Dungeon Crawler Carl: Jeff Hays to Voice Princess Donut in Peacock Series

Jeff Hays will be the voice of Princess Donut in the live-action adaptation of Dungeon Crawler Carl produced for Peacock. The announcement came on July 23 during the panel dedicated to writer Matt Dinniman at San Diego Comic-Con 2026, where Hays appeared as a surprise guest alongside the author and Chris Yost, head writer and executive producer of the series. He is the first officially confirmed cast member.

The choice maintains one of the most recognizable links between the novels and their adaptation. Hays has narrated all eight audiobooks published so far, portraying not only Donut but also Carl and the other characters. His version of the Persian cat, theatrical, vain, and endowed with magical powers, has become for many listeners the definitive voice of the character. Yost called his involvement «the easiest decision» made by the production, while Dinniman explained that entrusting Donut to a different performer would have deprived the series of an important part of its identity.

Dungeon Crawler Carl tells the story of Carl, a former Coast Guard member, and his ex-girlfriend's show cat, who survived an alien invasion that wiped out most of humanity. The survivors are forced to participate in Dungeon Crawler World: Earth, an intergalactic reality show set in an eighteen-level underground labyrinth, populated by monsters, traps, and other contestants. The series belongs to the LitRPG genre, a form of narrative that integrates typical role-playing game elements into the story, such as stats, levels, skills, and equipment.

Initially self-published by Dinniman in 2020, the first novel gave rise to a series later acquired for print by Ace Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House. According to data released at the time of the announcement, the franchise has exceeded 14 million copies sold across print, digital, and audio editions, while the audiobooks narrated by Hays have accumulated over 140 million hours of listening.

Peacock ordered the series directly, produced by Seth MacFarlane's Fuzzy Door alongside Universal Global Television. Chris Yost is adapting the series and serves as executive producer with MacFarlane, Erica Huggins, and Rachel Hargreaves-Heald, while Dinniman participates as co-executive producer.

The performers for Carl and the other main characters, as well as the release date, remain unknown. However, Hays stated that he has already seen some footage of cats used for motion capture and is slated to work on set: a preliminary indication of how the production might integrate Princess Donut into live-action scenes, although the definitive technique has not been confirmed.