Kingdom Come: Deliverance star Luke Dale on becoming a Prague “innkeeper”
Englishman Luke Dale first came to Prague as an actor in Kingdom Come: Deliverance, a video game set in Bohemia in the early 1400s that became a major international hit. Dale has since moved to the city, where he recently opened Nobleman. He describes it as a Czech classic pub with a medieval soul and a British twist, and his social media bios now list “innkeeper” among his activities.
What’s your own background? And what brought you here?
“Being part of [Kingdom Come: Deliverance] is where my journey to living here and being a part of the culture started.”
“I’m an actor, I’ve been a filmmaker, and more recently in life a streamer.
“I have been working in Prague for 10-plus years, because I was in a video game called Kingdom Come: Deliverance; I would come out every few weeks or months to work on that.
“And eventually by osmosis – you come here enough, you fall in love with it – I wanted to be here more.
“I developed friendships and fell in love with the culture, and that’s why I moved in the end.”
Describe your involvement with Kingdom Come: Deliverance, which is a massive Czech-made game.
“Yes, it’s been a very long saga [laughs] of being in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 1 and 2. It’s just been an absolute joy.
“Nobody really expected the second game to be a powerful, impactful thing on the culture, but it has been.
“And the way people have responded to the game is just beyond belief.”
For people who haven’t seen the game, your likeness is in it, is that correct? It’s not just an image of a face, it’s your face to some degree?
“Yes. There are three components of it.
“We do performance capture, which I always compare to Gollum in Lord of the Rings and Andy Serkis’s work – you get in the suit and your movements and your facial expressions are all picked up.
“Then there’s the voice work that you do after that.
“And then there’s the facial capture, which is actually them transposing your face into the game, so it’s like I’m walking around as a medieval noble in a virtual world [laughs].”
Your character is a Bohemian nobleman called Lord Hans Capon. I presume the nobleman aspect of all of that is where the name of your pub comes from?
“That’s right. It was inspired by something wonderful that happened to me, being part of that game – it’s really where my journey to living here and being a part of the culture started.
“So I kind of wanted to commemorate that and honour that.
“But the pub is not a KCD-themed bar or anything like that.
“It’s got a medieval soul, because I am forever associated with the medieval period; I’ve fallen in love with it so much, and it’s given me so much, that I wanted to kind of honour that.”
But why a pub?
“[Laughs] I feel like we could all do with a bit more in real life interaction.
“There are no screens, no football – you come, you break bread and you talk. That’s something we need more of.”
“I feel I spend way too much time online, as an actor and a streamer; I do a lot of content creation.
“And I want a space where people can come together and actually talk with each other.
“There are no screens, there’s no football – you come, you have a meal, you break bread and you talk. And I think that’s something we need more of.
“I also wanted something a little bit more concrete in my life. Having been an actor and a filmmaker, that’s a somewhat risky and not stable world.
“And I think having something that’s bricks and mortar is a really nice thing.”
I came to this pub some years ago, before it was yours. How did you find this place? Or how did this particular spot end up becoming Nobleman?
“I started looking for a space tentatively, not knowing that I would even take a lease on a place.
“This one was the last place I looked at [laughs], and I fell in love with it.
“I walked in and I said to myself, This is actually almost what I want it to be – it just needs a cosmetic facelift [laughs].
“And that’s what we did for three months. We changed it to be exactly what we wanted.
“So yes, it was the space here that convinced me to fully go for it. And if I hadn’t found the space I probably would have given it another three, four years before I did this.”
I saw from a YouTube video of yours that you yourself got your hands dirty doing the renovation job.
“It was a very, very educational period of my life [laughs], because I’m not really a DIY kind of person.
“I had to learn quite a lot of things. I did a lot of painting and varnishing, and smashing down things.
“I also learnt a lot about every element of restaurants and gastronomy.
“We’re a small team of people that brought this all together: Matty, our brilliant carpenter; Tony Williams, our brilliant general manager; Tom O’Sullivan, our brilliant chef; Máša, our fantastic administration person.
“Together we somehow managed to do it in a very short time. There was a lot to do, but people were passionate.
“We were also very lucky to have had quite a bit of marketing around it. We’ve had a lot of press, and the place has been fairly busy ever since we opened.”
How did you go about fitting it out? What kind of items are here, if people come to visit?
“All over the walls you’ll see a kind of nod to the medieval period.
“Most of it is locally sourced or made – handcrafted.
“We have a brilliant partnership with Hefaistos, who are a local blacksmith. They provided us with quite a lot of weaponry and armour, and we’re operating almost as a showroom for them.
“So you can buy their wares. If you like a helmet or a sword, you can actually purchase that very item from them.
“We have a bunch of tapestries that I sourced from a place in Český Krumlov; some of them are French or Flemish.
“We’ve worked with local artists. One of them, Margarita, did a triptych, a three-piece oil painting about a nobleman’s journey to Trosky Castle.
“There are loads of things like that all over the walls and hopefully they’ll start conversations about where they’ve come from.
“And it’s also nice to have employed local artists and craftspeople and tradespeople.”
Is it intended to be more like a classic Czech pub, or would you like it to also have some aspects of a British pub?
“We have sticky toffee pudding and apple crumble, but nothing I believe Czech people wouldn’t like.”
“It’s a classic Czech pub with a medieval soul, and I think a couple of Britishisms in there, from me.
“That’s because I felt passionately about a certain few things. For instance, we’ve got a lovely English cider called Thatchers.
“We have sticky toffee pudding and apple crumble, which are British twists, if you like, but nothing that I believe that Czech people wouldn’t like.”
You don’t have sticky carpet?
“We don’t – not yet [laughs].”
And as for the food, you’re combining Czech and British?
“Yes. It’s largely a very Czech-friendly menu. We have svíčková, jitrnice, chicken with mashed potatoes.
“Obviously, it's very early days. This is the first two weeks we've been open and a lot of people have asked, will the menus change? Will we expand? Will we have vegan options?
“And I think I just need to remind people that we've just opened. We had to get a menu ready and that will adapt, it will change.
“We want to do a Sunday and Saturday roast where people can come all day long and have a proper British roast, which I want to introduce to the area.
“I think it's something that people will really, really like. But that's going to come in time.
“We've been overwhelmed by how busy we've been.
“To be honest, our chef is and we're working on making him more comfortable, because we really didn't expect so many food orders.
“It been amazing, but it's been a lot.”
I saw a big queue of people here out on the street around the corner when the place first opened. Now you've been open for a little while, who is coming here?
“It's really a mixture. And this was always going to be a ‘let's find out’ kind of thing.
“It's now a real mixture of genuinely local people – who don't know me from Adam, and are just kind of intrigued by this new venue they've found – and people that are fans of mine and the medieval world in the game.
“That's also really lovely to see. It’ll be really interesting to see how it develops.”
One thing that came to my mind was, Do gamers go to pubs?
“Oh, hell yeah. Hell yeah. They definitely do, especially my fans – they love that.”
You’ve said also that this place is not a tourist attraction. And I know it's early days, but have you had international visitors?
“We have, yes.
“We had someone come from South Korea on the first night, and I was a little bit worried about that.
“I was really hoping we could get everybody in and seated. And we largely did. We had a queue of 90 people out of the door until midnight.
“I had to keep going out and apologising and saying, We're trying to get to you guys, we're really sorry.
“We have had a lot of people traveling from all over who have maybe come to Prague anyway, but they wanted to stop in. Or maybe they have come just for this.”
You seem like a very busy guy. Do you have much time to work here? Or will you be here much yourself in person?
“I’m here as much as I can be.
“I do have a lot going on at the moment, though I can now see that more free time is on the horizon.
“But the last few months have been quite ridiculous in terms of my workload.
“So once that eases up, I'll be here a lot more; I'm here as much as I can be at the moment.
“I love coming in here to just have a meal or a drink and talk to the locals, see how things are going.
“And I also obviously have to be here to address anything that comes up with the staff, make sure my general manager's happy, my chef's happy, the team are happy.”
Can we assume the fact you've opened this pub means you're here for the long haul in Prague?
“Yes, that's the intention.
“I wasn't happy in London, I must admit. It was not for me. I was there 13 years and it just wasn’t sustainable in many ways, financially.
“It was rough, and I think it can be quite a lonely place.
“I wasn't happy in London. But ever since I’ve been in Prague, I feel enveloped by everything.”
“But ever since I’ve been in Prague, I just feel enveloped by everything.
“Also I've got a great network of brilliant friends and amazing colleagues who I love working with.
“So, yes, I plan on staying a long time.”
