Actor and co-founder of Beadle & Grimm’s Matthew Lillard is a founder of Find Familiar Spirits, which combines the storytelling acumen and influence of Hollywood with spirits craftsmanship to deliver a super-premium whiskey.

Quest’s End: Rogue is the second release in its series of limited-edition blends created to match its character and is accompanied by the second tale in the evolving fantasy saga, “Dawn of the Unbound Gods.” There will be two additional releases scheduled for 2024.

You don’t get much smoother than a rogue… which made this the perfect follow-up to our first whiskey, Paladin! Quest’s End returns with the next chapter of our all-original fantasy saga Dawn of the Unbound Gods and a whiskey crafted to match, blended from small batch Kentucky and Indiana 4+ year aged bourbons with rich notes of vanilla alongside bright baked apple/jammy fruit and cooling herbaceous notes to create a balanced aroma and finish. Don’t let this one get away, it’s only on sale for a short time! The brainchild of celebrity actor/gaming entrepreneur Matthew Lillard, screenwriter Justin Ware, and spirits Master Blender Ale Ochoa, Quest’s End Whiskey crafts high-end potables for fantasy fans and RPGs. This limited-edition super-premium whiskey is inspired by Yuwe, The White Spider, the main character in the second chapter of our all-original fantasy saga Dawn of the Unbound Gods.

I reunited with Lillard to talk about the importance of being passionate in a business, the overwhelming fan response, the power of fandoms, what’s next, and more. Keep reading for everything he shared!

One of my favorite things about you is that you are genuinely a fan of everything you do and create. What do you think that adds when you do a project or product like this? Why do you think the fans relate to it so much? 
Matthew Lillard: Well, first of all, thank you for saying that. My kids always give me shit for saying this, but in the car, driving them to school when I have them cornered and they can’t escape, I say things like, “In life,” and I give them some big life advice. So in life, I think that if you’re chasing joy in what you do, you have to be authentic to who you are, right? And so, for me, building things that I’m authentically excited about, that I’m passionate about the business that I’m building, not only does it spark to the community I’m building it for because I think that I can authentically build things that they’re excited about, because I am excited about it, but it also allows me to find a sense of joy in the work, which is infinitely more important than making money. 

Quest’s End: Rogue is the second release in the saga. Can you tell me a little bit about choosing the order of when the whiskeys were gonna come out and which was next? 
Yeah, so actually, interestingly enough, it’s the third drop in five months, so what happened is that we sold out with Paladin in two weeks, and then we stood up sort of a waiting list in case we had extra bottles from leftover, from, as we said, we put aside a percent for breakage, and so we had a small amount and we put together a waiting list for people in case we had a couple of bottles left over. Within a week, we had 25,000 people on the waiting list and so, when we went back, it was crazy, and our company is called Find Familiar Spirits and our idea is to build communities around spirits and whiskeys, but it’s not about selling whiskeys as much as it is, can you build community? And so we, in good faith, couldn’t leave 25,000 people behind. So then we launched Paladin +1, which allowed us as a company, not only to go back and pick up those customers but to grow the base of people that know about the brand and hopefully become fans of the brand as we go through. 

So there’s actually been three drops in five months, but the point of, how did we decide, for us, Paladin was an emotional choice because Paladins are these warriors with a purpose. They’re sort of guided by a higher calling and for Justin and I, in the film and television industry, having something else call us away from a job, as we discussed earlier, that at times you’re helpless, right? You’re waiting for people to give you a job. You’re waiting for people to ask you to act. You’re writing scripts in Justin’s case and not selling them or you are selling them, but the idea of waiting is just ultimately so painful. So we chose Paladin because there’s a symbolic sort of connection to what Paladins are doing and what we were doing. So that was that and then, frankly, we knew that Rogues are a super popular class. I love playing Rogues. I think everyone loves playing a Rogue. And so, we knew as the brand’s launching and we’re trying to continue to grow the fan base, we knew that we could hopefully collect people’s interest with doing Rogue second. And so, that’s why we launched with Rogue. 

Yeah, and I want to bounce off what you said earlier about those two drops selling out, what was your reaction to that? Because you are taking, in a way, a leap of faith going into a new product and even if you’re confident in it, that has to be scary and challenging in some ways. So to see the fans respond the way they did must have been so rewarding for you.
Oh, so overwhelming. It was crazy. It was crazy and it speaks to — we had this thing called High Roller Guilds, which you could pre-buy all four of the first initial drops. There’s 16 drops in the whole story and so we’re like, ‘Okay if we can get people to buy these, it will give us operating capital to help build the enterprise itself.’ And so, we expected 100, 200. We ended up with over 1,100 people buying High Roller Guilds through Paladin and Paladin +1. So that, to me, was the real indicator that we had tapped into something that the community was excited about and that was huge. I mean, that was a game-changer for us.

Because it is a first-of-its-kind experience. You’re testing a whole new brand and you never know how stuff like that is going to work out. It must have been so cool to see something you envisioned was like, hitting home with the community. 
Yeah, and to the people’s sort of, I don’t know, their willingness to say yes, I mean, it was a lot of money upfront and we knew that. You didn’t know if the liquids were gonna be good, you didn’t know what the story was gonna be, you didn’t know if we could deliver and the fact that we had so many people take that leap of faith with us was like, it was proof positive that we were onto an idea that we’re really excited about, right? We cannot compete with all the brown liquids at BevMo! because those guys have market share, they’ve been around forever. They have gazillions of dollars, but we don’t need to be the biggest whiskey in that aisle. We need to be the biggest whiskey in the community. And so, that idea, that approach, the authentic sort of connection to fans and building things authentically for fans and not just trading on their passions, we think is a really exciting business model outside of just this one, “D&D inspired brand.” So we’re excited. We’re excited. 

Obviously, you have such notable past roles as part of your acting career. Did you, at some point, realize the power of fandoms? Because I think sometimes, at least when I was growing up as a fan, they were sort of underestimated. Now fandoms have gotten bigger, but was there a moment in your career when you realized their power? 
So firsthand, I have seen over my time in this godforsaken industry, the power of fandoms, and very few examples are as potent to me as Five Nights at Freddy’s. Five Nights at Freddy’s is a movie that was made for $24 million and went off to make $300 million worldwide. 

Congratulations on that one, by the way. When we spoke last, we couldn’t talk about it, but congratulations, it was incredible. 
Thank you. I appreciate that. It was very fun to be a part of and that is a shining example of a collection of people worldwide that have fallen in love with a game that come out to support something they love. And so, I think that one of the reasons it is so successful is Scott Cawthon, the creator of the game, was intimately involved in the production of the movie and made sure that he delivered for fans. And in return, it was a huge success. 

I love that you have the whiskeys continuing one long saga because while each of them are individual characters, they’re all part of a bigger story. Can you tell me the decision process in making it one big thing? 
Yeah, because we love the idea of, you know, we’re big fans of storytelling. I mean, our whole brand is like, what can we deliver to the fans outside of just the juice in a bottle? So we love the idea of creating something that played out over a long stretch instead of transacting in one sort of novella, having an ongoing saga just seemed exciting. Now, with that said, without saying too much, this October, we have really great, very exciting plans to launch a new brand that isn’t connected to an ongoing saga, but that has more of a one-off sort of approach to delivering to fandoms. So, we’re excited about that and can’t wait to share it with you soon.