Murphy's Multiverse

Tag: Crossing Swords

  • EXCLUSIVE: Luke Evans on Redemption for King Merriman

    EXCLUSIVE: Luke Evans on Redemption for King Merriman

    Amongst the colorful cast of characters in Crossing Swords, it’s pretty obvious early on that they’re all very bad people. The show is ultimately about a young man named Patrick who is clawing his way through the mud, trying to be the best squire and future knight that he can be. Of course, under the heel of King Merriman, though, it’s a bit harder as he’s just an awful ruler. 

    While making the press rounds to promote the second season, we had the chance to talk with Luke Evans on his character, King Merriman. During our interview, we asked if he felt there could ever be redemption on the rise for him, specifically after botching Chill Society, a gathering of royals from around the lands that hosted by a different king each year. For Evans, the actor doesn’t think it’s going to happen as he’s just a bad person overall.

    Redemption? He’s going to hell, that guys going to Hell. Yeah, he’s not living on the same planet as everyone else, he thinks he can get away with anything and sorta does. He is like the worst kind of King, the worst kind of leader. The wrong person with power and money and ego. You know, I mean what he does in season 2, I can’t even start to begin to imagine what you will be thinking of him by the end of episode 10.

    That’s the fun of it, you have to have someone like King Merriman in a story like this. I mean he sorta just fits the bill in all the wrong ways, and I think that’s where the joy of him comes from and the fact that you laugh at the things he’s saying. You shouldn’t really be laughing at those things, but isn’t that the fun of adult animation?

    Luke Evans

    Those that have watched the series, of course, will note Evans is right in his description of King Merriman. He’s a terrible character that doesn’t deserve redemption, and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

    To get more of Evan’s boisterous performance as King Merriman, make sure to check out season 2 of Crossing Swords, streaming now on Hulu.

  • EXCLUSIVE: Luke Evans on Developing the King Merriman’s Persona

    EXCLUSIVE: Luke Evans on Developing the King Merriman’s Persona

    Perhaps one of the strongest aspects of Crossing Swords is its voice cast. The roster of talent features the likes of Nicholas Hoult, Seth Green, Tara Strong, Yvette Nichole Brown, Tony Hale, and Luke Evans. One of the biggest shocks of the series was Evan’s work as King Merriman, whose voice work in the series is almost unrecognizable until the credits begin to roll and the realization hits.

    We recently had the chance to chat with some of the cast behind Crossing Swords and asked Luke Evans just how he went about developing the character of King Merriman and commented on just how unrecognizable he was in the role. For Evans, it was fun for him getting to figure out how he wanted to present this absurd character. In fact, there were various versions he went through before landing upon the crass King we now from Crossing Swords now.

    Well, thank you, I’ll take that as a compliment that you didn’t know it was me, that was part of the challenge, I think. Well it’s, I got to see an image of him when I said yes and they send me a couple of pre-vis images of Merriman, I then went through and they said “you can do what you want, you can try anything, come with lots of options and we’ll choose one that fits.” I narrowed it down to probably like three or four, one was British, one was cockney, one was very well spoken and upper-class.

    But the one that fit was, I mean, cause you know Nick Hoult is British and he’s doing this American and I thought well maybe I should find some sort of rough, cigar-smoking, heavy-drinking, gravely sounding voice and then you know I saw this character come to life with his little mustache that moves and I was like “Oh, okay yeah that fits,” you know?

    Luke Evans

    We previously spoke with the creators of Crossing Swords on what made them initially want Evans for a role, and how he landed it. As they previously teased, Evans was always on their radar for the role because his work on Robot Chicken. Evans surprised the heck out of them with just how much of himself he’d thrown into such a ridiculous role, that they were determined to work with him more going forward.

    Season 2 of Crossing Swords is streaming now on Hulu.

  • EXCLUSIVE: Tara Strong Wants Coral to Kill Everyone and Take Over in ‘Crossing Swords’

    EXCLUSIVE: Tara Strong Wants Coral to Kill Everyone and Take Over in ‘Crossing Swords’

    Voice actress Tara Strong has played plenty of powerful and dangerous characters in the past, but never one as violent and vulgar as Coral on Crossing Swords. As one of the protagonist siblings, Coral often takes the backseat but is always given some sort of plot-line throughout the seasons, being a pirate and all. Sadly, the character has never truly been given her time in the limelight, as it isn’t her story. Strong, however, has a few ideas on where she would love to see her character move on in the future.

    We recently had the chance to talk with the voice actress about her character and the upcoming second season of Crossing Swords. We were curious just where Strong would like to see her character go and how she would love to see her character progress, and didn’t hold back with her answer.

    I think she should just kill everyone and be queen. Hello! She should be running the show, she’s the smartest.

    Tara Strong

    Following up on this question, as we highlighted how incompetent the current royalty is in the fictional peg world of Crossing Swords, she gave the following response:

    Yeah, they’re ridiculous, Right! she needs to take over. She just needs some dragons and needs to go all Khaleesi on everyone, you know?

    Tara Strong

    Her direction for Coral is definitely a creative one, but wouldn’t seem too out of character for her. Of course, it seems unlikely that the creative team would kill off all their characters, but they might take a creative root with her character taking over in a future season. It would certainly add an interesting new dynamic to the show and mix things up for our colorful cast of characters.

  • EXCLUSIVE: Yvette Nichole Brown on Bringing Her Character to Life in ‘Crossing Swords’ Season 2

    EXCLUSIVE: Yvette Nichole Brown on Bringing Her Character to Life in ‘Crossing Swords’ Season 2

    Crossing Swords has a ton of characters, who are all so different and unique in their very own ways. As such, the kingdom is full of oddballs, and we’re not just talking about the Royal family. one of these citizens is played by Yvette-Nichole Brown, who many are familiar with for her work on series like Community, Drake & Josh, or even her cameo in Avengers: Endgame. She also isn’t a stranger to voice roles either, and Crossing Swords might have the actress in her most vulgar performance yet. We had a chance to talk with Yvette Nichole Brown on the upcoming second season and got to ask her in what kind of headspace she is to bring such an outlandish character to life.

    I mentally decided that she speaks like a Baptist preacher. So, she’s always, you know, just about to take you to the mountain top every time she speaks. The problem is: there’s no substance to what she’s saying. So, she’s giving it to ya, and she’s giving you the fire, but she’s talking about monkeys and craziness and pubic hairs, all kinds of stuff that you would never hear in a church or anywhere. So, I like the dichotomy of that, that she’s speaking with purpose about things that don’t matter. So, that’s how I found her.

    Yvette Nichole Brown

    As a follow-up, we asked how Brown would like to see her character progress in the series, and gave the perfect answer for someone like Sgt. Meghan.

    You know, I kinda love that she pops in when you least expect. […] I kinda feel like shes coming off of vacation. She just pops in, right? She’s always either about to go on vacation or coming back from vacation. So, she misses most of the shenanigans and she comes in right before crap is about to hit the fan and she tries “a little bit” to make it better. So, I think she’s in it about enough.

    Yvette Nichole Brown

    Brown‘s presence in the show, while it may not be a huge role, is definitely a memorable one. She does perfectly summarizes how her character plays into the story and she’s always a blast once she enters the screen. Here’s hoping that in a possible third season we’ll get a lot more from Sgt. Meghan.

  • EXCLUSIVE: Tom Root on Patrick’s Journey as A Squire in ‘Crossing Swords’

    EXCLUSIVE: Tom Root on Patrick’s Journey as A Squire in ‘Crossing Swords’

    It’s rare for adult animated comedies to put in the work to develop their characters, but it’s not all that uncommon. Crossing Swords is one of those shows that tries to fully develop all of its characters. However, it’s the protagonist, Patrick, that really gets the most development in both seasons of the show. 

    In an exclusive interview with Tom Root, one of the creators of Crossing Swords, we talked about developing Patrick’s story for the series. As far as Root sees it, Patrick has a couple of paths as far as his story goes, either he’s going to become the hero or he’s going to become the greatest villain. As it stands, Patrick’s journey is still being written.

    “Well, he’s going down the path he needs to go down because he’s still learning. He found out in Season 1 that being a Knight and chasing this dream would mean that he’s gonna have to make a lot of compromise, and in Season 2, he’s gonna find out just how far those compromises are gonna push him. Like, we think that he is going to find a breaking point down the road, and he’s either going to have to figure out a way to become a hero without compromise, or he’s going to snap and become the greatest villain in the entire land. We haven’t written that part yet.

    Tom Root

    Root’s tease of Patrick possibly traveling down a much darker path in the future would be an interesting development in the series. Since Season 1, Patrick has been the stereotypical boy scout, who tries to be the best he can be in his own occupation. Even Seth Green agrees that Patrick traveling down a darker path wouldn’t be an unwelcome surprise.

    I mean evil Patrick, or Patrick breaking bad, thats not necessarily the worst pitch

    Seth Green

    Season 2 of Crossing Swords is streaming now on Hulu. The series was created by Tom Root and John Harvatine IV, with Seth Green serving as an executive producer.

  • EXCLUSIVE: John Harvatine IV and Seth Green On Developing the Unique Animation Style in ‘Crossing Swords’ Season 2

    EXCLUSIVE: John Harvatine IV and Seth Green On Developing the Unique Animation Style in ‘Crossing Swords’ Season 2

    In a world that’s become almost infested with adult animated comedies, it’s becoming harder and harder to stand out amongst them all. The first show to really present a unique style was Robot Chickens’ stop-motion animation style. Robot Chicken writers Tom Root and John Harvatine IV definitely took a page out of that book when developing Crossing Swords, with the show’s unique style revolving completely around peg people, and pushing the limits with what they could do with this limited style. 

    We recently had the chance to chat with Root and Harvatine about the upcoming second season, and one thing we were curious about was the show’s animation style, and how they went about improving it and trying out new things.

    I think this season what was fun and what we were looking to do was more practical effects, like more in camera stuff. We really liked last season how we used fiber-fill and hot glue, and things like that. This season we pushed it, we did even more of it, so I think visually going into the season we really wanted to do as much in camera and as little in the computer as possible, so that was something we wanted to do and I think we achieved.

    John Harvatine IV

    Executive producer and voice of Blinkerquatz, Seth Green, added a bit more on how they evolved the animation style of the series.

    Also we were able to use a lot of the motion control rigs to get some far more dynamic cinematography then we’ve had before.

    Seth Green

    Using peg people to make a series is not an easy task. However, Crossing Swords continues to push the envelope on its animation style. Fans will be able to see more of what Harvatine IV and Green mean when Season 2 of Crossing Swords drops on Dec. 10, exclusively on Hulu.

  • EXCLUSIVE: Tara Strong on Bringing Coral to Life on ‘Crossing Swords’

    EXCLUSIVE: Tara Strong on Bringing Coral to Life on ‘Crossing Swords’

    Perhaps one of the most notable voice actresses working in the industry today is Tara Strong, who is best known for her work as Raven, Harley Quinn, Batgirl, Ben 10, and even Bubbles from the Power Puff Girls. But with all of her roles, she’s rarely taken on one as raunchy as Coral, the ruthless pirate sister of our protagonist, Patrick the squire.

    Ahead of the release of Season 2, we recently spoke to Strong about her character’s return in the upcoming second season of Crossing Swords. One question we couldn’t help but ask Strong was how she brings the swashbuckling maiden, Coral, to life.

    Well, whenever you’re doing a different character its a completely different headspace, because you are coming at these characters from an actors perspective, so you have to put yourself in their bodies, in their universe. So, the process is pretty similar but the spaces are all unique to their world and certainly Coral is part of a world that is much more irreverent and adult then most of the other shows that I do. So, to get to be in a studio and swear and talk about highly sexualized experiences is unique to anything else that I’m doing right now, but its a lot of fun.

    Tara Strong

    Following up on that previous question, we asked if there were any previous roles from her ever-expanding roster of voicework that she pulled from to bring Coral to life. Unsurprisingly, Strong noted that each character is its own creation, so she tries to approach them as their own entities, rather than drawing on her previous work.

    That’s a good question, I don’t think so. I don’t know that its a past character. You know, whenever there’s a new audition or new character they’ll give the actor a drawing of the character, a small character description, sides from the show, and maybe a show bible to let you know who they’re talking to in the world that they exist in. Then I create that character based on the information I’m given and what I think production would most like that character to sound like, so she’s really her own entity that only exists in this world.

    Tara Strong

    Fans of both Strong and Crossing Swords can catch more of Coral when Season 2 hits Hulu this Friday.

  • EXCLUSIVE: ‘Crossing Swords’ Creators on How Luke Evans Landed King Merriman

    EXCLUSIVE: ‘Crossing Swords’ Creators on How Luke Evans Landed King Merriman

    Possibly one of the strongest aspects of Crossing Swords is its ensemble cast and its distinctly different and colorful roster of characters. Each character seems so well cast with certain actors in the series unrecognizable in their roles, specifically Luke Evans in the role of King Merriman. Merriman is the greedy, sleazy, and corrupt leader of the kingdom who is so grotesquely full of himself.

    Perfect casting like this is no easy feat and Evans as Merriman is stellar, one of the best parts of the series. In our interview with the creators, John Harvatine IV and Tom Root, they shared just how they knew the actor was perfect for the role.

    “Seth will remember this, but the reason I knew I wanted Luke on this show in any capacity, we wrote a sketch for ‘Robot Chicken’ where the Creature from the Black Lagoon performs a Van Halen number ‘Hot for Teacher.’ I can barely remember why it makes any sense at all, but if you remember that video, the video is so iconic from our generation and it was so funny to us, the idea of The Creature from The Black Lagoon in the David Lee Roth role, but essentially Luke gave life to that creature and put his entire soul into that singing and made it a great sketch and we were like “Luke Evans did that?!, this ridiculous, stupid sketch?” we gotta work with this guy more”

    Tom Root

    Those who’ve seen Crossing Swords will know just how into the role Evans gets. Merriman, and his wife, are crude characters with no care about anyone other than themselves. Evans seems to enjoy the role, getting lost in this ridiculous character so much so that fans hardly know it’s him. And Season 2 of Crossing Swords takes things even further for both Merriman and the rest of these absurd characters.

    The second season of Crossing Swords, hits Hulu on Dec. 10.

  • REVIEW: ‘Crossing Swords’ Season 2 Fails to Capture the Uniqueness of Season 1

    REVIEW: ‘Crossing Swords’ Season 2 Fails to Capture the Uniqueness of Season 1

    The first season of Crossing Swords introduced audiences to an interesting new take on the raunchy adult animated series. Inspired by Robot Chicken, John Harvatine IV, and Tom Root took what they’d learned on the adult-oriented cartoon and applied it to this series, with an original project set in Medieval Times. The second season sees the return of Patrick the squire, still on his own personal quest to become a knight, and it’s when the show focuses on this plotline that it shines. Unfortunately, though, this season often feels astray and distracted when it decides to follow a linear path whenever it feels.

    The show’s most defining feature is probably its cast, which features the likes of Nicholas Hoult, Luke Evans, Seth Green, Alanna Ubach, Tara Strong, Tony Hale, Tara Strong and Maya Erskine. The cast is truly at their best this season. In fact, some of them are unrecognizable and seem to have become lost in their roles. This is particularly true of Hoult, Evans and Erskine, who are the standouts once again. It wasn’t until the episodes concluded that I was able to comprehend the actors behind the voices.

    I just wish the series used these characters to their full potential, with Patrick being the only character to get proper development in the series. This is where things begin to feel disjointed. Crossing Swords feels like it’s trying too hard to separate itself from another adult animated series by randomly deciding it wants to tell a linear story. The show quickly tries to wrap up the said story up and throw viewers right back onto an aimless path. The one-off episodes begin to lead up to a little story-arc, and this is where the show starts to get really interesting and felt like it wasn’t dragging for once, but it quickly wraps up the short burst of story development and throws you back into the outlandish nonsense that the series survives on.

    The series will have its moments and, if there’s a line they won’t cross, they have yet to stumble across it. Some jokes hit as they’re supposed to, and the humor is there, unfortunately, though, it’s missing the heart that many other animated series like this have. Crossing Swords feels as if the gas tank was low, so you decided to fill up, but then realized there was a hole in your tank and you’ve lost all momentum. The series ultimately feels as if it’s coasting by on its vulgar humor, but the act gets old fast. 

    Crossing Swords often feels like a modge-podge between Robot Chicken and something Like Rick and Morty, and could truly be something special and unique, but it doesn’t feel committed enough. The cast and distinctive animation style are some of its saving graces, but without a solid story, it can feel about as alive as its old king.