Netflix's THE WITCHER Series Casts Freya Allan as Ciri and Anya Chalotra as Yennefer
Netflix has cast a bunch of new actors in their highly anticipated series adaptation of The Witcher including the two lead female roles! Freya Allan (The War of the Worlds, Into The Badlands) is set to take on the role of Ciri and Anya Chalotra (The ABC Murders, Wanderlust) will play the character Yennefer. They both join the previously cast Henry Cavill, who is playing Geralt.
Ciri is the young princess of Cintra, one of the kingdoms at the center of the plot. Yennefer, meanwhile, is a sorceress and Geralt of Rivia's (Cavill) main love interest. She is also a mother figure to Ciri.
The series is based on the epic fantasy novel series by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. The books also inspired the incredible video game franchise by Warsaw-based game studio CD Projekt Red.
The series also stars Jodhi May (Game of Thrones, Genius) as Queen Calanthe; Björn Hlynur Haraldsson (Fortitude) as her husband, the knight Eist; Adam Levy (Knightfall, Snatch) as the druid Mousesack; MyAnna Buring as the head of the magical academy at Aretuza, Tissaia; Mimi Ndiweni and Therica Wilson-Read as novice sorcerers; and Millie Brady as the outcast Princess Renfri.
I think that cast should make fans happy. Producer and showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich (Daredevil and The Defenders) recently talked to THR about the casting of the series and says that they ended up “seeing over 200 young women from all over Europe and really saw a great group of girls, but then when we met Freya, she read for another role. I actually went to London to meet with her in person and we knew it right away.” When talking about the casting rumors involving Ciri that caused a backlash last month, she said:
“It boils down to a couple things. One, this property has such a passionate fanbase. I think any leak at all was going to attract this type of attention, and with any attention comes backlash to that attention. I do think that whatever information is trickling out there, there will be people responding positively to it and people responding negatively to it. I think that’s just part of making a television show, and especially a show this big. In terms of why people responded so strongly, I think the fans really have pictures of these characters in their minds and I don’t blame them for that. I get it. When I read my favorite books I certainly imagine characters a certain way. There’s obviously a couple lines of description of Ciri in the books and people become very enamored with their own vision of it. I think coming in as a writer and saying my vision might look different than yours is scary for fans, but truthfully I don’t think it has to be. One of the things I feel most strongly about is people being afraid that we’re going to strip out the cultural context of The Witcher, to remove its Slavic roots, the very thing people in Poland are proud of. That couldn’t be further from the truth. What I’ve always wanted to do is take these Slavic stories and give them a global audience.”
When talking about what attracted Hissrich to the project, she said:
“What attracted me was how I felt about the books. I fell in love with them, the characters and the stories. The fervor around it took me by surprise at first, frankly. I had been on Twitter since 2013, but when I first stuck my neck out I was surprised with the response. It’s something I feel really strongly about right now. I’m in this position to peel back the curtain a tiny bit to show people the process of making television. I wanted people to understand that I’m not trying to make this property my own or put my stamp on it, or make an American or female vision of it, or any specific vision of it. I just wanted people to know that I really respected the material. Truthfully, the controversy about Ciri, my own politics or the fact that I’m a woman, to me, just interacting with the fans has helped an enormous amount, because they see I’m on their side.”
When asked if the show will feature Ciri and Yennefer in prominent roles alongside Geralt, Hissrich said:
“Yeah, what’s interesting is the first couple books are told from Geralt’s perspective and when I was reading them I saw that there are all these other characters who are very strong and powerful; not just the women, by the way. They can be pulled to the forefront so it doesn’t always feel like just Geralt’s journey, because the journey of one man is never going to be very interesting. It’s only going to be as interesting as the people he interacts with. That’s why these characters are rising in prominence in the series.”
Hissrich is then asked if she intentionally cast lesser-known actors to star opposite Cavill and she explained that they were just looking for the best actors for the roles:
“Not specifically, nor were we looking for a movie star when we cast Henry. We’re looking for the best actors for these roles. Period. End of story. It comes down to the best actor for the role. Henry’s obviously a big fan of the franchise. We met in early April and had a very general meeting. I then went off and met with hundreds of other candidates for Geralt and never really got Henry out of my mind. In casting Anya and Freya, the cool thing was we were open to anyone and both of them, to me, embody the spirits of the characters.”
She concludes by discussing whether or not she was more inspired by the book series or the video game series:
“It does muddy the water a little bit for me. I’m a huge fan of the games. That being said, what I really tried to steer away from is that the video games right now are the sole visual representation of these stories and we needed to create our own visual representation. As I’ve been developing the series I’ve actually pulled back from playing the video games because I wanted to make sure the show we were creating was its own unique thing.”
I’m super stoked for this series and I can’t wait to see what it ends up looking like! The series is still in pre-production so we’ve got awhile before we see anything.
