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The past four years have seen Henry Cavill win over the hearts of The Witcher fans across the globe, thanks to his meticulous portrayal of Geralt of Rivia in the Netflix series.
However, despite what some viewers might imagine, it wasn’t always smooth sailing for the actor at the start, as he set about trying to nail every element of a character who was already deeply beloved from the books and video game franchise.
There are some who claim that when Henry takes his final bow as the monster hunter in season 3 volume 2, they plan on boycotting the show altogether so that they can avoid watching Liam Hemsworth make his season 4 debut.
While speaking to Metro.co.uk, executive producer Tomek Baginski reacted to those who say that they’re going to stop watching The Witcher, while also recalling how long it took for the Man of Steel star to ‘discover’ his Geralt all of those years ago.
When asked how he feels about the call for a boycott among some members of the Witcher fandom, he responded: ‘I don’t know, I think wait and see. It’s the only strategy I can take at the moment because we don’t know what will happen in the future. We don’t know how it will work.’
He continued: ‘I am personally very excited about what Liam will bring to the show, because I also remember what were the first reactions for Henry years ago in 2018.
‘At that time, a lot of people couldn’t imagine this character being played by Henry Cavill, because, “Oh he’s too muscular.” There was a ton of different opinions all over the internet. And then we released first materials and then we released first trailers and finally [it] was like, “Oh, that’s interesting. That actually is working, that’s actually going quite well.”’
However, before those first look images of Henry were released, he had some way to go to figuring out exactly how he was going to bring his depiction of Geralt to life on the small screen.
‘Even Henry I think it took… I don’t want to [be] very precise because it was a while ago, but we started in the fall, and we had this hiatus when we were shooting season one during Christmas,’ Tomek recollected.
‘During this hiatus both the director and Henry had the chance to watch some of the materials from what was shot before, and I remember when Henry returned after this hiatus, he returned with Geralt’s voice. But before that, it was not like that. It was still a discovery.
‘It was still like, “Okay, should we test this or test this?”, and looking for the proper voice and proper character and who this character is. And then suddenly, Henry comes back in January and he is Geralt and it was like that.’
Having ‘witnessed’ Henry’s transformation into Geralt, Tomek now feels ‘excited again’ to watch that same ‘discovery’ and ‘search’ of ‘who Geralt is’ with Hunger Games star Liam.
‘Especially who is Liam’s Geralt, because it will be a slightly different Geralt with a slightly different tone, but it will be still Geralt,’ he added.
The executive producer outlined how ‘amazing’ it is to observe the creative process that takes place between directors, actors and script writers in instances like this.
‘When the synergy happens, it’s almost like a moment of magic happens in front of you and suddenly, “Oh, this guy is this character,”’ he stated.
‘This never happens automatically. People think, “I have an idea and it will happen.” No – it’s a ton of people working very, very hard to make it happen.’
Another aspect of Henry’s Geralt that didn’t come together right away was a very important attribute of the character – his white hair, which the actor wore as a wig.
While of course now Henry’s hair as Geralt looks faultless, that wasn’t always the case, we were told.
‘The first wig of Henry was not great and we were terrified,’ Tomek shared.
‘People were working day and night to make this wig look better, and suddenly, it also started to work and the voice started to work and the tone started to work and all those things connected, all those puzzles fell into place. So seeing it again, I think it will be a fun journey.’
During an interview with Metro.co.uk alongside her The Witcher co-stars Joey Batey and Anya Chalotra, Freya Allan – who plays Princess Ciri in the show – explained how she ‘mourned’ Henry’s exit from the fantasy series through her character after she found out that he would be leaving.
When asked whether she now reflected on her final scenes with Henry differently in hindsight, the actress shared that the pair of them had ‘become so close through those characters’.
‘He plays my adoptive father. So that part was the most sad element of it. So it was more reflecting on this whole experience we’ve had together and that coming to a close with his side of it,’ she said.
The Witcher season 3 volume 2 drops on Thursday July 27 on Netflix.
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