After 13 years, Laura Bailey is finally playing her dream Critical Role character

It’s been 10 years since Critical Role brought Dungeons & Dragons from the world of tabletop RPGs into the mainstream thanks to its actual play campaigns. But for Laura Bailey, thinking about her dream character began three years before that, back when the founders of Critical Role started their home game, which would later segue into what we now know as Campaign 1, Vox Machina.

Bailey’s character in Campaign 3 (Bell’s Hells) was the tortured sorcerer Imogen Temult, while in Campaign 2 (The Mighty Nein, now a hit Prime Video show) she played the bubbly cleric, Jester Lavorre. Her first character, however, was the bow-wielding elf ranger Vex from Vox Machina. Renowned for her iconic wit and her love for her brown bear familiar, the goodest boy around, Trinket, it’s hard to imagine Vex as anything but a ranger. But originally, Bailey had something different in mind.

“I wanted to be a rogue from the beginning of Campaign 1, but Liam [O’Brien] got there first, so I didn’t want it to be double rogues,” Bailey tells Polygon over Zoom. Vex did eventually take a few levels in rogue, and Bailey has also dabbled in the class in Critical Role’s many one-shots. However, it would be over a decade after Critical Role’s streaming debut before Bailey would get her wish to play a full-fledged rogue in a main campaign.

And the rogue class wasn’t the only thing that Bailey desperately wanted to play.

“I love fairies. And I’ve always wanted to be a fairy.” Bailey says. “I love them. As soon as that opportunity came up, I jumped at it.”

Enter Thimble. Campaign 4 is set in the brand-new godless world of Aramán and led by the award-winning Brennan Lee Mulligan, with Matthew Mercer stepping out from behind the DM screen to be a player (his character is truly something to witness). Bailey’s new character is a grounded, kick-ass pixie rogue. Grieving the loss of her best friend and partner, Thjazi, Thimble is less of a manic pixie girl and more of a hardened warrior. In more recent episodes, Thimble has been forced to team up with unlikely allies to pursue her quest for vengeance.

With Thimble being so small, as well as having the ability to fly, we couldn’t think of a more perfect combination of a character for a full-fledged campaign. She’s able to fly out of reach from martial characters, and her high dexterity means she can dive into the fray, attack, and have a good chance of leaving unharmed. Bailey agrees, telling Polygon that Thimble is the first character that she felt she had built that was optimal for combat.

“I absolutely love it, and especially because I chose the Swashbuckler path. A lot of times, I’ll make a build that has a lot more to do with the RP aspect of it as opposed to the combat aspect of it, which was a blast every single time. But this time, knowing that Thimble was a soldier for so long, I wanted her to be capable in combat.”

Image: Critical Role

Bailey lets slip that Thimble had the potential to arrive on the scene even earlier than Campaign 4, revealing that the fairy was her backup character if, for some reason or other, Imogen died in Campaign 3. Considering how beloved Imogen and Laudna’s relationship was by fans of that campaign, let’s breathe a sigh of relief right now that it never happened.

“I’ve been wanting to do this for 13 years now. So I’m loving, loving, loving, getting to play Thimble,” Bailey says.

Thimble’s story is just beginning, and with Bailey now playing her dream character, this has the potential to be her most memorable Critical Role appearance yet.