The third season of The Wheel of Time has introduced us to a few new characters, including Andoran princes Gawyn and Galad, both of them brothers to Elayne, who we already know. Gawyn and Galad made a splash at the White Tower when they arrived in the second episode of season 2, "A Question of Crimson," sparring shirtless and catching the eye of many a young novice, not to mention driving Mat Cauthon up a wall.
Galad is played by Callum Kerr and Gawyn by Luke Fetherston. The both of them have important roles to play in The Wheel of Time books, so they could be sticking around the show for a while. "Firstly, I didn't know that I was auditioning for Gawyn and Galad," Luke Fetherston told ScreenRant. "It was all kind of code names. We didn’t know officially, but I kind of suspected that it was The Wheel of Time, so I managed to watch season one before auditioning. I was Googling the names of these brothers. It was something like Gerron and Gorwig–they made up names–and I could not find these names anywhere."
"Then, of course, I got the breakdown. I got the offer of Gawyn, and they kindly sent me a whole character arc, up until the moment where he leads the final battle. So, I had full visibility of roughly what was going to happen. They didn't go into a huge amount of detail, but it was a page worth of information with some really great character traits in there. That was really helpful."
It's cool to hear that he got a breakdown of Gawyn's full story, which plays out over the course of Robert Jordan's 14-book-strong series. Sometimes we hear about actors not hearing about the full scope of their character's stories ahead of time, which always confused me; surely it helps with a performance to know where the story is going. Especially in the case of The Wheel of Time, where the books have been completed for years, it would make no sense to hold back information.
This is also another hint that The Wheel of Time showrunner Rafe Judkins is playing the long game; we still don't know if Prime Video has renewed the show for more seasons, but if they do (fingers crossed), Judkins will be ready with a plan.
The Wheel of Time has a long-term plan for Gawyn
Anyway, after getting the part, Luke Fetherston looked Gawyn up on the internet only to realize what sort of role he was taking on. "Then, of course, I Googled Gawyn and very quickly resigned to my fate of being hated by the entire fandom, and was like, 'Oh, here we go,' before I'd even started," he said. "But I gratefully accepted the challenge and I'm absolutely thrilled to be playing Gawyn."
"I quickly stopped reading, because I didn't want to approach this role with the preconceptions of other people's feelings of Gawyn. I guess it's beneficial, in a way, that I hadn’t read the scripts. As an actor, it’s not my job to judge his motivations, but to approach them with as much nuance as they deserve. So, removing myself from the noise was a quite helpful tactic."
As viewers can see from just the couple episodes he's appeared in, Gawyn is a big on the arrogant side. He definitely does have his detractors in the fandom, but putting a face to the name could change minds over time.
New episodes of The Wheel of Time drop Thursdays on Amazon Prime Video.
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