The Witcher showrunner Lauren Hissrich almost didn’t take the job thanks to fear of getting compared to Game of Thrones.
Adapting anything for the screen comes with a lot of pressure, particularly if the original source material has a dedicated fanbase like The Witcher does, both from people who love Andrzej Sapkowski’s series and those who found it through CD Projekt Red’s video games. Still, Netflix pulled it off, and the show quickly became one of the most in-demand streaming series worldwide.
The lion’s share of credit for that success must go to showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, who also worked on another popular Netflix’s series, The Umbrella Academy. And as it turns out, Hissrich turned down The Witcher at first, afraid that she wouldn’t be able to do the fantasy series justice.
Speaking on 3rd & Fairfax: The WGAW Podcast, Hissrich explained her fears when first approached with the showrunning gig. She remembered being scared off by comparisons between The Witcher and Game of Thrones, which at the time was the biggest thing in TV. “I can’t do that! No way!” she remembers saying. And let’s be honest: being compared to a series like Game of Thrones is pretty intimidating.
Hissrich felt that someone who had experience working on a fantasy series might be a better fit for The Witcher, especially since fans would have high expectations going into the adaptation. “That fanbase deserves someone that knows they can write a fantastic fantasy show. Someone who has experience writing fantasy; someone who … can give them what they’re expecting.” She just didn’t think that she was “the person to take that on.”
So how did Hissrich wind up with the job? Well, despite her initially turning it down, Netflix continued to ask for her input on major decisions regarding the series. After that, Hissrich read the next two novels in Sapkowski’s series and realized that The Witcher is more than just a fantasy romp, and that she actually did have the experience to tackle its major themes, the biggest of which she felt was family. “My experience up to that point in writing had really been about family drama, character-driven drama, and that’s something I knew I could write,” Hissrich said.
From there, Hissrich pitched Netflix about focusing the series on the themes of family, following its three main characters until their paths converged with one another. “I think that pitch was, first of all, what got me incredibly passionate about the show, and probably what convinced Netflix to give me a shot with a huge property that I had no experience with.”
And it seems Hissrich’s vision paid off in the end. With any luck, the second season of The Witcher will focus even more heavily on those familial relationships now that Geralt, Yennefer, and Ciri are all on the same timeline.
If you’re holding out hope for a happy ending for Geralt and Yennefer, you may be disappointed.
Focusing on Geralt and Yennefer in particular, Hissrich described how she thought about the on-again-off-again romance between these two characters, each of which has a magically enhanced lifespan. “Time is a very different thing for you, so you’re not going to go get married and settle down and have kids… life looks very different to you,” Hissrich said. “They have short bursts of either sexual relationships or… flirtations that they may sort of come back and visit that person, but by the time they come back, that person could be dead.”
"What I like to imagine is that Yennefer and Geralt are both used to doing it one way; they’re both sort of perpetual bachelors…Geralt and Yennefer are really like pinballs off of each other in a way… Even in the books, I don’t know that there’s really a happily ever after for them."
There is one part in the books where Yennefers imagines a life where Geralt herds sheep and she bakes and weaves baskets, but Hissrich doesn’t see it happening. “It’s such a sweet dream, but it’s so unrealistic. These people are never going to be sheep farmers and basket weavers. They both have this sort of desire to live on this edge of life and death.”
That’s sobering for fans of the series who want to see these crazy kids make it. But even if the show doesn’t give us a happy ending for them, there’s always the video games:
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