Khary Payton Talks Playing Dungeons & Dragons on 'Encounter Party' (Exclusive)

Khary Payton is taking on a new role following his run on The Walking Dead. PopCulture.com caught up with the 51-year-old actor who talked about being featured on a new Dungeons & Dragons show called Encounter Party, which is part of the FAST channel Dungeons & Dragons: Adventures available on Freevee and Plex. 

"I wanted to play D&D. I had been playing D&D just for a little while," Payton told PopCulture. "I was introduced to it through my friends who are on Critical Role, and they were blowing up and they kept asking me to come play. I played as much as I could, but because I was shooting The Walking Dead at the same time, I had to say no a lot. I just didn't have time to be able to play. It was this new thing that I had just discovered."

"I started playing with my kids and then started playing with these all-stars. Every time I had to say no, it just broke my heart because it felt like the first time I got on stage, or the first time you do stand up, or the first time you do voiceover, it's like this new creative outlet that you can't believe all the possibilities, all of the different ways that you can express yourself. When The Walking Dead was finally over, it was maybe a few months later that they asked me to do Encounter Party."

Encounter Party features seven professional actors who guide their characters from the high seas to the dangerous streets of Baldur's Gate. The show includes 22 episodes and new episodes air every Tuesday and Friday at 9 p.m. ET. But Payton is also featured in two additional Dungeons & Dragons: Adventures shows — Heroes' Feast, a D&D cooking show, and Faster, Purple Worm! Kill! Kill!, an improvised D&D series with celebrity guests. 

"I had just such a great time hanging out with those guys," Payton said about being on the two additional shows. "It's been years, it was just before the pandemic, I was vegan for a while and now I'm quasi-vegetarian, maybe have a little fish here and there, but my dietary journey has changed a lot so that was fun to play with that and still have kind of a D&D twist to it all. But yeah, I just loved everything that we're doing. The producers, we just get along great. I was like, 'If you need me, call me.' They just kept calling and I kept coming."

Dungeons & Dragons has been played by millions for the last 50 years, and Payton believes the game is popular because of where the game can take a player. "It gives you such endless possibility," Payton said. "It is a game that's based in magic. All magic is to me, is what do you want to do? Anything you want to do, you can do. You know why? Magic. The human brain, it's the most incredible thing we have access to because we can imagine anything. We literally have what astrophysicists and metaphysicists and just imagining the wildest things."