‘Widow’s Bay’ Star’s New Fantasy Series Was Inspired by ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ and ‘Dragon’s Lair’

• Collider's Steve Weintraub chats with the team behind Paramount+'s Golden Axe.
• Creators and EPs Mike McMahan and Joe Chandler are joined by stars Lisa Gilory, Danny Pudi, and Liam McIntyre to discuss the making of the new animated series.
• The crew discusses collaborating with SEGA, the show's animation, epic fights, and classic arcade game Easter eggs, and so much more.

It’s a golden year for actor Matthew Rhys, who just recently made history at the 2026 Emmy Awards. He’s dominated screens this year in Apple TV’s Widow’s Bay and The Beast in Me, and now, Paramount+ has dropped all 10 episodes of its SEGA adaptation, Golden Axe, where Rhys plays the battle axe-wielding dwarf, Gilius Thunderhead. Just in time for its streaming debut, Collider’s Steve Weintraub had the immense pleasure of moderating a Q&A for our advanced screening of the first two episodes, “The Legend of the Emerald Blade” and “Rideable Beasts.”

Golden Axe brings the side-scroller to life with colorful visuals that evoke “Dragon's Lair, the old arcade game, or a Don Bluth movie,” expanding on the heart of what the video game’s fans love most about it. Like the choose-your-player game, the series follows Gilius, Tyris Flare (Lisa Gilroy), and Ax Battler (Liam McIntyre) — joined by newbie and novice Hampton Squib (Danny Pudi) — on a plethora of death-defying adventures. Every episode pits these heroes against classic and new villains, and, fingers crossed, we’ll get to see even more Easter eggs with future seasons!

After the screening, creators and executive producers Mike McMahan (Rick and Morty) and Joe Chandler (American Dad!) hit the stage with the voice acting ensemble, McIntyre (Spartacus), Gilroy (Jury Duty), and Pudi (Community), to discuss behind-the-scenes topics, like their preparations before stepping inside the voice recording booth, collaborating with SEGA, and working with Titmouse, Inc (Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse) on the show’s epic look. Check out the full Q&A in the video above, with a transcript provided below for all of this and more on the new series!

How 'Sonic the Hedgehog' Led to the Creation of 'Golden Axe'

The new series is based on the cult classic video game franchise of the same name.

Image via Paramount+

COLLIDER: How did this show happen? Pull back the curtain.

MIKE MCMAHAN: I had been working with Original Film, specifically Pavun Shetty, who's right here, who had me do a little bit of work on the Sonic the Hedgehog movies.

JOE CHANDLER: Heard of him.

MCMAHAN: Yeah, he's like a very fast hedgehog. He came to me one day, we've known each other forever, and he just loved Rick and Morty and Lower Decks and Solar Opposites, and he was like, “Is there any SEGA property from the arcade that you would like to turn into a show?” And I was like, “I played this game, Golden Axe, over and over and over again,” because the camp I went to in the summer had an arcade machine that didn't take quarters. They'd turned that part off. They had Tron as well. So that's what started it all off. It went from Sonic and Rick and Morty and Lower Decks all the way to Golden Axe.

There are 20 different versions of this show that could exist. How did you figure out the version you wanted to tell and the tone and the structure of the show?

MCMAHAN: Well, I immediately paired up with Joe.

CHANDLER: And then I figured everything out for him.

MCMAHAN: [Laughs] And we knew we wanted to do something that felt like a season-long quest. We loved the fun parts of Golden Axe — the kicking the imp and chicken leg, the rideable beasts, the things that were only in Golden Axe — and we like to tell stories the way we go through life, which is with comedy.

CHANDLER: We had the same experience where it's like every time I played the game as a kid on my SEGA, when I played at home, I always chose Gilius. The first time Mike and I talked about the show, same experience. We were laughing about this idea that there's this, like, Conan the Barbarian character, this Xena Warrior Princess, and this little shrimpy guy in green with a big white beard, and we started talking about him feeling less than. The metaphor I like to use is that he was like George Harrison to John [Lennon] and Paul [McCartney] — he’s the third-best songwriter alive, but he's in a band with number one and number two. So once we hit on this idea of, like, he needs to prove himself, that became, “Okay, this is worth doing through our comedy filter.”

'Golden Axe's Visuals Were Inspired by an Animation Legend

"We were blown away by how much the art team delivered on a very difficult task."

How did you end up with animation and animation style? I believe Titmouse did the animation, so how did that all come together?

MCMAHAN: Yeah, Titmouse was amazing. We've both worked with them, and we've actually got some amazing Titmouse artists here tonight that worked on the show. We didn't want it to look like a classic sort of comedy, like a Sunday night comedy. We wanted it to look sort of like Dragon's Lair, the old arcade game, or like a Don Bluth movie, or like this thing that felt epic but could also be funny at the same time. And I thought, for making something that's not on a movie budget, Giancarlo Volpe was the supervising director, and is amazing. He worked on Avatar; he makes these action sequences that are unbelievable.

Our couch, like when Family Guy gathers around our couch, that's campfires for us, right? And so those are our re-use, and then the savings from that get us giant fights and gets us piles of skulls and stuff like that.

That's actually something that I wanted to bring up, which a lot of people don't realize. Certain sequences or certain shots end up costing a lot of money. Which shot or sequence ended up being something more expensive than people might think?

CHANDLER: That's a question for our line producer and the artists. [Laughs] No, I think anything fighting. The more characters, the more movement, the more whatever, it's super expensive. On this show, they did a great job of making it for a pretty tight budget and making it look really special. Honestly, we were blown away by how much the art team delivered on a very difficult task.

MCMAHAN: And I think the last two episodes of the season really ramp it all up. So if you're looking for what cost the most, I think you'll see it on screen in this.

The 'Golden Axe' Team Tease Their Favorite Episodes

"They wouldn't let us call it 'Golden Imp' for some reason."

Image via Tyler Vosburg/JanuaryImages for Paramount+

It’s 10 episodes for this season. Which episode is the one you can't wait for fans to see?

LIAM MCINTYRE: All of them.

DANNY PUDI: It's really exciting. I think, like you were saying, as the season ramps up, there's just more. There's an episode where we all kind of unite. I don't know what I can say. Am I allowed to say these things?

CHANDLER: You guys get back together. The team joins up.

MCMAHAN: The team gets back together!

PUDI: The team gets back together!

CHANDLER: If you’re not expecting that, I don’t know what to tell you.

PUDI: The team will get back together. Hampton has a chance to show his worth. That episode's really exciting for me.

CHANDLER: And there's a Janzu episode. We go deeper into Jan’s life that I'm very excited for people to see. That's a personal favorite.

MCMAHAN: Yeah, when you play Golden Axe and you're kicking the imps, don't you wonder what they do later in the day? You get to find out!

LIAM MCINTYRE: I kind of thought you based the entire show, you’re like, “Alright, we'll start with the imp, build a world where that's real, and just go out from there.”

MCMAHAN: Yeah, they wouldn't let us call it Golden Imp for some reason.

LISA GILROY: I'm so excited to see everything. My brain is kind of like chicken leg brain because I obviously read the scripts, but if you don't show me a picture, I don't know what the hell is going on. So, seeing this today, I was like, “Oh, that's what it was.” [Laughs] So yeah, I have vague memories of fun things that happened, but I didn't have the pictures, so all I remember is doing later, like being like a toad or something, and I'm excited for that.

CHANDLER: You play a librarian, a little librarian creature.

GILROY: And the voice is so unintelligible that I had to rerecord it so many times, and so I'm excited to see if that…

CHANDLER: It works.

MCMAHAN: In her defense, the librarians are kind of toads. I know that sounded weird for a second, but she is correct, yes. And they’re very funny. And then we get Druda coming in later in the season. Another character joins the team, who's very, very funny, and you don't get her until later. You unlock her by playing through the season, by watching.

Liam, Lisa, and Danny, you've all done a lot of voice recording before. What, if anything, was unique about this recording process, or anything memorable?

MCINTYRE: I got to be funny. That's new. So thanks for trusting me with that. They were like, “Here's a guy that's never been funny. Let's try that!” So that was a joy.

PUDI: I actually didn't see the image of the character until later, so this was the first time I think I was doing something where I didn't know what I was going to look like, and I had all these ideas — “He's going to be so heroic.” And then I saw the image, and I was like, “That's me!” [Laughs] It's like an animated version. So, that was new. I've never done that before. That was really exciting. I guess that's my biggest surprise.

MCINTYRE: I’ve never worked with Titmouse before. That was awesome.

GILROY: Talking in this register was very difficult for me, and I would consistently lose my voice in every single session. I was like, “Why did I audition like that?” Huge mistake.

I actually want to follow up on that. How much control did the three of you have in the creation of the character, in terms of the voice, and how much was it like you were testing a few different versions and ultimately Mike or the director said, “That's the one?”

GILROY: Well, I do remember my original audition doing some sort of a vague Gal Gadot sort of accent. [Laughs]

CHANDLER: We did try an accent. We did try that.

GILROY: Because to me it was so LOL that Wonder Woman lived on this island where it was just like everybody just kind of has her accent because that's how the vibe is going to be. So I was like, “That could be fun for an Amazon warrior.” And then we played around a bit, and then we found something that I absolutely could not sustain in that register, and I lied and said that I could, and it worked out. I'm inspired by men because they lie in their interviews all the time, so thank you for your support.

MCMAHAN: I love how that voice came out, because it feels like our show is Vulcan, where you're very flat affect, and it makes me laugh.

GILROY: I don't know what that means. Thank you so much.

MCMAHAN: It's from Star Trek!

MCINTYRE: I'm starting to remember. I remember coming back here, somehow my brain was like, “Is it Tiris or Tyris?” And for the entire time we recorded, I was like, “This time, brain, it’s Tiris… No, damn it! That’s not the right one.” I somehow short-circuited, so I was always forgetting how to say your name, even though I knew.

CHANDLER: Every single one of you did that. Danny, Matthew, everyone.

MCINTYRE: Oh, every one was doing this? You made it seem like it was just me.

GILROY: I had big problems with Janzu, you remember? Because I'm Canadian, so I’m so desperate to say J-an Zu. I want to be, like, “Past-tuh, drama class, Jan Zu.” That was devastating.

The Cast of 'Golden Axe' on Voice Acting's Biggest Challenges

Plus, the cast shares how playing video games shaped their performances.

One of the things I don't think a lot of people realize is what it's really like to voice record. So if you could pull the curtain back a little bit for a show like this, how many times did you do voice recording? What is it like the day before or the morning of when you're going to record? Are you doing anything special, like drinking black tea or whatever it is to get your voice ready, especially if you're doing a register you're not used to?

PUDI: Speaking of registers, it's very hard for me early in the morning because I'll show up and they'll be like, “Oh, let's play reference.” And they'll be like, “Higher, Danny! Higher, higher!” So I'll have to get there. So, I have to do a lot. You wake up, you get the scripts — great — think about it. You're like, “Okay, Hampton Squib. You Google it. Squib means broken firecracker. Got it.” Then you go to a steam room, or you work out, you do some vocal warm-ups in your car…and people think you're crazy, but you're not. You're just getting warmed up, right? Then you have your throat coat. That helps me, as well. And then I just try to do a bunch of weird vocal warm-ups before I show up.

Then when we get in the booth, they're super helpful. So Joe's there all the time, and they'll be like, “Try it this way, try it that way.” And it's really therapeutic because you get to scream a lot. You get to try it a bunch of different ways. You look very silly, but you do every line like 50 different times louder, funnier, faster. All the things.

MCINTYRE: I got a lot of, “Funnier.” It was like “Do it until Joe stops going…” [Puts head in hands], and I was like, “Okay, I think we got it.”

GILROY: Remember when Spotify does Spotify Wrapped?

CHANDLER: Yes, yes I do.

GILROY: What did you guys get? [Laughs] No, I got this, like, super rare award because it was like, “Guess what? You listened to the rarest song of all time,” and it's some woman doing a vocal warm-up in her basement, and I would listen to it on the way. She'd be like, “Okay, now we're going to do, ‘Pee, pee, poo, poo, poo…’” and I would do that. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm not trained. So I found her thing, and I gave her 50,000 listens. Do that and then tons of throat coat. And then, guess what? You chug a bunch of throat coat — that's tea all day, baby — and then you’ve got to pee so bad. So then that's kind of the motivation behind all of [Tyris]. That performance, behind it, you'll just really feel that I really needed to pee the whole time.

Is it fun to tell people, if you want to get out of something when you're doing voice recording for this show, “Yeah, I have to play a bunch of video games this weekend for my character, and I don't think I can go to that wedding, or I don't think I can go do that. I really have to play Golden Axe?”

MCINTYRE: Did that work, honey? I just asked my wife. I was like, “I just got to play games. You know how it is. Just professional job, working men.” Yeah, I don’t know. It didn't work out for me.

GILROY: I mean, I would play for hours and hours and hours, and I would say to my husband, “I have to prepare for the big record this week.” And he would say, “Lisa, that's The Sims.” And that's fine. Any gameplay’s good. I'm sure in any video game you can drown someone in a pool and light a baby on fire. So, it's all good.

PUDI: [Laughs] Yeah, agreed. I'm a new character, so that was actually a relief. Hampton Squib wasn't in the original game, so I was like, “This is great. I get to just kind of dive into it.” But video games!

'Golden Axe's Cast and Crew Officially Tease Season 2

"The season finale, the last two episodes, are like a movie within the season, which is like a movie."

Image via Tyler Vosburg/JanuaryImages for Paramount+

That actually brings me to a question for the two of you. How did you decide which new characters you wanted to add, and did any other characters come close to making the cut?

MCMAHAN: We tried to pull a ton of characters in, and Danny's character was kind of like the player, like when you're playing for the first time, and you haven't encountered the quest yet, so everything is new to you, and you're bad at it all until the end of the season — or the end of the game.

You'll see across the season a lot of villains are pulled in there that you'll recognize. Another new character that you hear a lot is the narrator. It just felt like the world and the fun. We were trying to have fun with all the tropes of the game, but also all the tropes of other big fantasy quest stuff that we liked.

CHANDLER: Like the narrator, we were talking about the Conan narrator a lot as we were first writing the show, because that element of that movie is really memorable, I think, and fascinating. And then Chronos was an easy, just looking at the design of the game, like, “We’ve got to use that weird design.” And then there's a bunch more that we'd love to use if we get to keep going.

MCMAHAN: Yeah, when Gilius was out of the team, and he comes back and finds out that they hired frickin’ Chronos, you never want to be replaced with a cat — a panther. And then Chronos we just fell in love with and Druda, our skeleton character.

The villains are all really fun, too, that they encounter throughout this. I don't know if you know this, but in Golden Axe, you fight progressively through different villains that are named stuff like “The Bad Brothers” and “Death Death,” and they're all in this show!

What do you think fans will think after they've seen the season finale?

MCINTYRE: “Immediately greenlight Season 2.” Immediately.

CHANDLER: The fans will greenlight Season 2. That's the key.

MCMAHAN: I think that's right. The season finale, the last two episodes, are like a movie within the season, which is like a movie. But I think the thing you really take away from it is kind of what we were saying earlier, is that when the team comes together, it's such a relief because it's not only the coolest action sequences in the show, but it's also all of you guys playing off of each other finally, with Matthew [Rhys], and it just feels right at the end of it. It's the funniest, and it has the most heart. You feel like you've kind of gone through it with them by the end of it. It's really worth watching.

CHANDLER: And I think the hope is obviously, with any adaptation of something, it’s like, “They took the thing I love, and they built on it. They wrote up to this thing that I love and improved upon it and made it more. They deepened it and broadened it.” I think that's what I hope they walk away with.

MCINTYRE: There was a whole wanky thing with Matthew where I suddenly got real deep with him because he has this thing, and we started talking about how, “It's so relevant. The people that played this game, it's hard to build friendships and keep those friendships as you get into your 40s…” And we started going down this real, like… Those journalists were like, “Just tell us some fun facts about it!” And we were like, “And it's really the way that they reunite teaches you about the importance of friendship… You don't want to hear this.” But it's in there, though. It’s deep. It goes real deep.

GILROY: I have no problem making friends. [Laughs] No, I haven't seen the finale yet, so I'm so excited to see it. We recorded so long ago that I forget everything, but I think people are kind of talking about there's going to be a toad that's the librarian. So I think the fans are, like, really hyped on that.

This is obviously based on the SEGA game. How involved was SEGA in the making, and did they give you any sort of dos or don'ts in what you could or couldn't do?

MCMAHAN: I was actually really nervous because nobody's going to know this property better than them, and there's no amount of playing it that's going to put us in their heads — and they were the biggest fans from the get-go. It was a lot of dos. I think we got a couple of maybes across the season, two or three “Oh, we wish you had done it like this,” and it was a minor change. But mostly it was like, “More! More! We want to see more of what you're doing there. This is amazing. This is what we were hoping for.” It was the opposite of what you worry about, that it's going to be a lot of running into walls or trying to navigate it.

Then I remember there was a moment at the wrap party where we were hanging out with the person we talked to at SEGA the most and just having a blast with them, and I was like, “I couldn't have wished for a better partnership.” And I know this sounds like I'm glazing up SEGA, but it really was a blast to work with them on this because nobody loves this stuff more than them. Like, they know it, but they love it more than anybody. And them getting to be the first audience for it and getting to see the characters come to life and have a blast with it and feel like a kid again while they were watching it, I think, was kind of a surprise for me, and a welcome one.

CHANDLER: One note I remember referenced that second episode when Ax does the magic and the skeletons are dying. Their note was, “Can we see more skeletons dying?” And we're like, “Yes, of course you can. That sounds like a great idea.” So, they were just encouraging it to look cool and awesome. They were great.

Image via Paramount+

Liam, you've played some extremely serious warriors before. How much fun is it getting to play the guy who looks like Spartacus but occasionally thinks like a golden retriever?

MCINTYRE: Oh, it’s the best. And mostly because you don't have to do the diet because someone draws it all, and it's awesome. Yeah, I was like, “Yay! I don't have to eat chicken and rice today.” But yeah, no, it's fun because you get all these characters and you get to take all the fun parts that you never get to do and try to make a thing out of them. It's great.

Lisa, speaking of Spotify, if Tyris had a Spotify playlist for battle, what's on it?

GILROY: Probably that vocal warm-up that woman recorded in her basement. It just feels like Tyris if you’re listening to something no one else is listening to, and if you put an air bud in, you'd be like, “Are you okay, girl?”

Danny, Hampton has spent his entire life dreaming about going on an adventure, and apparently has almost none of the skills required to actually survive one. What did you love about that contradiction?

PUDI: Thank you for that question. There was a wrap party, first of all?

MCINTYRE: I was gonna say this!

MCMAHAN: We begged you to call.

PUDI: Oh, that's right. Yeah, yeah. Okay. I have skills. [Laughs] I remember talking to the guys early on, and I was like, “What's the arc for Hampton Squib?” That was really exciting to me because you see, actually, him prove his worth and value and how he's able to kind of bring this team together. My favorite thing is how he is the audience in many ways, thrown into this game, experiencing it, and trying to figure out how to navigate it. He's Jumanjied in.

By the end, I love that he is just as concerned about making friendships and checking in emotionally with his team as snake ribs and all these other things that are coming at us. So that, to me, was really appealing because I thought it was a new way to enter one of these kinds of sword games is to have someone who's actually really concerned about, like, therapy and family trauma. They were able to convey that to me, that he has his values in a different way, which is bringing the team together, which I thought was really cool.

All 10 episodes of Golden Axe are available to stream now on Paramount+.

Cast

• 

  Gilius Thunderhead (voice)

• 

  Hampton Squib (voice)

• 

  Lisa Gilroy

  Tyris Flare (voice)

• Liam McIntyre

  Ax Battler (voice)