Morning Wire - From Writer’s Room to Princess of Atlantis: Rose Reid’s Pendragon Journey

Episode Date: January 24, 2026

After much anticipation, the Daily Wire’s new fantasy series “The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin” is now live on the platform. In this episode, we go behind the scenes with Rose Reid who not only stars in the Epic, but also helped write and produce it. Reid shares what it took to bring the production to life and why meaningful fantasy still matters. Get the facts first with Morning Wire. Get the facts first with Morning Wire. - - - Ep. 2597 - - - Wake up with new Morning Wire merch: https://bit.ly/4lIubt3 - - - Today's Sponsors: Zoc Doc - Go to https://Zocdoc.com/WIRE to find and instantly book a doctor you love today. - - - Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacy morning wire,morning wire podcast,the morning wire podcast,Georgia Howe,John Bickley,daily wire podcast,podcast,news podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Do not drive me away again. Allow me to go to him freely. So that I may return freely. This is more bitter to me than death. No, you cannot bind me to you with false feeling. I'm dying here, father. That was a scene from the new Daily Wire Plus television series, The Penn Dragon Cycle, Rise of the Merlin,

featuring actor and writer Rose Reed, who plays the pivotal role of Karris, the young mother of Merlin. In this episode, we sit down in studio with Rose to discuss what drew her to the project, what it was really like behind the scenes, and how she hopes the show will impact the culture. I'm Daily Wire Executive Editor John Bickley with Georgia Howe. This is a weekend edition of Morning Wire. Raise your hand if you've been putting off a dental cleaning, an annual checkup, or honestly any kind of doctor's appointment. Yeah, my hand's up too. When something feels off, I usually doomscroll my symptoms or self-diagnosed using the World Wide Web while loading up

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That's ZOCDOC.com slash wire. Zocdoc.com slash wire. Thanks Zock doc for sponsoring this message. Joining us now in studio is Rose Reed, one of the stars and writers of the new Daily Wire Plus series, The Pin Dragon Cycle. Rose, so great to have you in studio. Thanks for coming on. Yeah, I'm so excited to be here. It's so cool to get to finally meet you both. You too. And I'm a little. Starstruck. I mean, we've got screens, people don't know this at home, but we have screens all over the office that are just playing pin dragon scenes. So you're all over the place. Yeah, that's a little alarming for sure. I was walking through the cafeteria there and was like, oh, that's, that's the bull sequence. Okay, cool. That's, that's always a little unnerving. Yeah, here I am injured badly again. And again and again. Yeah. It's a little nicer, though, because I have a very different hair color, so I feel like I'm flying incognito with like slightly darker hair right now. So that makes me.

that makes me feel like I'm one of the cool celebrities with the sunglasses. Yeah, and built-in protection. Yeah. You know, look, it's an epic series. And I'm curious, I have a bunch of questions for you, but I'm curious what it's like to step back and look at yourself in a series like this. I mean, this is big. You've done a lot of projects.

But this one seems like in terms of scope, maybe the biggest you've worked on, right? Yeah, definitely. And what is that like for you? What is it like seeing yourself on the screen in this form? Well, it's very, I feel like. alarming isn't really the right word to use to say, feeling, you know, seeing myself on screen in this form. But it's definitely, it's, it's a very cool thing. I'm a huge fantasy nerd. And so, you know, especially as a writer, I've always wanted to write fantasy. So getting to, getting to come on board

and not only write, but also act in a very high fantasy show has just been really incredible and very daunting and there were there were a lot of fears and challenges going into it but I'm very grateful that I got to be part of it but still it just whew it there was some growing pains for sure on this one you said daunting and it was I was you know when we first announced internally that we were taking on this project I personally was like what we're going to pull off a high fantasy series when you have to compete with things like Game of Thrones what were there fears for you that we're not going to be able to actually do this? I think I was a little delusional going into it. I was a little, you know, we had Dallas Sonia, who I was like, wow, man, he's just,

he's such a pro. He's worked with the best and really can create incredible things with very little funding and very little resources and he can just create a masterpiece. But then I did get to see a little bit of how the sauces was made and be like, oh, okay, this is, it's, there was, there was a lot more work going into creating these masterpieces that were made without the amount of resources that Hollywood typically gets and the amount of funding that Hollywood typically gets. So that funding was replaced with manpower and creativity, which ultimately was such an incredible experience and I got to wear more hats than I would have been able to wear otherwise. So I'm very grateful for that.

But yes, going into it, I was maybe a little bit more diluted than I am now. Well, speaking of wearing many hats, I don't know if a lot of you were to know just how many hats you wore. So what were your roles aside from starring? So I was also a writer on season one and a co-producer, which basically just is a fancy term for meaning that because I wrote, I got to have the, I guess, the title co-producer. But I'm also very grateful that Dallas and Jeremy gave me the opportunity to kind of be on the production team and get to learn a little bit about producing. It is a part of the world that I want to step into at some point, so I'm very grateful for that. You have a writing background, obviously, and you've written on some other projects. What was it like the writer's room? I remember hearing about this getting constructed, and then you guys would go back into the secret

writer's room and all that stuff. What was that process like for you? It was so cool because I was very young. I still am young-ish, but I was very young going into the writer's room and was very new to writing. I'd only written a couple of screenplays before, and only had a couple of them produced. and so being a writer on it was another daunting part of the process because I was writing with these incredible writers who had sold so many scripts and even, you know, one of my mentors in a way, Ryan Whitaker, who I worked with on a project and who wrote one of my favorite screenplays,

getting to work with him and kind of be a peer to him around a table was absolutely terrifying. And it took me a while to actually speak up in the room. room and say, wait, hold on, I have an idea for this. And, you know, I was the only, I was the only female writer as well. So that was at first a little, a little scary because I, like I said, all the other men in the room, I was like, you guys all have so many more credits than me. But everyone was really welcoming and in a way that didn't feel like condescending or anything. Being very young. I was expecting that to kind of be part of the process. But no, it was just really, I would go back and do it all over again. It was very stressful because when you work on a project like this,

there's a lot of excellence that's demanded of the writers and of everyone on the team. But it was absolutely worth it. I feel like the pressure did really mold us and created us, hopefully, into diamonds. We'll see what viewers think. But yeah, ultimately it was a great experience. even if it was like very stressful at first. It was a tight turnaround. You guys got on the road quick. In terms of the auditioning process, what came first in terms of the writing versus which role particularly you played? Yeah.

That was a very long process, actually, because I was hired as a writer to, you know, just be a staff writer in the room. And as we got further into it and the more I learned about the character, Karras, the more I really fell in love with her. and the more I started to realize that Dallas Sonier always has a plan and that he had originally said, do you want to act in the show? And I said, no, what I really liked to do is write. And at that point, when he first asked me, I hadn't read the books. I didn't, I wasn't familiar with the character. And by the time I did read about the character, I ended up kind of falling in love with her. And she's a very unique character. So I really pursued that. And there were discussions of maybe I would play someone else. Maybe it wouldn't be this. character and ultimately we we kind of all landed um on her and i i was the one who ended up being like

okay yes i i really want to play this character i just she's she was very special and i've never gotten to play a character like her before so um but yes writing writing came first which was very odd ultimately because you write something being like that poor actress who's going to have to go do that and then it's you you're the poor actress who has to go do that jump in legs and jump over bulls exactly speaking of the jumping over bowls which we already mentioned mentioned, that's an epic scene. And I mean, I think what was going through my mind is like, how did you train physically to get in the shape to do that? How much of those, how much of the stunts were you? And then, I mean, just to get the physique where it needed to be. I mean, what did you do

to prepare? Yeah, it was a, it was a lot of, a lot of time that went into it. But I'm very grateful that Dallas and the production team and everybody gave me the time and opportunity to do that and gave me the resources I needed to train for that. I was not a track athlete. going into this. So I had to learn how to. And the biggest thing Jeremy wanted to make sure happened was that I was able to do as many of the stunts as I could as we needed to make it look realistic on camera, which just meant a lot of running. And he was like, you've just got to be able, like, you really. Watch Tom Cruise. That's how you run. Yes. True. And he actually brought that up a lot, which we did not nail that. But other than that, it's fine. But we did, you know,

he really was just like, we're going to, you're going to, you're going to, you're going to be running a lot on set. We're going to be running a lot in this arena and you've just got to be able to, you know, have the stamina to do it really. And so that was the main thing that we really focused on was having the cardio strength to be able to hang in there. And man, I could have run a marathon back then and now I'm like wheezing after a mile. So we need to maybe get back into that routine a little bit. But yeah, that was a really. And you weren't an athlete going into this. Not really. No. I mean, I played volleyball. But that's about and that's like generous to say that I played volleyball. What about the horseback, right?

Right, and you come, you have a farm. Yes, I do have a farm. I do have a farm. And this is something I can talk about all day because I love horses. I do have horses. I have four of my own. And, yeah, horses was that aspect of it I was very excited about. And getting to swing up on them and, you know, ride bear back in a couple of scenes and stuff like that was so much fun.

And just getting to goof around with our horse wrangler, they were, we really had some of the best stunt team. horse wranglers that we could have asked for. And that's something else that I really credit to, you know, yes, Dallas, but also just the production as a whole, because we brought the best of the best people from Androsh and Attila who made the costumes in the wardrobe to the actors like Daniel Fathers. He was incredible. And the horse team, like everybody truly, truly were the experts in their fields, which just made us all feel very safe even in situations when, you know, it's very dangerous stunts. How were the elements in terms of filming locations?

You're on top of mountains half the time. How was that? Was it cold? Was it harsh? Yes, all of the above. But it was also very immersive. And I think that that was just what we really had to lean into. You know, I've made this joke several times that, you know, we shot for about six months.

So we shot in summer, fall, and winter pretty much. And are like, you know, bits and pieces of each. and when we were shooting in like the tail end of summer, I was running around in like my frilly dresses and I was like this is so great. All the boys are in their furs and I'm in like my I've got sleeveless shirts on and it's great. And then of course December rolls around and you're still in your sleeveless and you're still in your frilly dresses and the boys still have their furs. The boys are way happier than I was. But it was very immersive and you know when you get in the lake and you're meant to be kind of cold and uncomfortable because this guy is kind of, you know, spying on you or whatever you think he's spying. on you, you get to lean into that as a character. When you're, you know, dealing with a very emotional scene in the pouring rain in December, you get to lean into that discomfort and lean into that pain. And being on, man, being in the mountains of Trentino and being in the wind and everything and we were shooting in a cloud one day. It was really incredible. Getting to do that, it's so easy to let the cameras fall away and just step into the scene and be the character. So yes, it was

not fun sometimes, but it was very good for the characters. When you do discuss this maybe with friends, you know, in terms of the story that, what drew you to it the most, what is it? What is it? What is the most powerful element of this series? I think that probably second chances, all of the characters or most of them experience some form of redemption. and having to, you know, to use a phrase from the show, go back the way you came. And that's true of my character. It's true of James Arden's character, Tallyesson. It's true of Merlin. It's true of so many others in the show that they're given a second chance.

And I think that that's a really powerful message to me because, I mean, I've made plenty of mistakes. And I would love to go back and change them and have the opportunity to move forward without them weighing me down. And so I think that that's a beautiful message to be giving people is that you don't have to keep walking in the way that in the direction that you're going. You can make a change. You can have that second chance to write that wrong and be a better person and, you know, all the things, yada yada. But that was the, that was the strongest message that I kind of got from the books is that you can, you can write the wrongs. You can, you know, have that redemption. So yeah, that really spoke to me in the in the scripts as well. Okay, so aside from Pendragon, what are your favorites or what is your favorite? Oh my gosh. Okay, well, I've just recently gotten obsessed with Red Rising, and I am loving these books right now. Harry Potter is also obviously a huge one. I only got interested in Harry Potter actually more recently. I wasn't a huge Harry Potter fan growing up, but growing up it was Star Wars. It was all of the whole Star Wars universe. I was a big Clone Wars girl and anything. Basically any kind of Star Wars spinoff.

I was obsessed with. I just think it's so interesting the other languages and coming up with rules and cultures and how does this and often they are, you know, unintentionally metaphors for our societies and stuff. So I just, I think it's so interesting. Also, Dune. I love Dune. Dune's incredible. Dune's incredible. Have you read the books? Yes. Yeah. Dune, the first Dune, the first, is the best sci-fi book of all time. It's so good. How'd you feel about the second movie? Which one's better, Dune one or Dune two? Dune one. The, the reason I think this. No one's going to want to hear that. The problem with Dune

is the worldview that takes over that is built in from the beginning is very dark and very fatalistic. And so you realize it more and more as you watch that movie. So the second movie you realize, oh my gosh,

where this is going is very dark. It's not what you think. It's not a it's not a Judeo-Christian perspective. It's not a good perspective on a Messiah. So And that's true of the entire series. I've read all of them. And they get kind of darker and darker.

So I love that I can have some hope and optimism in the first one. Yeah, that's so fair. I think, yeah, my hot take is that that's why I love Duton, too, is because I think I love, I love a good anti-hero. I don't know, I'm going to really, like, out myself here. But I don't know if you guys have seen Attack on Titan, but it's an anime. And it is... I have watched half of that, yeah.

Yeah, it's the same kind of thing. where it's like, it goes down a dark path, but I think it's, oh man, I think the dark ones are the most beautiful, though, because they, they touch a part of your soul that you didn't think anybody else saw. And there's something in that being seen. And I do think that that's part of like Merlin's story in the Penn Dragon cycle is that he goes to some dark places. And I think that there's something about showing those dark places that he goes to that really makes people feel seen. And so that's part of the reason. I don't know. I, I, I don't know. I like Dune, too.

Well, I'm glad you brought that up. I do think part of the reason the Daily Wire and Jeremy Boring is drawn to things that he feels and we feel are true to life, true to human psychology, resonate with people, are not rose-colored glasses, are not, you know, putting a little beautiful shine on something that actually is dull and dark, you know. And I think this series does that. And do you, in terms of adding to the canon, so the follow-up question to the sort of bigger picture you love fantasy, do you feel like this book series and this, now this TV series, adds to the fantasy series, fantasy sort of canon in any significant way? I think so, because I think that, you know, you're taking, in a lot of ways, it's historical fantasy, which I think that we don't see a ton of. So yes, I think that it's, I hope, you know, if I can, you know, be a little grandiose. I hope that it does contribute. I love the historical aspect of it that these ideas that these myths are true. I think that that's something that I really was drawn to about this. And I'm sure that this is something that some people will struggle with. But I loved that we portrayed some of the old gods of the, like I thought that that was so cool to portray them. and the designs that our special effects artist did, just from a creative standpoint, they were incredible.

It's beautiful, yeah. Yeah, just really spectacular. So I think that just from a historical fantasy standpoint, I hope so. I think that if nothing else, I think that we created something that did feel very authentic and did feel very gritty, as you said, that doesn't cast any rose-colored glasses on things.

But I also think that we did it, excellently. And yes, of course, there are things that I watch, especially in my performance or whatever, and I'm like, oh, man, I wish I wouldn't have written that line that way or whatever it was. There's plenty of things that, you know, you always think you can do better. But as a whole, I'm so proud of this team and I'm so proud of the producers who pulled it off and the production quality and the performances that I, you know, fingers crossed, I hope it, I hope it becomes somewhat canon. We do too, and I think it will. It really is amazing. I'm excited for people to see it. Thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, thank you both so much. That was Rose Reed, one of the stars and writers of the new Daily Wire Plus series, The Penn Dragon Cycle, Rise of the Merlin, available now on the Daily Wire's website and app. And this has been a weekend edition of Morning Wire.