat. It was awesome.
And then right on the heels of that, we find out the princess you all are trying to save is actually the monster. What did that feel like that you, not necessarily were you going to fight the monster in the sense you expected, but it’s like, “Oh, we’re dinner. Whoops”?
Luis Carazo: Oh, yeah. I know Kailey, and when the reveal came, I was like, “Yeah, that feels very you and delicious in its own way.” If there was more time, I would’ve leaned into it a little bit more, I think. But a great reveal. The whole purpose of the character that I created was to be perfectly primed to rescue this kind of a person, and then to have who they were on the inside be the monster that kills us, it sort of feels like it’s a running theme in some of the things that I’ve done before.
But I love falling into traps, and I love playing really, really… If I’m playing a really good character or a really good-hearted character, I like to see what the consequences of that might be. I’m glad that it played out exactly as it did. It was awesome.
In Faster, Purple Worm, the characters are all doomed, but that is not the first time you’ve played that kind of character. In Calamity, you knew this was not going to end well. And even Candela, there’s a certain expectation that that could be a tragic end for your character. What draws you to this kind of storytelling?
Luis Carazo: Oh, man. Probably my very constant, morbid, existential crisis that I have in a healthy dose every day, where I think I’m really curious about the acknowledgement that our time here is limited. And when you are storytelling with that as a part of the agreed-to reality, it makes…
I think you ask yourself in this fantastical setting, “Well, what would this character want to leave behind,” or “What would this character hold onto as firmly as possible despite the odds that are stacked against them,” and many more reasons. But that is really exciting storytelling to me. I will say, I say all the time, I’m also very whimsical, I promise.
I can attest to this. You are very whimsical.
Luis Carazo: I am. I am. I’m all whimsy. I just tend not to. And even if I’m presented a character that’s like that, I think I’ll end up finding some sort of corner of them that is beyond that just because… I don’t know. It’s just part of what… I like to dig.
Can you talk about creating the friendship between your character and Todd’s character, Pip and Fox?
Luis Carazo: Yeah. So it’s interesting because we have very little prep time and very little conversation before we’re about to go, so I always try to just try to absorb what another character at the table is about, what I’m getting immediately from them and see how I can contribute to it or counterbalance it. And I didn’t realize that I was going to create such an uplifting character, I guess, or someone whose drive was so much about Todd’s character and wanting to help him see a version of himself that his father refused to see.
And it was really unfolding at the table in real time as I started to… The more I heard him just story-tell, the more I was like, “Oh, this is feeding me and changing slightly how my character is engaging.” But the more dark he got, the more dark Frodo at Mordor he got, the more I knew I was going to Samwise it, so I just responded. Todd’s great. That’s all I’ll say to that.
Was there anything from your experience with Faster, Purple Worm that you wanted to bring into future games like DesiQuest and Candela Obscura?
Luis Carazo: I’m trying to think of, what was the order of when I shot all these? It’s like, “Which one did I do first?” I think with Purple Worm, I was intimidated at first, as I said, and I did want to challenge myself to see how much heart I can bring. I was willing to have it crash and burn but try to navigate the pressure, not push it too forcefully, but to challenge this sort of concept to see if it can be not just like a improv comedy where they all meet their end, but to see if there is a way to find some sort of deeper substance to it.
It just kind of helped reinforce, I think, that you can find the heart in a story, when appropriate, I always say, because sometimes it’s not appropriate, but you can challenge yourself to find it. And sometimes it’s worth trying to, even if… It’s worth the attempted failure to find the heart in something, to me. That’s not really answering your question, I don’t think. But yeah, I don’t know. I have to think a little bit more about that. That’s a really good… I don’t know.
You’re telling a tragic story so often, and I think the lives of the characters that we’re playing, their lives matter to them, especially level one characters where they must believe they have such a long trajectory ahead of themselves, that there’s… Here’s what it did. I think it helped reinforce something that I’ve been thinking about, which is there’s all this talk about backstory, and I think as a level one character, and especially in the premise of this with the way that it ends with those epitaphs.
It’s asking you to really think about your character’s future story, the future that they never got to live because their level one lives were ended so abruptly, and now you have this epitaph where you get to talk about how you want to be remembered or what you wanted to do that you never got a chance to do. So I think that it helped me understand that there is such a thing as a future story in our TTRPG games that I think is worth exploring for any character in any game. That’s the answer.
Speaking of future stories, if there were any way to do it, like a one-shot or something, would you want to explore what happened to your Calamity character after he was taken in by the Nine Hells?
Luis Carazo: Hell yeah. All Nine Hells yeah.
I am really hoping we get an animated Calamity miniseries movie or something. All of the Critical Role adaptations have to condense the story to a degree. What is something you would want to make sure stays true with your character in the narrative?
Luis Carazo: I think the core of that redemption paladin, that unrelenting drive to see that anything and everyone is redeemable, whether they know it or not, and his relationship to Elias and Evandrin. There’s also a part of me, because I’ve had a lot of people ask me or reach out to me and tell me in person or online that they’ve introduced Zerxus into their home game, and sometimes they want to know whether they’re interpreting him to my liking. And my response is always, “You get to take the reins. You get to interpret this character.”
I’m just as curious to see how many different versions and interpretations of him might happen in someone else’s home game. So as much as I would like for these aspects definitely to be cornerstones for his character, I’m also curious to see if there is another adaptation, or an adaptation of the story. I’d be curious to see how someone else might interpret what they’ve seen me do, what I’ve created and what I’ve portrayed.
I love watching all of the different shows you’re in, and I cannot wait for more. And I can’t wait to see more of you in Faster, Purple Worm. You guys are great in this episode. Thank you so much for talking to me about this.
Luis Carazo: Thanks. Thank you. And thanks, everybody, whoever’s watching. I appreciate all the support. I’m in three Purple Worm episodes, so I hope you catch them all. Catch all 20 of them.
About Faster, Purple Worm! Kill! Kill!
“Faster, Purple Worm! Kill! Kill!” serves up comedic mayhem with tabletop gaming stars and celebrity guest players, including Seth Green, Anjali Bhimani, Skeet Ulrich, Sean Gunn, Mica Burton, Patton Oswalt and series co-creator Matthew Lillard. Perfect for seasoned gamers and newbies alike, every episode features an improvised, stand-alone story along with epic, hilarious character deaths
Check out our other Faster, Purple Worm! Kill! Kill! interviews:
- Matthew Lillard
- Bill Rehor, Jon Ciccolini, Charlie Rehor, and Paul Shapiro
- Matthew Lillard and Bill Rehor
- Anjali Bhimani
- Aabria Iyengar & Gina DeVivo
- Deborah Ann Woll
- Jasmine Bhullar
- Matthew Lillard on episode 7
- Alicia Marie
- David Dastmalchian
