Mirren Mack tells us about playing Princess Merwyn in The Witcher: Blood Origin

Netflix’s new live-action spinoff of The Witcher has arrived. Set 1,200 years before Geralt of Rivia walks the Continent, The Witcher: Blood Origin tells the story of an uprising that leads into the Conjunction of the Spheres, a celestial event where worlds merged worlds and monsters, humans, elves, dwarves and halflings are all stranded together in the same reality.

Mirren Mack plays Princess Merwy. One of the royal heads of a powerful elven kingdom, Merwyn must deal with a demanding political marriage. Over the course of the series, she evolves into a complicated character. We had the opportunity to ask Mack about portraying the many different sides of Princess Merwyn.

Be warned, there will be SPOILERS for The Witcher: Blood Origin below.

For Princess Merwyn, the “ends justified her means” on The Witcher: Blood Origin

The Witcher: Blood Origin introduces a huge cast of new characters into Netflix’s Witcher universe. One of the most central to the prequel is Merwyn, the elven princess of the kingdom of Xin’trea. After a romantic indiscretion leaves her future uncertain, Merwyn is betrothed to the king of the nearby elven kingdom of Pryshia.

“Merwyn to me…so she was a princess born into this patriarchal monarchy, and her role, she was destined to be married off as a pawn in this civil war that lasted a thousand years,” Mack told us. “And her dream, her voice inside of her had all this knowledge, this real great love of history, and she’s a very intelligent person who thinks ‘I can help shape this world, create this golden era to come.’ But the people around her rejected that.”

"Her ends justified her means in getting to where she got. So basically she had this vision for what was right, and to get there some sacrifices had to be made."

In Blood Origin’s premiere episode, Merwyn takes part in a coup that effectively wipes out the leadership of three elven kingdoms, leading to a new “Golden Empire.” But she only trades one set of men who wish to use her as a puppet for another.

By the end of the show, Merwyn is able to take matters into her own hands. Mack had to portray both Merwyn’s wide-eyed optimism and her hard edge. “I think I can probably access the optimistic ones a little easier,” she said. “But…nothing on Earth do I love more than people…looking at me a bit funny, going ‘oh, you’re actually quite scary.'”

Mack adopts a look of mock horror, before laughing. “I go, ‘oh good!’ It’s really interesting when people see you a bit differently to how they saw you a minute ago. So it is quite fun if you can play that dark.”

Creating Merwyn’s intricate visual identity was a “collaboration”

Of all the characters in The Witcher: Blood Origin, Princess Merwyn has by far some of the most consistently intricate costuming. Over the course of the show she wears sheer elven gowns, complicated hairstyling and makeup, and even her own unique set of armor. I was curious: what was a day on set like, and how long did it take to prepare given Merwyn’s ever-changing attire?

“It was amazing. I have to say…the hair and makeup team and costume team, they were immense, ’cause they were up…an hour before me probably prepping everything,” Mack recalled. “It was pitch black outside, we were always the earliest people. We’d play our music and we’d get to it, and it was just…it was amazing.”

"We all got on really well, which was the lucky thing. But what a collaboration [it] is, I think. They had the vision for who Merwyn would be, and I was lucky enough to be able to play her, and bring my version of her. So we all came together to make who you see on camera."

You can see Mirren Mack in The Witcher: Blood Origin, out now on Netflix. And don’t forget to check out our interview with prequel creators Declan de Barra and Lauren S. Hissrich:

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