The original “Critical Role” campaign had a rather simple casting process; the voice actors were already friends playing in one of their homes. As the show grew, they had guest stars come in, mostly other actors and friends of the cast.
When it came to “The Legend of Vox Machina,” that sentiment mostly stayed the same. As Travis Willingham, a member of the main cast, a writer on the show and also the CEO of Critical Role Productions, told CBR, “Compiling the wish-list was pretty cool. Like, ‘Would this person actually work on this? They’re going to? Oh my god.’ It’s, you know, it’s a dream.”
According to Sam Riegel, another member of the main cast, an executive producer on the animated show, and also the casting director, they mostly tried to reach out to the people they most wanted to see join the story. “Luckily me and my fellow castmates are well-established in the voiceover and animation world, so we had a bunch of contacts, a bunch of friends who are well-established voice actors,” Riegel told Comics Beat. “Putting together the cast of ‘Legend of Vox Machina,’ it involved a little bit of everything.”
For some of the roles they could simply text or call someone they knew, but for the more heavy-hitting actors (the cast includes Lance Reddick, Indira Varma, and Stephanie Beatriz) they had to go through their representatives, lawyers, and clear more roadblocks. Ultimately, Riegel says, it was the unique story of the project that brought major talent to the show:
“We found that it was really compelling to just say how ‘Critical Role’ came about and to show them our passion for the project and how these characters were sort of invented by a group of friends and became something that was much more popular than anyone could foresee.”