Critical Role has not just built out an incredible fantasy world over the course of a decade but also crafted heroes as renowned as the world they have saved. Some of these heroes fall into the more classic archetypes of fantasy heroes like Vox Machina. However, others fall into more morally gray and distinctive versions of protagonists like the Mighty Nein and Bells Hells.

Jester is not just a member of the Mighty Nein; she is in many ways the heart and the glue of the party. She connects with people wherever she goes, making friends with not just allies, but often times with individuals that are initially more antagonistic of the group. One of the characters she unexpectedly connects with is Isharnai, although this connection is a bit more duplicitous than others.

In an exclusive interview with Temple of Geek, Kiri Callaghan discusses Jester’s impact on Isharnai. She explains how Jester’s actions opened Isharnai’s mind to understand joy and misery like never before. Callaghan also breaks down how “Delicious” shows the mindset Isharnai had in the aftermath and how it motivated her actions in the Fjord and Jester wedding at Radio City Music Hall.

Jester Was Isharnai’s First Friend

Temple of Geek: I think you’re completely right about her feeling this friendship was real. I actually want to circle back to what you said about this kind of being fake, what Jester did, because I almost don’t think it was, because it was something I’ve talked to Dani about, like Jester’s everyone’s first friend. That’s how she introduces herself to the world. And then the other piece to me, what you did with this where it made me go, “I don’t think Jester was lying,” is that she gets someone to deliver another cupcake.

Kiri Callaghan:

Yeah, she does. It is in there.

Temple of Geek: She’s still doing things. I wouldn’t be shocked if she kept messaging Isharnai like she does with other random people that she’s met.

Kiri Callaghan:

Absolutely. I think the only lie is the fact that she planted that initial, we had the best time and you enjoyed my company. That’s it. Is that initial icebreaker, which I’m not saying that’s it, I mean, obviously you could get into the kind of moral and also ethical about the idea of altering someone’s memory in that way. But I don’t know. It’s interesting. It reminds me almost of theater. Technically it’s a lie, but it’s a lie in order to tell the truth. You know what I mean?

Temple of Geek: Is it a lie if you felt it?

Kiri Callaghan:

Exactly. It’s a kind of theatrics that might, if you boil it down as true, that didn’t happen, but it was based in something that is real. And so it almost doesn’t matter that that didn’t happen. If she had the ability to open herself up and actually receive that friendship in a way that didn’t get twisted, absolutely. Like you said, I completely believe she continued to occasionally send, I don’t know, not forgive me cupcakes, but be like, “Hey man, we still cool, send cupcakes.” Yeah.

Jester Forever Changed Isharnai’s Understanding Of The World In Critical Role

Temple of Geek: Yeah. I mean, because it was kind of what you said, where Ishanai doesn’t have the tools or the emotional capacity to really approach or deal with any of this. If she did have just even a tick more of them than she does now, do you think this would’ve changed her for the better versus where it broke her even more badly maybe?

Kiri Callaghan:

I think it’s a crossroads. There’s so many different ifs. I don’t know if it’s a matter of if one other thing happened or whatnot, but maybe if the fight hadn’t happened in the garden after or da, da, da, or if she had actually, or potentially if, I apologize, I cannot say either of those characters’ names. I did not choose them, which is no slight to that. Viracheios and Erythiona. But if maybe she hadn’t been that whole time doing her own scheming, maybe that could have been a moment. I think that there’s always, it’s like a roll of the die. There is a chance, absolutely, that could have been the start of an entirely different path for Isharnai.

It’s not how it went down. But I’m also a firm believer that nothing’s set in stone either. I mean, obviously things will not be getting better now. But another time, another life, she is the prism sage. That idea of maybe this outcome, because that’s her whole point is, I think I got to reference it, but I’d asked Matt about why is she called the prism sage? And it’s that she had been given that name after she showed this guy basically all different possibilities of the paths he could take with this prism. And then after that, it’s like, okay, he escaped the badness, but then his children got all the stuff that he escaped. But that idea of the multiverse of there are so many paths she could have taken and maybe one of them would not have ended this way.

Temple of Geek: One of the things that I thought was really cool and kind of unexpected was this moment where Isharnai almost had this admiration for the Mighty Nein. And it was this thing where I was like, oh, that’s really interesting. Because again, it may have been tied to these feelings that she’s having for the first time of joy and loss and everything. Why was that something you wanted to include in the story?

Kiri Callaghan:

One, because that idea of getting that taste of companionship and going, what might that be like? But also to feed that idea of when she’s looking at her coven and this idea of, man, we did some cool fucking shit together, but we were never going to. And she’s probably right. It was probably going to break up because they’re all three of them pretty volatile and definitely need to go to therapy if that was a thing that Exandria provided for supernatural beings. But despite the fact that yeah, it probably would have crashed and burned eventually.

It might not have in the way that she went about it, but also that idea of seeing this group of very, very different people come together, become more powerful as a result to the point where before she sprinkled the dust, Jester’s like, “I’m going to give my hands. I’m going to literally no longer have hands and not be able to grow them back or anything for the rest of my life and give up drawing and all the other things she loves to do with her hands, just so Veth can look like a halfling again.” Or Beau who was like, “I’ll sever myself again.” And just seeing this, man, what must it be like to have someone who’s got your back that much?

Because when you’ve got, I mean, if you’re that kind of a lonely creature and you’re just constantly used to having to look over your own shoulder and you’re crafting, every time you make a deal, you’re crafting it very carefully because you expect everyone to fuck you over. How could you not look at a group like that, that should not work. Because you’ve got so many different backgrounds and kind of envy it. They don’t have a sliver of that Hag’s magic and yet look at all they managed to do. And I feel like she’s probably, and I think he did mention in one of the things, she’s probably kept an eye on the group because she’s able to do that.

And how that must have just been every time she checked in something that festered in her. Just this idea of how. How. And honestly, probably fed that idea of Jester’s everyone’s first friend, she’s the glue. That idea of if I have Jester, not just if Jester is my friend, but if I have Jester, then I can have that too. As if it was just an artifact that I now could have the power of. No. So yeah, that was very much that thought process of really hitting home that loneliness and how much she doesn’t understand what goes into that or how to make that.

“Critical Role: The Mighty Nein – Stories Untold” is available now. The book includes stories written by Betsy Aoki, Kiri Callaghan, Dani Carr, Mae Catt, Mike Chen, Rin Chupeco, Nino Cipri, Nadia El-Fassi, and Chase K with a foreword penned by Taliesin Jaffe.