How the Game of Thrones creators joined Joe Manganiello’s celebrity D&D game

If the creators of Game of Thrones want into your Dungeons & Dragons game, you don’t say no, do you? Joe Manganiello didn’t.

Picture this: a bunch of celebrities meeting periodically at actor Joe Manganiello’s house to play Dungeons & Dragons. In addition to Manganiello himself, the group also includes Vince Vaughn, Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn, Saturday Night Live alum Taran Killam, AEW wrestler Paul Wight, Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, and now, Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and Dan Weiss.

Manganiello laid it all out during an appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers. “Tom [Morello] said there was a guy in my kid’s carpool, he wants to play,” the actor remembered. “I said ‘Nah, the group’s kind of big. We’re ballooning. I just want to keep it intimate.’ And Tom said “He created Game of Thrones.”

That man was Dan Weiss, one of the two guys behind the HBO hit. Apparently, he and David Benioff come as a package deal. “Dan came and played and then he was texting,” Manganiello said. “Which you don’t do while the Dungeon Master is working. I asked ‘Dude, what’s up?’ and [Weiss] said ‘Oh, it’s Dave [Benioff]. He wants to know how many hit points the dragon has.'” Benioff apparently told Weiss that he’d “divorce Weiss as a creative partner” unless Weiss got Benioff into the Dungeons & Dragons game.

And that’s how the creators of Game of Thrones muscled their way into the most exclusive D&D group on the planet, although Manganiello did get a measure of iconic revenge against them. “My nephew gave me a bunch of dragons that were Game of Thrones dragons so I would use them to try to kill [Benioff and Weiss’s characters.]”

Oof, you don’t wanna fight Drogon, I don’t care what your level is.

This all was probably a while back, because Manganiello was on The Late Show in the first place to promote his new movie Metal Lords, which was created by Benioff and Weiss. You can watch it on Netflix now. Clearly, it all worked out.

And who knows? Maybe we’ll see Manganiello show up in one of Benioff and Weiss’ other Netflix creations, including a forthcoming sci-fi adaptation The Three-Body Problem.

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