D&D’s Regé-Jean Page says playing Diablo, JRPGs made him an actor

The weeks leading up to filming Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Wizards of the Coast copywriter Sarra Scherb gathered stars Regé-Jean Page, Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Sophia Lillis, and Justice Smith and directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein around a table for a special D&D one-shot about a party being chased across a bottomless chasm by a sentient drilling machine. Obviously.

Everyone played as the character classes of their characters in the movie — Page as a paladin, Pine as a bard, Rodriguez as a barbarian, Lillis as a druid, Smith as a sorcerer, and Daley and Goldstein as… a two-headed bird creature. Page said that they found a rhythm immediately.

“We were all playing our characters, feeling that vibe, seeing how you could push the other characters, what kind of energy they bring to it — [D&D] is just an improv game for actors, you know?” the actor tells Polygon. “And learning that if you do something crazy, you’ve got Chris Pine sitting next to [you], he’s going to take that ball and run with it, he’ll throw it across the table, and you’ve got Michelle Rodriguez to knock it out of the park. […] That’s what we rolled into set with, the idea that if we were having a good time, if we were being creative, if we were inhabiting this world in that spirit of fun, that’s what we wanted to come out of the screen at you.”

Image by Paramount Pictures/eOne

Page, at the moment is the definition of a posh lead man. After breaking out as the much-desired Simon Basset on Netflix’s BridgertonThe 34-year old actor from English-Zimbabwean was instantly picked up by Ryan Gosling to be a star in the film alongside Chris Evans. Gray ManThe speculation circle saw him as the obvious choice for James Bond’s reboot. His Honor among ThievesPage’s character, the far more holy-than-thou paladin Xenk Yendar is another dashing role. However, it offered Page more screen time with Tabaxi baby tabassi babies and swordplay than any of his other roles. (Unless they missed them in Gray ManWe will correct it if necessary.

His past encounters with action spectacle are not his present. Honor among ThievesProfits from Page’s charisma and light-footed style that has made her a huge star Bridgerton. He also has the chance to earn some cash for his years of gaming experience. If there’s any confusion, Page is — and we say this with absolute love — a big nerd. When we mention his time playing Diablo, Page instantly flashes back on his childhood fighting hellspawn and falling below Tristram.

“I lost like half of my adolescence to Diablo,” he says. “Diablo was the crack of my day. I lost a Lot of overnight sessions to that game.”

Page says he was drawn to the Diablo series because he loves “things that free up my mind and my imagination.” And wouldn’t you know, his Diablo 2The paladin was the class of choice.

Photo Credit: Aidan Monaghan/Paramount Pictures

“I liked that mix between support classes and hero classes,” he says with total authority. “I liked that I could do a little bit of healing, a little bit of support, a little bit of buffs, but also I could kind of run out in my armor and do a little bit of hack-and-slash. I like to have my cake and eat it.”

Page was more than a single-franchise child. He was a multi-lingual kid, moving from England to Harare in Zimbabwe to London to attend drama school. However, Page worked hours on many foundational JRPGs. Breath of fire Chrono Trigger, the Final Fantasy games, Lufia — “just whatever I could get my hands on,” he says. “These are the hours of my youth. This is what forged me.”

Page was forged in the fires of late-’90s/early-2000s gaming, and today carries that institutional knowledge to the set of Dungeons & Dragons. According to him, the Diablo Games had a profound impact on the way that he thinks about and approaches roles. Honor among Thieves included.

“It’s just learning that everything is: How can you create the most fantastical and unusual world to share with an audience? How do you encourage your imagination to create the kind of world that brings joy and delights an audience? That’s the heart of this movie. What that background gave me was knowing that Dungeons & Dragons isn’t about dragons or magical swords. Yes, that’s all there, but it’s about the feeling you have when you’re gathered around a table with your friends and this crazy stuff happens that no one outside of that room will ever understand again, but that you’re laughing and talking about it for weeks afterward. If you get that feeling in the audience, that’s what we’re shooting for.”

With Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves locked and ready for theaters, there’s only one big question left: Will Page play Diablo 4It drops in June

“I’m steering clear, man,” he says with a hardy laugh. “I’ve done my time. “I got a job!” I gotta hold it down.”

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves On March 31, the movie will be in theaters