Transcript of From Writer’s Room to Princess of Atlantis: Rose Reid’s Pendragon Journey

But what I still wanted to tell you, my niece is fighting the studium. Semester-betrag, laptop, books, software, mobile, internet. A Master is really expensive.

Tell her, she can take it back.

You mean from a tax-subset, right? But she doesn't deserve it.

No matter. The magic word 'Lustvortrag' makes her just simply with 'visosteuer'. And if she then works, it means, 'caching'.

That's possible?

Safe. 'Visosteuer'.

Get your money back.

Now, try it for free.

Ma'am Magda, may I see you data? Please do not drive me away again. Allow me to go to him freely so that I may return freely. This is more bitter to me than death. No, you cannot bind me to you with false feeling. I'm dying here, Father.

That was a scene from the new Daily Wire+ television series, The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin, featuring actor and writer Rose Reid, who plays the pivotal role of Karras, the young mother of Merlin.

In this episode, we sit down in studio with Rose to discuss what drew her to the project, what it was really like behind the scenes, and how she hopes the show will impact the culture. I'm Daily Wire executive editor, John Bickley with Georgia Howe. This is a weekend edition of Morning Wire.

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Joining us now in studio is Rose Reid, one of the stars and writers of the new Daily Wire Plus series, The Pin Dragon Cycle. Rose, so great to have you in studio. Thanks for coming on.

Yeah, I'm so excited to be here. It's so cool to get to finally meet you both.

You too. I'm a little star struck. We've got screens. People don't know this at home, but we have screens all over the office that are just playing pin dragon scene. So you're all over the place.

Yeah, that's a little alarming for sure. I was walking through the cafeteria there and was like, Oh, that's the bull sequence. Okay, cool. That's always a little unnerving.

Yeah, here I am injured badly again and again and again.

Yeah. It's a little nicer, though, because I have a very different hair color. So I feel like I'm flying incognito with slightly darker hair right now. So that makes me feel like I'm one of the cool celebrities with the sunglasses.

Yeah, and built-in protection. Look, it's an epic series. And I'm curious. I have a bunch of questions for you, but I'm curious what it's like to step back and look at yourself in a series like this. I mean, this is big. You've done a lot of projects, but this one seems like in terms of scope, maybe the biggest you've on, right?

Yeah, definitely.

What is that like for you? What is it like seeing yourself on the screen in this form?

Well, it's very... I feel like alarming isn't really the right word to use to say seeing myself on screen in this form, but it's definitely a very cool thing. I'm a huge fantasy nerd, and so especially as a writer, I've always wanted to write fantasy. Getting to come on board and not only write, but also act in a very high fantasy show has just been really incredible and very daunting. There were a lot of fears and challenges going into it, but I'm very grateful that I got to be part of it. But still, it just... There were some growing pains for sure on this one.

You said daunting, and it was. When we first announced internally that we were taking on this project, I personally was like, We're going to pull off a high fantasy series when you have compete with things like Game of Thrones. Were there fears for you that we're not going to be able to actually do this?

I think I was a little delusional going into it. We had Dallas Sonye, who I was like, wow, man, he's such a pro. He's worked with the best and really can create incredible things with very little funding and very little resources, and he can just create a masterpiece. But then I did get to see a little bit of how the sausage was made and be like, oh, okay, this is There was a lot more work going into creating these masterpieces that were made without the amount of resources that Hollywood typically gets and the amount of funding that Hollywood typically gets. That funding was replaced with manpower and creativity, which ultimately was such an incredible experience, and I got to wear more hats than I would have been able to wear otherwise. I'm very grateful for that. But yes, going into it, I was maybe a little bit more than I am now.

Well, speaking of wearing many hats, I don't know if a lot of you were to know just how many hats you wore. What were your roles aside from starring?

I was also a writer on season one and a coproducer, which basically just is a fancy term for meaning that because I wrote, I got to have, I guess, the title coproducer. But I'm also very grateful that Dallas and Jeremy gave me the opportunity to be on the production team and get to learn a little bit about producing. It is a part of the world that I want to step into at some point, so I'm very grateful for that.

You have a writing background, obviously, and you've written on some other projects. What was it like the Writers Room? I remember hearing about this getting constructed, and then you guys would go back into the secret Writers Room and all that stuff. What was that process like for you?

It was so cool because I was very young. I still am youngish, but I was very young going into the writer's room and was very new to writing. I'd only written a couple of screenplays before and only had a couple of them produced. And Being a writer on it was another daunting part of the process because I was writing with these incredible writers who had sold so many scripts. Even one of my mentors, in a way, Ryan Whitaker, who I worked with on a project and who wrote one of my favorite screenplays, getting to work with him and be a peer to him around a table was absolutely terrifying. It took me a while to actually speak up in the room and say, Wait, hold on, I have an idea for this. I was the only female writer as well. That was at first a little scary because, like I said, all the other men in the room, I was like, You guys all have so many more credits than me. But everyone was really welcoming and in a way that didn't feel condescending or anything. Being very young, I was expecting that to be part of the process.

But no, it was just really... I would go back and do it all over again. It was very stressful because when you work on a project like this, there's a lot of excellence that's demanded of the writers and of everyone on the team. But it was absolutely worth it. I feel like the pressure did really mold us and created us, hopefully, into diamonds. We'll see what viewers think. But, yeah, ultimately, it was a great experience, even if it was very stressful at first.

It was a tight turnaround. You guys got on the road quick. In terms of the auditioning process, what came first in terms of the writing versus which role, particularly, you played?

Yeah, that was a very long process, actually, because I was hired as a writer to just be a staff writer in the room. As we got further into it, and the more I learned about the character, Karras, the more I really fell in love with her, and the more I started to realize that Dallas Sonier always has a plan and that he had originally said, Do you want to act in this show? I said, No, what I'd really like to do is write. At that point, when he first asked me, I hadn't read the books. I wasn't familiar with the character. By the time I did read about the character, I ended up falling in love with her, and she's a very unique character, so I really pursued that. There were discussions of maybe I would play someone else, maybe it wouldn't be this character. Ultimately, we all landed on her, and I was the one who ended up being like, Okay, yes, I really want to play this character. She was very special, and I've never gotten to play a character like her before. But yes, writing came first, which was very odd, ultimately, because you write something being that poor actress who's going to have to go do that, and then it's you, you're the poor actress who has to go do that.

Jump in legs and jump over bowls and things like that.

Exactly. Speaking of the jumping over bowls, which we already mentioned, that's an epic scene. I think what was going through my mind is, how did you train physically to get in the shape to do that? How much of the stunts were you? Just to get the physique where it needed to be, what did you do to prepare?

It was a lot of time that went into it, but I'm very grateful that Dallas and the production team and everybody gave me the time and opportunity to do that and gave me the resources I needed to train for that. I was not a track athlete going into this, so I had to learn how to. The biggest thing Jeremy wanted to make sure happened was that I was able to do as many of the stunts as I could as we needed to make it look realistic on camera, which just meant a lot of running. He was like, You've just got to be able to really-Wash Tom Cruise.

That's how you run.

True. He actually brought that up a lot, which we did not nail that. But other than that, it's fine. He did great. But he really was just like, You're going to be running a lot on set. We're going to be running a lot in this arena, and you've just got to be able to have the stamina to do it, really. That was the main thing that we really focused on was having the cardio strength to be able to hang in there. Man, I could have run a marathon back then, and now I'm wheezing after a mile. We need to maybe get back into that routine a little bit. But yeah, that was a really-So you weren't an athlete going into this? Not really, no. I mean, I played volleyball, and that's generous to say that I played volleyball.

What about the horseback riding? You have a farm, right?

Yes, I do have a farm. I do have a farm. This is something I could talk about all day because I love horses. I do have horses. I have four of my own. Horses was that aspect of it I was very excited about. Getting to swing up on them and ride bearback in a couple of scenes and stuff like that was so much fun. Just getting to goof around with our horse wrangler, we really had some of the best stunt team horse wranglers that we could have asked for. That's something else that I really credit to yes, Dallas, but also just the production as a whole, because we brought the best of the best people from Andras and Attila, who made the costumes and the wardrobe, to the actors like Daniel Fathers. He was incredible. The horse team, everybody truly, truly were the experts in their fields, which just made us all feel very safe, even in situations when it's very dangerous stunts.

How were the elements in terms of filming locations? You're on top of mountains half the time. How was that? Was it cold? Was it harsh?

Yes, all of the above. But it was also very immersive. I think that that was just what we really had to lean into. I've made this joke several times that we shot for about six months. We shot in summer, fall, and winter, pretty much, and/or bits and pieces of each. When we were shooting in the tail end of summer, I was running around in my frilly dresses, and I was like, This is so great. All the boys are in their furs, and I'm in my... I've got sleeveless shirts on and it's great. Then, of course, December rolls around and you're still in your sleeveless and you're still in your frilly dresses, and the boys still have their first. The boys are way happier than I was. But it was very immersive. When you get in the lake and you're meant to be cold and uncomfortable because this guy is spying on you or whatever, you think he's spying on you, you get to lean into that as a character. When you're dealing with a very emotional scene in the pouring rain in December, you get to lean into that discomfort and lean into that pain.

Being in the mountains of Trentino and being in the wind and everything, and we were shooting in a cloud one day, it was really incredible. Getting to do that, it's so easy to let the cameras fall away and just step into the scene and be the character. So yes, it was not fun sometimes, but it was very good for the characters.

When you do discuss this, maybe with friends, in terms of the story, what drew you to it the most? What is it? What do you think? What is the most powerful element of this series?

I think that probably second chances. All of the characters, or most of them, experience some form of redemption and having to, to use a phrase from the show, go back the way you came. That's true of my character. It's true of of James Arden's character, Talieson. It's true of Merlin. It's true of so many others in the show that they're given a second chance. I think that that's a really powerful message to me because I've made plenty of mistakes, and I would love to go back and change them and have the opportunity to move forward without them weighing me down. I think that that's a beautiful message to be giving people is that you don't have to keep walking in the way in the direction that you're going. You can make a change. You can have that to write that wrong and be a better person and all the things, yada, yada. But that was the strongest message that I got from the books is that you can write the wrongs. You can have that redemption. Yeah, that really spoke to me in the scripts as well.

Okay, so aside from Pendragon, what are your favorites or what is your favorite?

Oh, my gosh. Okay, well, I've just recently gotten obsessed with Red Rising, and I am loving these books right now. Harry Potter is also obviously a huge one. I only got interested in Harry Potter, actually, more recently. I wasn't a huge Harry Potter fan growing up, but growing up, it was Star Wars. It was all of the whole Star Wars universe. I was a big clone wars girl and anything. Basically, any Star Wars spinoff I was obsessed with. I just think it's so interesting, the other languages and coming up with rules and cultures and how does this... Often, they are unintentionally metaphors for our society and stuff. I think it's so interesting. Also Dune. I love Dune. Dune's incredible. Dune's incredible. Have you read the books?

Yes. The first Dune is the best sci-fi book of all time.

It's so good. How do you feel about the second movie? Which one's better, Dune 1 or Dune 2?

Dune 1. The reason I think this, no one's going to want to hear this. Hot take. The problem with Dune is the worldview that takes over, that is built in from the beginning, is very dark and very fatal. Realistic. And so you realize it more and more as you watch that movie. So the second movie, you're realizing, oh, my gosh, where this is going is very dark. It's not what you think. It's not a Judeo-Christian perspective. It's not a good perspective on a Messiah. And that's true of the entire series. I've read all of them, and they get darker and darker. So I love that I can have some hope and optimism in the first one.

Yeah, that's so fair. I think Yeah. My hot take is that that's why I love Dune, too, is because I think I love a good anti-hero. I don't know. I'm going to really out myself here, but I don't know if you guys have seen Attack on Titan, but it's an anime. It is-I have watched half of that. Yeah. It's the same thing where it goes down a dark path. But I think it's, oh, man, I think the dark ones are the most beautiful, though, because they touch a part of your soul that you didn't think anybody else saw. There's something in that being seen. I do think that that's part of Merlin's story in the Pendragon cycle is that he goes to some dark places. I think that there's something about showing those dark places that he goes to that really makes people feel seen. And so that's part of the reason I, I don't know. I like Dune, too.

Well, I'm glad you brought that up. I do think part of the reason the Daily Wire and Jeremy Boring is drawn to things that he feels and we feel are true to life, true to human psychology, resonate with people, are not rose-colored glasses, are not putting a little beautiful shine on something that actually is dull and dark. And I think this series does that. In terms of adding to the canon, so the follow-up question to the bigger picture you love fantasy, do you feel like this book series, now this TV series, adds to the fantasy fantasy canon in any significant way?

I think so, because I think that you're taking... In a lot of ways, it's historical fantasy, which I think that we don't see a ton of. So yes, I think that it's... I hope if I can be a little grandiose, I hope that it does contribute. I love the historical aspect of it, that these ideas, that these myths that are true. I think that that's something that I really was drawn to about this, and I'm sure that this is something that some people will struggle with, but I loved that we portrayed some of the old gods. I thought that that was so cool to portray them. I the designs that our special effects artist did, just from a creative standpoint, they were incredible. It's beautiful, yeah. Yeah, just really spectacular. I think that just from a historical fantasy standpoint, I hope so. I think that If nothing else, I think that we created something that did feel very authentic and did feel very gritty, as you said, that doesn't cast any rose-colored glasses on things. But I also think that we did it excellently. Yes, of course, there are things that I watch, especially in my performance or whatever, and I'm like, Oh, man, I wish I would have, or I wish I wouldn't have written that line that way, or whatever it was.

There's plenty of things that you always think you can do better. But as a whole, I'm so proud of this team, and I'm I'm so proud of the producers who pulled it off, and the production quality, and the performances. Fingers crossed, I hope it becomes somewhat canon.

We do, too, and I think it will. It really is amazing. I'm excited for people to see it. Thank you so much for joining us.

Yeah, thank you both so much. Thank you.

Thank you both so much. That was Rose Reid, one of the stars and writers of the new Daily Wire Plus series, The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin, available now on the Daily Wires website and app. And this has been a edition of Morning Wires.