The Wheel of Time season 3 is in full swing, and it feels like it's just getting better with each new episode. The fourth of the season, "The Road to the Spear," was a sweeping epic that saw reincarnated messiah Rand al'Thor (Josha Stradowski) go on a surreal vision quest through the lives of his ancestors. The next, "Tel'aran'rhiod," vastly expanded the world of the series, introducing new locations and cultures as our heroes explored the homeland of the Aiel Waste and sailed the high seas with the Sea Folk.
This week's episode will continue to explore more of The Wheel of Time world by giving us ample time in the seaside city of Tanchico. The nefarious sisters of the Black Ajah have set up camp there to search for a dangerous artifact which could give them power of the Dragon Reborn. At their head is Liandrin Guirale, played by English actress Kate Fleetwood. Liandrin has had a huge presence in the series; last season she sold Nynaeve, Egwene, and Elayne to the Seanchan, before eventually being ousted from the White Tower at the start of season 3. Well, perhaps "ousted" is being a bit too generous to the sisters still loyal to Amyrlin Seat Siuan Sanche (Sophie Okonedo). Liandrin and her fellow schemers carved a bloody path out of the tower which left more than a few of their former friends dead in their wake.
With Liandrin coming back into focus this week, we sat down with Fleetwood to discuss filming this season, how learning more about Liandrin's backstory informed her performance, and what it was like working on the sets of Tanchico. Watch our full interview below, or read on for a transcription edited for clarity and length:
DANIEL ROMAN for Winter Is Coming: Kate, thank you so much for making time to talk today, how are you?
KATE FLEETWOOD: I'm very, very well. I'm very happy that the season has finally dropped. It's always a long time coming...so that's been exciting. And I'm rehearsing a play at the moment, I've just come from rehearsals and I'm sitting in my agent's office to meet you all...so yeah, I've been in a bathing suit for a fitting for something. [Laughs] Anyway, I'm very lucky that I get to do so many things, and speaking to you is one of them so thank you for having me.
WiC: Of course! I have to ask, what's the play?
KF: Oh, it's called My Master Builder, and it's a kind of response to [Henrik Ibsen's] The Master Builder. I'm playing that in the West End with Ewan McGregor.
WiC: So The Wheel of Time season 3. You've been on the show since the very first season. In your opinion, what sets season 3 apart from the first two?
KF: I would say that now we've sort of set things up. It's given space to it, and it means it can be in some ways more ambitious, because things have settled a bit. And I think everyone's grown into their roles, I think that's really important. And I think it's just got a bit of breadth, and the horizon has moved so its wider, so the aperture is wider, so you know you go into the Aiel Waste...and it's just opened up a bit. And it trusts itself, I think that's what's really important about season 3, is that it's trusting itself. And so I think it's really exciting, yeah.
And I also love, what I really have picked up on in season 3, is the dreamscapes. They're really owning themselves, rather than just going 'Oh, and there's this other thing going on in The Wheel of Time, which you all sort of need to know about,' which is this parallel Dream World. I think we've just grabbed it this time, and it's just like this is what it is. And I think the camera work over the season impressed people about that...the upside down-ness of things. I love that, and I think that language in the show is really robust now, and I think that's really great.
WiC: You're not the first person who's mentioned the Dream World in these interviews. I'm excited for people to see more of it.
KF: Okay good, I'm not barking up the wrong dream.
WiC: We discover in the first few episodes of the season that Liandrin is from Tanchico, and this season we learn a lot more about her past. How did the information about where she's from and what that city is like help inform your performance for season 3?
KF: Well...just before we start shooting, the scripts are released and we all get together, we have conversations. And the writers and the showrunner [Rafe Judkins], lovely Rafe will say, 'This is sort of what we're thinking,' and they said 'She'll be going back home.' And I knew it was by the docks, and I sort of connected...this is sort of the best part about acting, you start connecting things, [thinking] 'How can I use that, what's going on there?' And I remembered that in the books — and I'll be completely honest, I haven't read all of them but I've read bits and pieces that I need for Liandrin — is that she slips into a rough accent when she's under pressure. And she conceals that and has spent years sort of formulating a more White Tower-esque RP as it were, to cover her background. And I thought, wouldn't it be great if she could slip into her home accent when she goes home, and that's a bit of a rougher accent.
My family, my mum and dad, are from Liverpool...and that's next to the [docks], my grandfather was a docker. And all of them were seamen, my family, so that world is very much part of my mum's upbringing. So I thought wouldn't it be great if she was Scouse. So I suggested it to the writers and they said, 'Yeah, let's go for it.' So that's where that little Easter egg comes in, where I slip a little bit into a Liverpudlian accent. Those kinds of things are very exciting, when you can contribute that way.
WiC: Especially when it aligns with some of your own family history that way. That's really cool.
KF: That's right. That made sense to me, I knew what that was. And that it was a kind of mercantile environment, and the topography is water, and there's merchants and it's a melting pot. It gives a bit of license to the community, it's a bit edgy. That mood of transience.
WiC: So you got to film on the sets they made for Tanchico. Can you talk a little bit about working on those sets?
KF: [Laughs] That was amazing. What's incredible about The Wheel of Time is that the level of detail is off the charts, you just wouldn't believe it. If you spend an hour on set of The Wheel of Time, you just can't believe the level of detail. I mean I actually think...and I don't know if you'll be able to air this...but there was a market, so it was like a food market. Here [in the UK] we have Camden Food Market or Borough Food Market, and we have those cool kind of street food-y sort of things. And so we had one of those walking down the street, and just every sort of thing you could imagine was stuck on a skewer. It was like frogs and lizards and arms, and it was just really kind of Bacchanalian in a really dark, edgy way. And strange people smoking weird drugs. It was really...hallucinatory.
And there was some chopsticks...I kind of try and steal something, every show I do, a little something, and I've got a cabinet at home. I've got some Tanchico chopsticks at home that I pilfered.
WiC: I feel like Liandrin would approve.
KF: She'd probably stick them in her hair. That was another thing — I wanted her to rebel with her hair as well. So I know that her braids are really important, but I wanted her...when she'd left the White Tower, to not only rebel against the White Tower...but also rebel against home as well. She's coming home, and she's changing the dynamic of home, and she's not fitting back into that patriarchy. She's saying 'No, I'm going to be in charge and I'm gonna wear my hair the way I want to wear it.'
A huge thank you to Kate Fleetwood for taking the time to talk Wheel of Time with us!
The Wheel of Time is in the thick of its third season. New episodes premiere Thursdays on Prime Video. We'll be spending plenty of time in Tanchico in this weeks episode, so prepare to see more of Liandrin and the rest of the Black Ajah.
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