Casting Princess Donut For Dungeon Crawler Carl's Live-Action Show: 6 Perfect Actors

Published Jul 22, 2026, 7:30 PM EDT El is a Junior TV Features Editor for ScreenRant, with previous experience as The Mary Sue's UK and Weekend Editor. She holds a Bachelor's in International Media and Entertainment Management, as well as an MA and Ph.D. in Creative Writing. There is little she loves more than discussing her favorite TV shows with fellow fans. One day, she hopes to publish an original fantasy novel. Now that Peacock and Matt Dinniman have confirmed the live-action Dungeon Crawler Carl adaptation is in active development, it's time to start thinking about casting — and no casting will be more important or more difficult to get right than her royal highness, Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk. Of course, it won't be easy to cast Dungeon Crawler's Carl either, but an actor will have much more room to interpret the role and make the character their own. They can rely on their physicality, voice, and facial expressions, and they'll be able to lose themselves in Carl's (sometimes) controlled chaos. The person who ends up playing Donut, on the other hand, will be reliant entirely on the strength of their voice. The animators and VFX artists have their work cut out for them to capture Donut's majestic, spell-casting, excitable, and endearingly pretentious personality, but even if they design the world's most perfect talking show cat, it'll fall apart without the right voice. The chemistry with the actor chosen to portray Carl will need to be on point, as well. After all, they're one of science fiction's most dynamic duos. One doesn't work without the other. This being a major Hollywood streaming adaptation, the studios will likely want a recognizable voice for Donut; a marquee name that could raise the show's profile with the increasingly dwindling number of people who haven't read Dinniman's bonkers book series. This casting needs to be just as good as Bradley Cooper's Rocket Raccoon in Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy — arguably even more so. With that in mind, who should wear Princess Donut's magical tiara? Jeff Hays Credit: Dandy House Let's be honest, noted voice actor Jeff Hays is Donut — he created the haughty British voice that so many audiobook readers have fallen in love with — and so he had to be added to this list. Why couldn't a book narrator do the same for the live-action adaptation? Hays is almost singularly responsible for creating the entire voice cast of the Dungeon Crawler Carl saga, from Donut to Carl to Mordecai to Katia and the overly thirsty System AI and every character in between, giving each one a distinctive personality and tone. Since Dungeon Crawler Carl will largely rely on its fanbase in the early seasons, casting Hays would be a great way to win over readers and a great way to ensure that Donut is as charismatic and memorable as she's meant to be. Hays might not be an old-school Hollywood A-lister, but he's certainly an A-list voice actor, and he's more than proven his talent. Seriously, watch the videos uploaded of his recording sessions. Hays is a machine. Hannah Waddingham Credit: James Manning/PA Images/INSTARimages Now, if Peacock wants to stick with a more conventional casting choice, may we suggest Hannah Waddingham? Since Ted Lasso's debut, Waddingham's star has shot into the stratosphere, hosting Eurovision, starring in action-comedy flicks with Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, and most recently, leading her own Prime Video series alongside the legendary Octavia Spencer. Perhaps in the future, she'll be able to add voicing pop culture's most beloved talking cat to the list, as Waddingham 100% has what it takes to nail Donut's personality. She has the accent, the charm, the wit; we know she can squeal with excitement after doing so numerous times with on-screen best friend Keely Jones in Ted Lasso, and she's just as fabulous a performer as Donut. The only thing that might be difficult for Waddingham is capturing Donut's eager yet atrocious singing voice, as she herself is an incredibly talented singer. A minor blip, however. Waddingham would kill it in this role. Jodie Comer Jodie Comer is a chameleon. She was a revelation in Killing Eve, switching seamlessly between accents and personalities without ever making it feel like a gimmick; sweet and unassuming one scene, homicidal and possessive in the next. It honestly feels like there's nothing she can't do. She's strong and hilarious, and charisma oozes out of her pores. She'd be a sensational Princess Donut. In fact, she'd be a sensational voice actress in general, but the world arguably needs to hear her take on Princess Donut's Dirty Shirley-induced drunk voice. It also feels like Comer would be really great at portraying Donut's youthful, almost childlike side. Donut might play dirty; she might gleefully shoot people with her magic missiles, mess with Carl and Mordecai, and hate any creature that even remotely resembles a dog, but she also has a childish innocence about her, especially in the way she easily befriends characters like Zev, the way she's still surprised when people in the Dungeon turn on each other, and the way she reacts to herself and Carl being in danger. If anyone can portray that kind of complexity with their voice alone, it's Jodie Comer. Jameela Jamil Jennifer Graylock/INSTARimages Donut isn't just charismatic. She's also (at times unintentionally) hilarious, scathingly sarcastic, and sneakily observant. Donut's role feels like it was made for Jameela Jamil, whose incredibly pretentious turn in the Emmy-nominated The Good Place was a great audition for voicing Dungeon Crawler Carl's feline lead. I'd love to see how she'd handle Donut and Carl's interview scenes. That's when Donut's at her show-cat best, after all, and The Good Place's Tahani Al-Jamil is basically Donut in human form. Donut would totally tell stories about all the celebrities she'd met. Jamil could really lean into the funnier side of Donut's personality. Her performances are so relatable, and she's done plenty of voice work before, including in major franchise shows like Star Trek: Prodigy and Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous. If Peacock wants to make this story work in live-action versus animation — which, some might say, would have been the more obvious route to take, especially now that there's a graphic novel adaptation — more than anything, Donut needs to be believable. Jamil can make it feel as though a talking, spell-casting cat is the most natural thing in the world. Olivia Colman Olivia Colman should be in everything until the end of time, but in this case, she really should be in Dungeon Crawler Carl (if not as Donut, as someone else, please and thank you!). Colman can do it all, from pretentious royally-bred accents to heartbreaking vulnerability to hilarious takedowns and righteous fury. She has chemistry with every actor that shares the screen with her, and it's so easy to imagine what her voice would sound like when she babies and admonishes Donut's pet dinosaur, Mongo. "Mongo is appalled!" would become an even more iconic line. Colman has proven again and again that she's up for anything. She might be an Oscar winner (for a raunchy, dark, psychological royal dramedy, it should be noted). She might have portrayed Queen Elizabeth II with unnerving grace. Still, she's also had an incredible turn in ITV's Broadchurch alongside David Tennant, played Kit Connor's mother on Netflix's Heartstopper, and been a wonderfully devious nun in Paddington in Peru. Colman would have a blast playing Donut, and the audience would have a blast listening to her. The MCU wasted her talent. Put her in DCC. Emily Blunt Credit: Macall Polay /© Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures /Courtesy Everett Collection Watch The Devil Wears Prada and The Devil Wears Prada 2, and it will become clear why Emily Blunt was added to this list. Blunt would absolutely smash the haughty, pretentious side of Donut's personality, the obvious overwhelming disgust whenever she's covered in gore or forced to participate in one of Carl's unsavory, ludicrous, yet well-executed plans. Blunt has excellent comedic timing and a real knack for making even the most mundane of insults sound excruciating; she'd be a lot of fun in this role. Crucially, though, Blunt is also a great dramatic, sci-fi, and horror actress, as proven by her roles in Steven Spielberg's recent Disclosure Day and John Krasinski's A Quiet Place. With all of Donut's iconic one-liners and epic takedowns, it can be easy to forget that she's also sometimes just a frightened cat fighting for her life and Carl's life in a horrific, torturous intergalactic game show. Blunt would bring depth to Donut's personality that Dungeon Crawler Carl would definitely benefit from. Network Peacock Writers Chris Yost