Liam Hemsworth gives first interview about The Witcher, reveals season 5 production timeline

The Witcher is currently in the thick of filming its fourth season, and by any metric you want to use, this is a big one for the show. For the first three seasons of the series, its iconic lead monster hunter Geralt of Rivia was played by Henry Cavill to pretty much universal acclaim. But starting in season 4, Cavill will be replaced by Liam Hemsworth. Needless to say, fans are more than a little curious about what that transition will be like on screen.

So far, Hemsworth hasn't really talked much about joining the series — he's a little busy shooting it, after all. But this week he took a break from fighting monsters and mercenaries to stop by Live with Kelly and Mark where he spoke about what it's been like to film season 4 and even drop a timeline about when season 5 will begin production. You can watch below; Hemsworth's interview starts around the 23:00 mark:

Liam Hemsworth is still filming The Witcher season 4

“I’ve been shooting a show called The Witcher for the past nine months," Hemsworth told the hosts. "We were [in Wales] for two weeks. And the first week was beautiful sunshine, blue skies. And then the second week was kind of like tornado season.“

We've known that Hemsworth has been off in Wales shooting because there have been reports leaking out with images taken by locals of some important set pieces by the lake Llyn Padarn. As best we can tell, it looks like The Witcher filmed the Battle of the Bridge there, along with some other key scenes that required a beautiful waterfront backdrop. It's believed that filming in Wales has just wrapped; next it will head back to Longcross Studios in England to cap off the rest of the season.

Hemsworth also talked about what it was like for him to take on the mantle of Geralt. “I hadn’t seen the TV show. And I hadn’t read the books," he said. "But I played the video game like 10 years ago or something. And it’s still to this day one of the best video games of all time. And Netflix came to me almost two years ago now and said that they wanted me to just step in and take over.”

"I was really excited by taking on that character because I was a fan of the video game. But I said, you know, let me watch the TV show and have a look at the books and really get stuck into it."

The Witcher season 5 will begin filming in early 2025

It's great to hear Hemsworth talk about how he got involved in The Witcher TV show, but that wasn't the only juicy tidbit from this interview. He also spoke a bit about his work schedule, which gives us some pretty good clues as to when The Witcher season 5 will film. Hemsworth said he's been in London since January for the series and is almost done with season 4.

“I’ve got about three more weeks after this week of shooting," he said. "So we’ve been shooting now about eight months. Three more weeks and then we break for about four months and then come back next year and do another eight months.“

This lines up with the rumbles we heard that The Witcher was going to film seasons 4 and 5 back-to-back to finish out the series. Since Netflix has confirmed that season 5 will be the final season, it makes sense that it would film in this manner. This way, there will be continuity between the seasons and Hemsworth and his co-stars Freya Allan (Ciri) and Anya Chalotra (Yennefer of Vengerberg) can finish the show strong.

Hopefully this also means the wait between seasons won't be quite as long; season 3 premiered back in the summer of 2023, so by the time season 4 rolls around it'll have probably been around two years, which has become the norm for these sorts of big-budget fantasy shows. The Witcher is one of the rare cases where that doesn't particularly bother me; they just swapped out their lead actor and season 3 ended on a massive turning point for the series, with Ciri joining a band of misfit thieves called the Rats and Geralt setting out for Nilfgaard, where he believes she's being held captive. I'd much rather the show take its time to get this crucial transition right than rush things.

Besides, we've got plenty of other Witcher stuff to tide us over. A new anime movie, The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep, is coming out in February of 2025. Geralt is voiced by Doug Cockle, the same person who portrayed the growling witcher in the video games. Plus, author Andrzej Sapkowski has a new Witcher book on the way, which is expected to release early next year. There are no shortage of ways to spend time on the Continent these days!

To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and Twitter account, sign up for our exclusive newsletter and check out our YouTube channel.

h/t Redanian Intelligence