Rashawn Nadine Scott Talks Major Episode 7 Reveals & Playing In The Dome

Dimension 20 is heating up with huge twists in the seventh episode of Burrow’s End, including potential deaths and huge battles. This season follows a family of stoats who have been searching for a new home after their own was destroyed by poisonous gas. When they find the Last Bast after traveling through the Blue Forest, they find one in the Last Bast. However, things are not as they seem, and with secret and impending dangers on the horizon, their suspicions lead to even darker secrets.

Aabria Iyengar leads Burrow’s End as the Game Master this season. Veteran Dimension 20 cast members Brennan Lee Mulligan, Siobhan Thopmson, Erika Ishii, and Isabella Roland are joined by Jasper Cartwright and Rashawn Nadine Scott. Burrow’s End is inspired in part by The Secret of Nimh and Watership Down, and with only three episodes left, it seems the story will only get more intense.

Related: Brennan Lee Mulligan Reveals Which Dimension 20 Seasons He Wants Animated

Screen Rant exclusively spoke with Rashawn Nadine Scott about Dimension 20: Burrow’s End. She shared her decision to incorporate the pregnancy story line and discussed Iyengar’s DM style. Scott also breaks down the huge revelations and twists from the seventh episode and what it felt like to play in the Dome as a long-time Dimension 20 fan.

Rashawn Nadine Scott On Dimension 20: Burrow’s End

Screen Rant: I think Aabria is trying to kill me. I don’t know what you guys are doing!

Rashawn Nadine Scott: Trying to kill you? She killed me. I’m actually a ghost and I’m here to tell you that Aabria is the best in the worst at the same time.

I was like, Oh, it’s a shorter episode. Maybe it’ll be nope, not less stressful, somehow more stressful than a Box of Doom episode.

Rashawn Nadine Scott: Yeah and I was wearing my Oprah t shirt, which is supposed to give me good luck. I just sweat through it. It was really a time. I think of all the times the camera hits my face. I’m going like, Oh my God, no, or I whisper something to myself and they zoom in, get all the reactions. There’s still so much more to happen. At first I thought that there was going to be like, Oh, okay, this is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. She just lulls you into a confident space. You’re like, Oh, we’re with our family. We’re learning in this new place. There’s puppets, fun. And then just hits us with the gore. The wolf, when the head sliced off, I lost it. I couldn’t believe it.

That was just completely horrifying. It got worse every time.

Rashawn Nadine Scott: It got worse every time and my tactic of, Oh, I’m just gonna slice this thing up. And Brennan being so kind to be like, This animal needs help. And I’m going to try. We’re so much on other sides of the spectrum of how we are going to solve problems, but so similar in the sisterhood. I don’t have any sisters. So it’s been very interesting to play with Brendon as my big sister.

I love that. Can you talk about developing that relationship with him? Because it’s really, really natural from the get go.

Rashawn Nadine Scott: When we had our initial cast meet up, we kind of talked about what everyone was going to do, and it kind of settled out. I think the first thing was that Siobhan wanted to be a karate boy. So, how do we develop a family around them, and then it kind of settled that we were Paladins. I’d never played a Paladin before and it was just such an interesting new perspective for the game. And Brennan was really kind in everything that he does, but with just kind of developing a repartee of, Oh, this is a family. But we knew we didn’t want to be fighting siblings, because our characters are older and a little bit more mature. So they’ve gone through that sort of stuff.

And I hadn’t had the chance to play with Brennan because I’d only been staring at him on the screen watching Dimension 20 for the last five years, but he and Izzy invited me to play improv with them. So it’s kind of shortly after our character development we got to be on stage and play with each other. And in person, he has so much energy and will just go balls to the wall. And will basically throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks. And that’s kind of my improv style. I love to just be a big character and just go and do whatever we need to do to make it the most fun. Our energies match and I was like, Oh, this is gonna be really fun to sit at the table with him.

And at first, I was in shock. I think there was a whole time I was just staring at everyone like, Is this a prank that you asked me to be here? Because if so, it’s a very mean prank. But a good prank. Good, long con, to trick me into this. But I think we just kind of hit it from the get-go. And you can see that we check in with each other at the table often just through eyes. So he’s kind of learning a little bit of black girl communication, telling a whole story between our eyebrows and our eyes. So he’s coming along quite nicely.

Can you talk to me about the moment of stepping into the dome as a fan of Dimension 20 and sitting at that table?

Rashawn Nadine Scott: Yes. That was surreal. Because Jasper and I being the new kids at the table before we were like, Okay, we’re gonna be chill, we’re gonna be cool. We’re both freaking out inside like, Oh my god, we’re literally sitting at the table. So we get in, and we’re like, Okay, they tell us where we’re going to sit. We’re right next to each other and as we’re sitting down, it just washed over us. We looked up and saw the dome, just the blue dome, and we were in it and sitting at the table. I just got so overwhelmed that I started to cry that I was like, Oh my god, I can’t believe we’re doing this. Makeup running and Jasper’s hugging me, and then Aabria sees us crying from across the room and just swaddles us up in a big hug.

It was very emotional and surreal. I had kind of manifested it in my head. I didn’t know anyone at DropOut at the time, when I first started watching. I was like, Man, I would love to sit at the table and play. I will sit at this table at some point. I don’t know how it’s gonna happen, but I kind of just willed it into existence. It happened so quickly and with such a great cast. I’m so, so thankful and lucky to be a fan girl who made it to the table. Doing it for all the fan girls.

Can you talk to me a little bit about developing Viola and creating the relationship with Thorn? Because that is also one that feels so lived in immediately.

Rashawn Nadine Scott: Yeah, Jasper and I, after we had character creation, because we met over Zoom, he was still in the UK at the time, while we were developing everything. I knew him from Three Black Halflings, I was familiar with his work. We’d had a separate zoom, just a husband-wife zoom to be like, What’s our dynamic? We talked about our backstory, about how Thorn and the Lukura had developed trade with our borough, and that was our connection. Viola was the go-between, and they kind of fell in love during trading back and forth. He has lots of stories of the outside world, and she’s more kind of in a gated community, so she was just glamoured by all the world that’s out there.

We just vibed so hard, straight away. I do consider Jasper a good mate. If I’m using that word correctly, we’re buds. We just bonded from the start. We really want to lift each other up and have a good time in the dome. Not put so much pressure on ourselves that we can’t have fun, but enough pressure on ourselves to go full out. Don’t hold anything back, because at some point, I think we got a little heated. The relationship seems lived in, but I think I hollered at him a little bit. But that felt like, Oh, we’re really acting. Where it felt like I was in a scene study. I’ve said it before that I felt like this experience was the most immersive play I’d ever been in. And it was in the one week it took to put all this together. So it was really on top of it.

But when coming up with the character of Viola, Viola Davis is the inspiration, cause she’s one of my favorite actresses. And it also was a little bit Auntie Vi from Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Trying to think of all of the best aunties in the world because I have the best aunties in the world. I have five aunties. So I have a lot of source material to draw from. She was the church lady, kind of the leader of this cult in a way. In every cult documentary I’ve ever watched. Yes, there’s the leader, this male figure, but there’s always a very fashionable woman in the back actually running the show. I was like, Who is she? I want to see her more in the foreground. And so that just gave me a lot to play with.

And I was thinking a lot of Lady Macbeth and the want for power, but then that kind of morphed as we kept going through the episodes. That was her intention. There’s still a lot of Viola reaching and grabbing for power, not knowing that those coppers were actually coppers. That blew my mind. Aabria snuck that in, and it was right in front of our faces. She’s laughing at us the whole time. She’s so sneaky. But developing, what is your role in a family? What is status? What does that mean within your family? What does that mean outside your family? What does that mean within your personal, intimate relationships? So it’s kind of a scene study in family dynamics. That I really enjoyed.

Could you tell me what inspired the decision to have Viola become pregnant during the season? Because I did love the fact that they do this when they feel safe. And I can’t believe she feels safe.

Rashawn Nadine Scott: Not at all. Yeah, what’s that quote that Aabria says about D&D. Each player has a secret. So I kind of had that in the back of my mind. What was going to be her big secret? What was going to be the reveal? What would really gag the family? Okay, this you’re happy-go-lucky child, who seems to be larger than life and not really thinking about the future, actually buckles down and says, This is my partner. This is the life that we’ve set up; deal with it. And because of the gestation of stoats, they can decide when they want to become pregnant, and that was such a fascinating thing, especially with the state of women’s health in America and the world.

I would love some ownership and some autonomy over my own body and, just having ownership of deciding this is the time. This may not be the best time obviously, because there is deathly smog trying to take us out, but having the ownership to say this is what I want. This is my choice, and this is what I want to do with my body. So I felt very powerful in that way, but also didn’t feel like Viola had to be so soft and untouchable. She’s still a badass, even though she’s carrying a litter. So everyone’s badass in that way.

I love that. And I’m going to break down some of the craziness from this episode. So Jaysohn was saved last episode, everything seems great. Ava immediately disappears into the Blue.

Rashawn Nadine Scott: I know! Oh my god! When Erika left the room. I was like, Oh, are they dead?

Yeah.

Rashawn Nadine Scott: Are they gone forever? Someone tell me something. There was a lot of moments where people stood up from the table and said no more. This is too stressful. I know I had a moment, too. But that blew my mind. Just to get all the details. Again, I have to shout out the creative team behind Dimension 20. They do so much detailed work that I was so blown by. Even that reactor core seemed like there was an elkhead, and there were skeleton bones everywhere. They just do so much detail that it really blew me [away], and I was like, Oh, these look like brownie squares. But no, they’re radioactive metal that will kill you if you even get a little bit close to them. It was amazing.

I prefer brownie squares. But yes, yeah,

Rashawn Nadine Scott: I would prefer brownie squares too.

What did you think when Erika came back to the table? Because that blew my mind.

Rashawn Nadine Scott: I liked having the suspense of we may not see grandma ever again. But it allowed us to figure out, What is this family dynamic when the big boss is gone? How do we solve problems? And that’s kind of when big sister stood up and became Tutu. And let us know we have a lot of great skills. Our grandmother may stress us out a lot, but gave us a lot of tools to survive. I think we have a lot more know-how than a lot of the other stoats that are in the Last Bast because they’re just going with the flow. They have no idea what potentially is coming for them. So it’s a little scary.

And you all completely blew up what their lives were because you-

Rashawn Nadine Scott: Immediately walked in and said, Actually, I’d like to change everything. I’d like to speak to the manager. Actually, I want to speak to the manager’s manager. Can I speak to the Regional Manager, please?

You killed the manager.

Rashawn Nadine Scott:Sure did. Killed the manager and is like, Oh, my daughter’s are going to be in charge now. I love a forward, brassy lady. And Erika, they are so amazing. Oh, I’m a fan of everybody at the table, but Erika was very good in the beginning, saying, Hey, we’re gonna get into these family dynamics and these family ideas. If at any point you feel I’m going too hard, or you feel like this is not going the way that you want, Erika was more than willing to pull back. But we said I was very comfortable. Let’s get into it. Let’s do it. So there was a sense of safety and community that we could play the way we wanted to because we had those guardrails up.

Can you talk to me a little bit about how Viola was feeling when Ava disappeared? We see a lot of tension and friction in that relationship. I have to say, I think one of my favorite lines is when Viola says, I’m worried mom and she’s like, That tracks.

Rashawn Nadine Scott: Yeah, she’s a pretty blunt lady. So try to find, sift through that hardness to be… if Ava is a hard candy we’re trying to get to that soft, gooey part in the middle. We know that it’s there, but that exterior has been built up for so long. It’s hard to crack. Even if you’re someone’s child, there’s obviously things that you’re never going to know about your parent because they’re trying to make sure that you feel as protected as possible.

So when Ava was gone, I felt like I was basically reaching out for her. Trying to pull her through the Blue. It felt very like, Mommy. Mommy, oh my gosh, she’s gone. It felt like a baby wanting uppies, that sort of thing. So it really pulled on my heartstrings and in these next few episodes, I know that there are going to be some really emotional. I wept. I wept several times. Getting into this kind of mother-daughter dynamic. It wasn’t pain. It wasn’t joy or anything like that. It was kind of like a numbness of, What am I supposed to do?

She could have had the litter right there. Just the shock of, Oh, Mom’s gone? How am I going to be? I can’t be a mom without my mom. I was feeling there will be someone missing. Oh, the hole will be too big. It’ll be too hard to fill. To become everything that Ava was or could be. Yeah, I think we can’t not have a Ava. I think that would be very devastating for Viola.

Well, we did find out Ava’s heart isn’t beating, which is terrifying in its own right, but then we found out that has something to do with Tula’s secret. What went through your mind when those two revelations happened immediately back-to-back?

Rashawn Nadine Scott: Well, I was so glad that the very last line was kept in and I said, Why is my sister such a sneaky b-tch? I was so mad. I think I threw down a pen. I was like, You are lying to me. How dare you? But I know there was a point during character creation where Aabria was like, You can take this feat or a trade or something, if not someone, they left the room and Aabria whispered something. So there was always a little secret that we never knew.

And again, I think it’s just having blinders on and being the little sister, like, My world is great. I have everything you ever want. My niece and nephew think I’m the coolest person in the world. My husband’s hot. My mom carries around a raccoon dick to bash anybody. And my sister is kind of stressed out, but she used to be cool. I thought I had everything going. Thought I knew everything about the world, but then, drops that foot. I was mad. I was looking at Brennan sideways. How dare you lie to me? I thought we were cool. We’re supposed to be sisters. What’s wrong with you? Brennan. It was a a good reveal. I loved it.

It was definitely a good reveal. And it has me so stressed for what is coming in the future.

Rashawn Nadine Scott: Y’all are not ready. You really aren’t. I was screaming my head off. The last few maps are beautiful. The story gets even more intense and wild. And it makes me think, what are Aabria’s dreams like? Maybe let’s go through a couple of her journals and see if there’s anything that we could really… This arms race that they’re in, all the DMs. It’s only going to get more crazy and I think it’s good for the rest of us because we get to see what they can dream up. But I can’t wait. I cannot wait. I think everyone is going to gag honey. It’s gonna be fabulous. It’s good to be. It’s nuts. It really, really is.

Every time I talk to one of you guys, you say the next episode is gonna be more insane. And it’s somehow delivers.

Rashawn Nadine Scott: Yeah.

It’s amazing and also so stressful. Because I watch these in the middle of the night, and I’m just like, I can’t go to bed now, man. I’m just gonna sit here for an hour staring at the wall disassociating. I don’t know what’s going on.

Rashawn Nadine Scott: Yeah, and bears are my favorite animals. So now every time I think of my favorite animal, I have to rectify it with, and then what if I had just like eaten its brain? I have to live with my choices. Oh, yeah. I’m definitely gonna do that. And now I’m like, Oh, should I get a bear skin rug? Maybe not? Me. Maybe a faux one. Maybe we just do plushies from now on. No more realness.

She got a little too real with that bear map?

Rashawn Nadine Scott: Yeah, sure did. Sure did.

Can you talk to me about playing with Aabria as a DM because I love her style of DMing, with the storytelling and everything. She just amps it up every time with puzzles, with the maps, with the animation. What is that like for you as a player?

Rashawn Nadine Scott: It was really good because it helped. Obviously, she can hold my focus because she’s amazing and wonderful and all those things, but it really made me lean into the game. There was no moment that my brain could wander because I was so invested. I felt like I was listening to the greatest audiobook of all time. I would keep little notes of things and try to remember every snapshot. But I really enjoy her style.

I’ve never had a DM quite like her because she’s more theater of the mind and paints that picture. This was the first time she had used any battle map. So she had let us know that she was a bit nervous about it, but she did such a good job. There’s no way I would have thought that was her first time doing anything like that. And just stepping it up, I think the shadow puppets, the audio recordings, and the things that they had done were just so far and beyond anything that I was expecting.

I was like, Maybe this would be kind of goofy, like, Starstruck or like Fantasy High, or it can be all yackety shmackety. But no, you really got to the heart of family and community, and how do we do for others and do for ourselves? In the midst of this strike, it felt a little like, Okay, how do we unionize and get ourselves together so that everyone is benefiting in the long run? And not just this one particular family.

As a Dimension 20 fan, is there a world that’s been established outside of Burrow’s End that you would like to play in at some point?

Rashawn Nadine Scott: Oh, I would like to go to Leviathan. I thought the pirate season was very, very fun. I enjoy The Seven, actually The Seven. I love, love the dynamic of that friendship. They just bonded so quickly, seeing Seven different personalities and types of femme that are out there. We get a couple of archetypes that we got so, so much range and style from them. I would love to play in that world. That’s all Spire, isn’t it? I think I just want to be in Spire. But yeah, I would happily come and play in any world they had. I trust them wholeheartedly.

So the First Stoats are gone. Does Viola think it’s done or does she think that it’s going to be worse now?

Rashawn Nadine Scott: I don’t think it’s going to be worse. I think she’s so confident in her family that everything we did in the outside world, we can easily [implement] here. I’m really trying to think if that totally falls apart. I want to believe that we think we’ve got it. It’s cool. We got rid of the big baddies who don’t tell the people the truth. And now all these people are gonna have questions for us. And I don’t know if we’re really going to have all the answers that they really want to hear. So there’ll be a lot of politicking for sure.

Didn’t you show up and basically kill all their leaders within 24 hours?

Rashawn Nadine Scott: Caitlin, being an animal is almost exactly like being a human. So we just used our animal brains to make decisions. And then we think about the repercussions afterwards. But I am optimistic because now we have hats, so nothing can go wrong.

Yeah, that is true. They establish hats. You’re good.

Rashawn Nadine Scott: And the whole time, I never really pressed the clothing thing, but I love that everyone else at the table’s like, I would love to get Rashawn a hat or any sort of gloves of any kind. I love that Ava trying so hard to think, invented hats. I hope the Wikipedia pages have been changed for the invention of hats, because now we know concretely how it actually happened.

One of the moments I loved in the fight, cause Thorn, man Jasper with those dice is rough.

Rashawn Nadine Scott: Yeah, I want to support my man. But also these roles are terrible.

It’s rough watching. With the Box of Doom I’m like, Come on, come on, man. You need, like, a 10. Let’s do this! I love the moment where you gave him inspiration by saying, They kicked! Was that just a spur of the moment thing?

Rashawn Nadine Scott: Yeah, I was really just trying to do anything to get a Aabria to give him some sort of advantage, and it was not gonna work. I love that she was like, You tried it and this will never ever, ever happen again. But you gotta support your man. I was just like, Can I send him some loaded dice under the table? How can we fix this? They’re cursed. I think someone took his dice and put them out under the moon or something to make sure that they were rolling better because baby. It was bad. I was really trying to not laugh in his face because we made a promise to support each other no matter what. But, golly, get better dice. People of the world send him dice, please.

Yeah, he needs dice bad.

Rashawn Nadine Scott: Badly! It was, it was so bad.

What has your favorite and most unexpected thing to explore with Viola this season? Maybe that you didn’t initially think would be a standout for you when you were conceptualizing a character.

Rashawn Nadine Scott: Based on other characters that I’ve played, I didn’t think that she’d be as reserved. I know I came out swinging with that first line because I was trying to be badass cult lady wife. But within the family dynamic, I feel like, because I, personally, I am a big sister, I’m the oldest of three, I’m kind of Mama Bear. So, kind of taking a backseat role to be a younger sibling and look to the older people and see what we should do was different for me. Because I’m just used to Oh, I made a decision, and that’s what I want to do. But having to consult with your partner and your family before you make a decision. That’s very foreign to me.

So leaning into that dynamic was so strange and different for me, but I like it. I didn’t know that I would be so emotionally invested in it. But I guess I was having a great time, and I felt comfortable with all of my castmates. And I love my character, but I just got really emotional. I could just feel, there’s going to be a conversation that happens between Tula, Ava, and myself that I got the real lump in the throat. I felt like I was confronting an actual parent about something and just, I can’t speak. As vocal as I am. It’s like, Well, if I get that lump in my throat and I can’t speak, I’m feeling it in my belly and all over it. I had a guttural reaction. I think after we had done that particular scene.

I believe it was Mother’s Day that we were working, and afterwards, we had lunch and we all had a real talk about family and how we were feeling, and it just got me really emotional. I had to step outside and calm myself down, so I could continue with the rest. Let that happen, work through the emotion, and not carry it into the Dome because I don’t need to feel all my family baggage. That’s for when I write my book, but I felt very good, comfortable, and supported very much so, by everyone. They really made me feel like I could go there comfortably and no one was going to judge me, obviously, for having that sort of reaction or feeling so connected to the people at the table.

Quick recap of what we have in this episode. Ava, maybe dead. Tula heart stopped at somepoint?

Rashawn Nadine Scott: Somewhere.

All the First Stoats are dead and you guys have some mutant crazy wolf. What can you tease for the next episode because this is a lot of threads I feel like we have to follow.

Rashawn Nadine Scott: Okay, teasing for the next episode, if I can recall. There is going to be another tape. There’s gonna be another recording. There’s more things to decipher because Dr. Wenabocker. There’s more to the tapes; baby, there’s tapes. There’s more information, and there was a point I do remember during the break where, because Erika works in voice acting, was able to pick up little things that happened in the background. They were like, That’s glass shattering. They heard all these details that I didn’t personally catch until maybe the third or fourth time that they played it for us. So again, layered beautiful details that this production has. It’s amazing. So yes, listen to the tapes very well people. Listen to the tapes.

About Dimension 20: Burrow’s End

Burrow’s End takes place in the Blue Forest where a certain family of stoats comprised of matriarch Ava, adult sisters Tula and Viola, Viola’s husband Thorn Vale, and Tula’s children Jaysohn and Lila find their once peaceful existence threatened by forces both natural and otherwise.

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