The Witcher franchise has been so popular that it’s not only been three main RPG titles and a card game, but Netflix has gotten the rights to make a series based on the original stories. And casting has been underway for a while now. The main character of Geralt of Rivia is going to be played by Henry Cavill, but the roles of the other characters were a bit up in the air. Now though, we have confirmation of two more castings.
As noted by the Hollywood Reporter, Freya Allan will be portraying Ciri the adopted daughter of Geralt. Ciri’s “mother” is none other than Yennefer, who will be played by Anya Chalotra. Lauren Schmidt Hissrich is the showrunner for The Witcher series, and talked about how casting for Ciri and Yennefer went down:
“There were some people who I had in mind from the minute I started writing this character and then there were other characters — Ciri is the perfect example — that take a really exhaustive search. We 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… I actually went to London to meet with her in person and we knew it right away.”
As for what she was looking for specifically…
“We’re looking for the best actors for these roles. Period. End of story,” said Hissrich. “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.”
The series will more than likely come to Netflix next year.
