The Witcher: how Henry Cavill’s Geralt won over sceptical fans and made Netflix show a hit

When it was revealed that Henry Cavill would star in Netflix’s The Witcher, there was derision. The suave, chiselled Superman actor playing the scruffy, taciturn Geralt of Rivia? Get out of here. But after seeing Cavill as the beloved character from the bestselling books (on which the show, and the phenomenally successful video games, are based), the chorus has mostly quietened. After all, the numbers don’t lie: season two of The Witcher has been the streaming behemoth’s most-watched series each week since its release last month. Cavill can understand the visceral reaction to his casting, telling Forbes “people are going to be upset because, especially when we’re talking about books or games, you’re never going to be the exact person who they had in their head . . . I just consider that passion”. But the acceptance, however grudging, of his portrayal of Geralt by The Witcher’s notoriously dedicated fan base must be a salve for Cavill — for he is one of them. Although he is best known as Superman in the DC blockbusters, as one article put it, “beneath that iconic S beats the heart of a true nerd” (legend has it Cavill missed a callback for Man of Steel because he was playing World of Warcraft). Cavill was bought up on fantasy stories, read to him first by his father and then discussed passionately with his brothers once they could read themselves. Among those first novels Cavill read as a teen was Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski’s bestselling series The Witcher; when it was adapted into a video game in 2007, Cavill was into that, too. Such was his love for the elaborate world Sapkowski built around Geralt — a gruff “witcher” or monster hunter, with supernatural abilities of his own — that when Cavill heard showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich (Daredevil) had been hired to write a TV adaptation, he immediately began badgering his agents. “He was really annoying,” Schmidt Hissrich tells Vulture. “I finally said ‘I will meet with you. The show is not green-lit. There is nothing.’ I said ‘Thank you. Now I have to go write the show.’” Cavill had successfully planted the seed; Schmidt Hissrich auditioned 206 other actors but, ultimately, she knew Cavill was the man to embody what Indie Wire described as Geralt’s “husky, irritable energy”. Sapkowski told People he was “more than happy” with the casting, saying that “just as Viggo Mortensen gave his face to Aragorn (in The Lord of the Rings), so Henry gave his to Geralt — and it shall be forever so”. Season two of The Witcher sees Cavill stretching Geralt’s character to become more “three dimensional”. After taking Princess Cirilla, or Ciri, (Freya Allan) under his wing, he shows a more protective, paternal side, while another plot line follows his former lover, sorceress Yennefer (Anya Chalotra), last seen laying fiery waste to invading forces during the Battle of Sodden. Cavill tells NME that “as much as Geralt is fantastically good at killing things, it’s wonderful to see this gentle bond between (he and Ciri). “We see more of the wisdom of the character,” he says. ”We see him trying to draw information out rather than just demanding it or shouting and fighting.” The rich scenery is an integral part of the series and while the first season, released in 2019, was filmed across Europe, including in Hungary, Poland and Spain, COVID meant the second instalment was shot entirely in the United Kingdom. The art department built a full elven village in woods in Chichester; the entire cast, crew and filming equipment were winched into a cave in Cumbria and later, they lined up one at a time to cross a rickety bridge built in 1830, at the top of a 5.5m waterfall. A crucial part of the season is Geralt and Ciri’s time at Kaer Morhen, the decaying stone castle in snowy mountains that is home and training ground for witchers, filmed in the backlot of Arborfield film studios, a 100-plus-year-old former army barracks. It was vital they got it right; production designer Andrew Laws described its role as more of a character than a location. “We were aware that (Kaer Morhen) is an environment familiar to those who have read the books and played the video games, so we needed to honour that source material but also elevate it to a new level to keep it exciting for the audience,” Laws says. “That was a great challenge, but also a responsibility that we took very seriously.” Taking the source material seriously is also very much Cavill’s approach. Allan described his presence as like having “a Witcher bible on set”, telling the Fortress of Solitude website: “We’ll be doing a scene and he’ll be like ‘I think we should use this line from page 253 of Blood of Elves,’ and I’m like ‘how does this dude know all this stuff?’” His dedication is legendary; he admits to sneaking segments of his favourite dialogue from the books into the show and rumour has it he slept on set and rarely removed his armour (Cavill insists he was just trying to give it the lived-in look you’d expect of leather worn by a 100-year-old monster hunter). Shooting the second season was not without other challenges — Cavill, who does his own stunts, badly tore his hamstring and there was also a pause in March when cast member, Game of Throne alumni Kristofer Hivju, tested positive for COVID. But given the series success, as Forbes put it: “Cavill will go down in history as yet another one of those odd casting choices that ended up being perfect in the end. At first it seemed like he was too A-list, too pretty to be the grizzled Geralt, and yet in practice, everyone seems to love him in the role.” Shooting for the third season of The Witcher — there will reportedly be seven — is due to begin this month. The Witcher, season two, is out now on Netflix.

The Witcher: how Henry Cavill’s Geralt won over sceptical fans and made Netflix show a hit

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