How a canceled Fox sitcom led to 'Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves' wildest cameo

The most unexpected moment in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves isn't a monster attack or even a deadly betrayal. Instead, it's the appearance of none other than Bradley Cooper — an unexpected shock that made the person sitting behind me in the audience whisper, "the fuck?"

Cooper stars as barbarian Holga's (Michelle Rodriguez) ex-husband Marlamin, who shows up for one scene of the film. However, for a movie already boasting incredible star power — Chris Pine, Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page, Hugh Grant, Sophia Lillis, and Justice Smith make up the main cast — Cooper is a wild surprise. He's not in any of the promotional materials, and his turn as a soft-spoken halfling couldn't be farther from what we've seen of Cooper in films like A Star is Born, Silver Linings Playbook, or The Hangover.

So how did this cameo come to be? According to John Francis Daley, who co-directed Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves with Jonathan Goldstein, Cooper's journey to the film started all the way back in 2005, with the Fox sitcom Kitchen Confidential.

Based on Anthony Bourdain's nonfiction book of the same name, Kitchen Confidential follows a renowned, Bourdain-esque executive chef (played by Cooper) and his fellow chefs, one of whom was played by Daley. It ran for one season before being canceled.

"We had a great time on [Kitchen Confidential] because we kind of knew that it was going to be canceled, so we all just had a lot of fun when we were shooting it," Daley told Mashable in a Zoom interview. "I think that prior relationship [with Cooper] gave us an in to seeing if he would want to dip his toe into these waters."

Daley and Goldstein showed Cooper a rough cut of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. "After seeing it, he said some very nice things about it and was on board," said Daley. "It was so exciting to us, because we always knew that we wanted Marlamin to be this larger-than-life character."

Goldstein and Daley had Cooper on set for one day, and he didn't even shoot the scene opposite Rodriguez. She actually learned about Cooper's appearance after the fact, telling Yahoo Entertainment she'd originally performed the scene with another actor. "I was like, 'What?'" she said. Later, she added: "I like him in real life: I think he's a cool dude."

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is now in theaters.