The Witcher is one of several shows on track to get back to work after a prolonged hiatus courtesy of the coronavirus. Season 2 has been giving the working title of “Mysterious Monsters,” and when shootings starts back up, showrunner Lauren Hissrich intends to return to set with the vigor and heart that made the first season such a hit on Netflix.
Hissirch is very aware of the multiple influences she’s working with. The show is an adaptation of Andrzej Sapkowski’s Witcher books, which started coming out way back in 1994. But it’s no secret that the reason the books caught on in the U.S. is because of a very popular series of Witcher video games by CD Projekt Red, video games set in the world created by the books but that don’t follow the story set out there. Hissrich’s show is based on the books, but she and her team intend to honor the games, as well.
“We love the games,” she told TV Guide. “Obviously what we wanted to do is go back to the source material, not to do an adaptation of an adaptation. But it doesn’t mean that we’re not fans of the games ourselves, that we don’t play them ourselves, and that we know that a huge part of our audience has only heard of The Witcher because of the video games. So we do, we want to pay homage to it, to them as often as possible. And also I’ve been to CD Projekt Red. I’ve met all of all of those really talented people there. And what they do is amazing. So, if we can offer them a wink and a nod whenever we can, we will.”
We’ve already seen references to the video games pop up, such as Geralt’s multiple bath scenes, and we’ll be on the lookout for more.
Speaking of Geralt, it sounds like Hissrich has a pretty good hold on what she wants to do with him as a character. “hat I think is fun in terms of Geralt as a protagonist is you have this external shell, which is this tough man who’s walking through the world who is determined not to need anyone,” she said. “He’s there to do his job. He’s there for money. That’s all he cares about. But it’s all protecting the sort of internal — we call it his white knight syndrome — his internal desire to be a hero and the sort of human emotions that he can’t help but let filter through, even though he’s determined to tell everyone that he doesn’t have an emotional capacity. I think a lot of that conflict is fun to play, and it’s kind of all going to explode in Season 2. All of the times that we saw him withhold, all the times that we saw Geralt sort of internalize things as opposed to externalize, in Season 2 he’s going to be confronted with that a lot more and has to make some different choices.”
Indeed, Geralt spent much of the first season resisting the idea that it was his destiny to be a mentor to the Princess Ciri (Freya Allan), but when the two finally meet in the last episode, they immediately hug, and thus begins a beautiful relationship.
Or at least an interesting one. Hissrich sees some quality bonding time ahead. “What would it be like for two strangers to come together and feel like that’s what they’ve been driving for for the entire season?” she asked “They finally got together and then they’re like, ‘Oh, I don’t know you at all. You are a stranger.'”
"And you know, Geralt, of course, has no experience with parenting, with children, with having a sort of continuous relationship in his life. He’s a vagabond of sorts. He’s a traveler. He purposely doesn’t establish long relationships and now he has one that’s going to be with him for a very long time. And for her, for Ciri, we started her journey in Season 1 really about what it would be like for a princess who’s been protected her entire life to suddenly be thrust out on her own. And one of the things that I love doing in Season 1, she has this final moment where she’s actually not running away from the problem. In Episode 7, she picks up this stick, literally, and charges toward the problem. And it’s this slight shift in Ciri where she’s not going to run anymore. And now we get to see her with that new attitude, with this kind of lovely stubbornness and grit that she’s built over Season 1, but then give her a father figure who’s suddenly going to start telling her what to do again."
I guess the warm fuzzies couldn’t last forever, huh?
The man who plays Geralt, Henry Cavill, was enthusiastic about the part from the jump. “I’m a big fan of fantasy,” he told Variety. “I love the genre. My dad was reading it to me before I could read. This is just slightly different from your average fantasy genre. There’s something a bit more grim about it, and I’ve been told that’s the Polish way. So there’s a heavy Polish influence. There’s just a harder edge, which I found kind of fascinating. In the same way that in Game of Thrones, you didn’t know who was going to die, in The Witcher, you can’t anticipate what’s going to happen, because it is quite a grim world.”
"Geralt doesn’t smile much, not in the show. When he does, even in the books, it’s called a “hideous smile.” There is a real grimness to it, but there are moments of light and moments of care and loving and strong familial bonds for people who aren’t actually family. Those moments seem all the brighter for the darkness in the world."
It’s important to get that hideous smile right, especially because the look of Geralt is so important to the overall character, from the white hair to the golden eyes. And the team spent a lot of time perfecting it. “Let me tell you this — the whole thing shifted a lot because we had screen tests and the look of the character evolved throughout the first season,” Cavill said. “We went through a couple of iterations of trousers because they initially had me in leather trousers. I mean, I’m designed in a certain way that things are forced into a stretched position. So, once that happens, the leather just didn’t go back to its natural shape. It ended up being a little bit saggy in places, which was not a great hero, attractive look.”
“I’m designed in a certain way that things are forced into a stretched position.” That is a very polite way of saying that his stuff was getting mashed.
"Eventually, the costume evolved, the wig evolved, the makeup evolved. Once we had it nailed, the experience in the morning — the two hours of hair and makeup and getting into costume — was transformative. It was something which by the time I was out of hair and makeup, my body language changed. I was moving differently. I was talking differently, obviously, but not just the voice, which Geralt has, but the intonation changed. My interaction with my dog even changed. He still saw me 100% as me. He didn’t freak out at all, or anything, but just the way I started interacting with the world changed a lot."
As for what else we can expect out of season 2, Hissrich promised that the whole thing will be a little more coherent this time out, now that all the characters are on the same timeline. “ur storylines start to become a little bit more cohesive,” she said. “The characters start overlapping a lot more. But it’s been really important to us to continue exactly what you brought up, those different genres and different tones within the show. So there’s still a lot of really dark humor and some ridiculously silly humor. There’s obviously romance; Geralt and Yennefer are at the forefront of it. But I think now we have this additional layer of family. There’s a new emotional layer to the show, which is what it means to be a parent, what it means to be a child, and what it means to sort of realize that you need people. And I think that’s one of the most exciting parts of Season 2.”
And of course, we’ll get more of we actually all came for: Joey Batey (Jaskier) singing catchy songs. I’ll get it started: “Toss a coin to your witcher…”
“So, it’s really funny. The lyrics to me of that song are so brilliant and they were written by Jenny Klein, who wrote the episode,” Hissrich said. “Of course in the story itself, it’s about how narrators control the story. Whoever’s telling the story gets to decide what actually happened. And that’s all that matters. And so there’s obviously some subtle bitterness and resentment knowing that whatever really happens doesn’t matter. It’s just about who tells it. But also, we wanted to talk about how Jaskier becomes popular by taking and exploiting Geralt’s travels and why they’re going to stay together for the rest of time. ”
"And when we were writing this song, I had no idea if it was going to work. Honestly, there was a point that I was like, “what are we thinking putting an anthem in the middle of this episode? It’s insane.” And then the very first time that we listened to it in the sound mix and it was laid over picture and we had actually had — Joey Batey had gone and recorded it with an orchestra — and it was so beautiful and odd. The next morning, we came back to the mixing stage and all of us were like, “we can’t get it out of our heads. It’s all I sang all night.” And at that point, we realized that we had something. It’s weird. You never know what’s gonna strike a chord. And that did so. So no, I mean, pressure-wise, Joey’s an amazing singer. We want him to sing as often as possible. And I also think the idea of narrative is really important to The Witcher and the idea of who tells stories. So we’re absolutely going to keep doing it."
I’m hoping they eventually write enough original songs for him to fill an album.
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