Bill & Ted’s William Sadler Ready to Return as Death (But On One Condition) [Exclusive]

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When Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey came out in 1991, it included a hilarious parody of the classic 1957 Swedish film The Seventh Seal. That movie stars Max von Sydow as a knight named Antonius Block, who returns from the Crusades to find Sweden devastated by the plague. Facing his own mortality, Block challenges Death (played by Bengt Ekerot) to a chess game. If Block wins, he gets to live. But really, he just wanted to postpone the inevitable long enough to see his wife one last time.

The filmmakers made a surprising decision to parody a famous Swedish artwork, which led to William Sadler being cast as Death after Bill and Ted seemingly died in the movie. Instead of a chess match, they challenged Death to games like Battleship and Twister, and surprisingly, they won! This resulted in Death joining their band. Recently, William Sadler spoke with Chris Killian from ComicBook about his new film, The Yeti, and the conversation naturally turned to Bill & Ted. He shared the one thing that would need to happen for him to reprise his role as Death again.

I did get to play the character again in the third movie, Face the Music, and it was a lot of fun. Actually, speaking of the makeup, something I don’t often share is that I developed an allergy to it.

What Does the Future Hold for Bill & Ted?

While working on the show Roswell, actor William Sadler discovered he was allergic to the makeup. Sadler is well-known for playing Death in Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, and he reprised the role in Bill & Ted Face the Music. This later appearance revealed that Death had a falling out with Bill and Ted, stemming from a lawsuit. In the film, Bill and Ted briefly die in an attempt to save their daughters, who are killed by a time-traveling robot named Dennis Caleb McCoy. They reconcile with Death, who ultimately agrees to bring both them and their daughters back to life.

Keanu Reeves said he stopped wearing makeup until the movie Face the Music, when applying it caused his face to become very puffy again. He’s open to doing another Bill & Ted film, but only if they can prevent that from happening again.

During the interview, they also asked about the creation of Death’s distinctive voice in Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey. Sadler revealed that the inspiration came from a Czech actor named Jan Tříska, whom he’d worked with in a play. He explained that Tříska’s habit of mispronouncing words and landing on the wrong syllables was the basis for the accent. Sadler also shared that he particularly enjoyed the contrast between Death’s initially frightening persona and his eventual transformation into a comically bad loser, noting how dramatically Death ‘falls apart’ throughout the film.

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2026-04-25 23:17