Sam Riegel
Sam Riegel is an actor, born 1976.
Sam Riegel had a full voice-acting career before most of his current audience knew his name. He was Donatello in the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Phoenix Wright in the Ace Attorney games, Teddie in Persona 4, and Riven in the revived Winx Club, and he worked the other side of the glass too, directing voice for Nickelodeon on Sanjay and Craig and Fresh Beat Band of Spies.
Then Critical Role happened. Since 2015 he has been part of a cast of voice actors playing Dungeons and Dragons on camera, a format nobody expected to turn into a business, and his characters have outlived the sessions that produced them. Scanlan carried over into the animated The Legend of Vox Machina; Nott the Brave, later Veth Brenatto, carried into The Mighty Nein. He is usually the cast member doing comedy, and the reason it works is that he lets the comic character absorb real consequences instead of protecting him from them.
The rest is the daily bread of a busy animation actor: Hack and Slash in DuckTales, Emperor Awesome in Wander Over Yonder, Ketch in Star Wars: The Bad Batch, Corr Taldaan in Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures, feature work in Zambezia and Khumba, plus the Critical Role satellite shows, 4-Sided Dive, Narrative Telephone and Candela Obscura.
Movies (4)
TV (22)
- Critical Role (2015)
- Critical Role (2015)
- The Legend of Vox Machina (2022)
- DuckTales (2017)
- Sofia the First (2013)
- Star Wars: The Bad Batch (2021)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003)
- Wander Over Yonder (2013)
- Marvel's Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (2023)
- Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures (2023)
- The Mighty Nein (2025)
- Critical Role Abridged (2024)
- Minecraft: Story Mode (2018)
- Critical Role Cooldown (2024)
- Critical Role Cooldown (2024)
- Danger & Eggs (2017)
- Candela Obscura (2023)
- Narrative Telephone (2020)
- Mixels (2014)
- 4-Sided Dive (2022)
- Critical Role: The Mighty Nein (2018)
- Critical Role: The Mighty Nein (2018)
Where to start with Sam Riegel
The Legend of Vox Machina is the easiest way in, since it compresses hundreds of hours of improvised play into twenty-odd minute episodes, and Scanlan is the clearest showcase of what Riegel does: a joke machine repeatedly asked to be serious.
If that lands, Critical Role itself is the main event, though the commitment is measured in hundreds of hours. The Mighty Nein is the alternative adaptation, with Nott the Brave as his part.
For the older work, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is the nostalgia pick and a genuinely good Donatello. DuckTales and Wander Over Yonder are the sharpest of his comic supporting roles, Star Wars: The Bad Batch shows the straighter register, and Candela Obscura is worth trying if you want the tabletop format in a darker key.