The Witcher: Actors behind Yennefer and Ciri outline their season 1 journeys

The Witcher is among the most hotly anticipated genre shows on the horizon. Netflix’s adaptation of author Andrzej Sapkowski’s stars Henry Cavill as the titular monster hunter, and takes place in a richly developed world where different intelligent species try to live together in a medieval world beset with monsters, many of them drawn from Polish folklore.

But even if you don’t care about the particulars, the trailer is good enough to speak for itself:

From the start, it’s looked pretty clear that Geralt (Cavill) wasn’t going to be the only focal point of the show. Ciri (Freya Allan), his eventual protégé in the ways of the Witcher; and Yennefer (Anya Chalotra), his on-again, off-again sorceress love interest, both look like they’ll have big parts to play. Speaking to ComicBook.com, the actors talked about what their characters will get up to in the first season.

“Ciri is the princess of Cintra,” Allan said at a roundtable interview at San Diego Comic-Con. “She is very feisty and stubborn […] but also has been protected her whole life, and always been surrounded by the same people, same environment; so she’s very innocent, naïve. Hasn’t experienced the real world at all. Her idea of the real world is going out into the streets, disguising herself as one of the boys, and playing on the street. And really hasn’t seen how brutal the world truly can be. That’s what she experiences.”

Fans who are coming at this series having played the video games by CD Projekt Red, or even having read Sapkowski’s Witcher saga, may be surprised to see a Ciri who isn’t already acquainted with Geralt. The Witcher books are unique in that the first two — The Last Wish and Sword of Destiny — are more collections of short stories than a proper serialized narrative. Based on the trailer and what we’ve seen of production behind the scenes, it looks like the show will start by adapting those stories, meaning we’ll see how these characters meet before forming the close bonds we know from the games and later books.

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Meanwhile, Chalotra described Yennefer’s season 1 journey. “Yennefer is a sorceress, and she is the ultimate survivor. She’s stubborn. She won’t take no for an answer. She is in a constant battle with herself. She’s also witty and brave and sexy. Yeah, and one of the most powerful mages on the continent.”

"So in our version of The Witcher, we explore Yennefer’s backstory. So we explore from her at 14 years old to when she’s 77, and so within that there’s that huge turning point for her when she discovers her powers and the purpose that that gives her. […] And also the transformation. Yeah, and the journey of self-discovery she goes on from then on."

In the world of The Witcher, sorcerers and sorceresses can extend their lives through magic, which explains how Yennefer can be played by the 23-year-old Anya Chalotra even though the character is pushing 100. It looks like the show will include flashbacks to earlier in Yennefer’s life, when she was first discovering and developing her powers. That’s something we didn’t explicitly get in the books, so it should be exciting.

A Yennefer flashback may also explain the report from Witcher fansite Redanian Intelligence that actor Isobel Laidler, above, has been cast as Queen Kalis of Lyria. By the time we get to the Witcher saga, Kalis’ daughter Meve is the well-established ruler of Lyria, with her mother Kalis having been dead some time. But if we flash back to Yennefer’s early days, we could meet Kalis as a young woman.

In short, everything is coming together on this show. We’ll be watching when it drops on Netflix later this year.

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