The ’Donna, Dungeons & Dragons

To celebrate the digital release of Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Amongst Thieves, we chat with irreverent Aussie comedy troupe AUNTY DONNA (aka Mark Samual Bonanno, Broden Kelly and Zachary Ruane) and struggle to get a word in edgewise…

When Aussie comic trio Aunty Donna lend their dulcet tones to three reanimated corpses in Dungeons and Dragons: Honour Amongst Thieves, it makes for one of the funniest moments in the blockbusting adaptation. Voicing “Yes Corpse”, “Toke Horgath” and “Sven Salafin”, the desiccated deceased threesome are briefly, and hilariously, resurrected to help Chris Pine’s flute playing felon Edgin, Michelle Rodriguez’s ferocious warrior Holga the Barbarian and Justice Smith’s amateur sorcerer Simon on their quest to defeat a gleefully villainous Hugh Grant playing megalomaniac despot Forge Fitzwilliam. We asked the funny guys about their D&D fandom, their undead inspirations and who got to be killed by a bathtub. Here are the results…

So how did you get involved with Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves? Was there stiff competition for the voiceover roles.
Mark: As stiff as the corpses we played.
Zachary: We just emailed. We got our people to go back and forth for a little bit.
Broden: No, that’s not what happened. I’ve been asking our management to be in the Dungeons & Dragons movie for 14 years. Our management kept coming back and saying there is no such thing. Doesn’t exist. That movie is not happening. I kept pushing and they kept saying no. And then eventually, like a few months ago, they went, oh, you can play the corpses.
Zachary: I didn’t realise that.
Mark: Zach and I just got an e-mail.
Zachary: I honestly thought it was just an e-mail about, you know, doing some voiceover work for the Australian release. You’ve been pushing for this for 14 years?
Broden: For a long time. People thought I was crazy, but I thought the way that people are converting IPs into films now, it was eventually going to happen. Eventually.
Mark: Doesn’t that just go to show that sometimes you can work hard, want one thing, focus on it and you can get it. Or you can just check your inbox!

Were you Dungeons & Dragons fans? Had you ever played the game?
Zachary: I’ve never played Dungeons & Dragons before. I’ve played other tabletop games. If you’re a comedian, chances are you’re going to do a podcast, a tabletop themed podcast. But I’d never done Dungeons & Dragons before. And let me say when I watched this film, I realised that it was for everyone. It’s a romp. It’s an adventure. It’s got those references for the fans, but anyone’s going to enjoy Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves.
Broden: You’ve played it a fair bit Mark?
Mark: Almost as much as probably you have.
Broden: Yeah, I’m a fiend.
Mark: But on Dragon & Friends, which is a very popular Australian Dungeons & Dragons podcast, Broden and I have both guested on that. But that’s about the extent of which we’ve done it.

When you prepared to voice the corpses, were there any famous corpse movies that you watched for inspiration? A Weekend at Bernie’s, Return of the Living Dead or Swiss Army Man?
Mark: Yeah, I watched The Notebook, but that was more just to feel something again. It didn’t do anything for my character in retrospect. Bad choice of film, yeah. But I just wanted to feel.
Zachary: I watched Dawn of the Dead, the Zack Snyder remake of Dawn of the Dead, 15 times…
Mark: Well, that’s too much.
Zachary: Fifteen times. And then when I came in initially, I was like one of the screaming, running zombies from that film. And they said no. We’re thinking more just like a fancy British croaky voice accent. I think I watched the wrong one.
Broden: I watched the found footage of the first Australian film ever made, True History of the Kelly Gang. It’s the only remaining footage, about eight minutes left of it. But I watched that and I wondered how this would work with a corpse?

Did you argue amongst yourselves who was going to play what corpse?
Zachary: No, no, it was very simple. Mark doesn’t like doing accents, so he wanted the one with the least words.
Mark: That’s not true. I asked for the one with the most words, and they shut me down.
Zachary: No, that’s not true at all. You’re lying.
Mark: Isn’t it funny how we remember things so differently.
Broden: My memory. You came in with a big sword. And you said, I will play this one. And then the director was like, no. And then they said, you just say yes a bit!
Zachary: I played the goofy one…

You’re the one who gets killed by the bathtub?
Zachary: Yeah. I said to the guys, as the goofy member of Aunty Donna, I feel it pertinent I should play the goofy corpse.
Mark: If you’re the goofy member, what’s Broden?
Zachary: Broden is the serious one.
Mark: And then what am I?
Zachary: [extremely long, awkward pause] You’re crazy.