Despite production being put on hold because of the COVID-19 health crisis, Amazon’s adaptation of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time novels is poised to become the next big fantasy series on television. And fans wanting to know more about the series have gotten their fair share of new info these past few weeks, thanks to the cast members doing Q&A sessions on social media.
Daniel Henney, who’s playing the Warder al’Lan Mandragoran, took to Instagram earlier this week to answer some of fans’ biggest questions. Lan starts the series as, essentially, a bodyguard for the Aes Sedai Moraine. As the series continues, Lan plays a larger role, and Henney seems excited to tackle that.
Henney told fans that the hardest part of playing Lan is “just the unrelenting physicality of the character.”
"I mean, I have played a lot of physical characters. And I’m a physical person. I’ve played college basketball. I practiced martial arts, screen fighting, years and years of stunt work … This is the first time in my life when I looked at something and had this sort of fear — not a fear of playing him, but fear of, ‘I don’t know if I can pull this off, the physicality, the action, what they’re asking of me.’"
The good news? According to Henney, they did manage to pull it off, something he attributed to “the level of talent the stunt team has.” Given how much he’s talked up the action, it seems there will be no shortage of fight sequences in the first season of the show, and it sounds like plenty of effort has gone into making those scenes as good as they can be.
And while Henney may not have the same physical strength and endurance as Lan, he does have other things in common with the Warder. To start, he joked that they’re both “tame beasts,” referencing his dog who was onscreen during the video.
“He’s very loyal, he’s very protective, he’s very task-oriented, he values duty very much,” Henney explained. “He’s such a very good man, and I like to consider myself somewhere in that realm. I’m very protective of my loved ones. I try to take care of the people around me and guide them the right way. I’m very loyal in freindship and other relationships. I think we share those qualities.”
“Of course,” he added, “there’s a lot Lan has that most humans never could in terms of qualities.”
A throwback to Day 1 on the #WOTonPrime set. Can you tell where we were? pic.twitter.com/WDTIiNfpI2
— The Wheel Of Time (@TheWheelOfTime) February 19, 2020
Speaking about the series as a whole, there wasn’t much Henney could reveal. He did, however, tease some impressive sets — and fantasy fans know that the backdrops to these stories are as important as the plot or characters.
“I’ve never before in my life seen sets like this,” Henney said. “It is incredible. It’s like everything you ever dreamed of as an actor. As a fan of these books, I can only imagine what it would be like to see these sets.”
With such high praise, it seems The Wheel of Time fans have plenty to look forward to once filming finally concludes.
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