Liam Hemsworth is experiencing a true baptism of fire. Surrounded by lit torches and blaring overhead lights, the 6-foot-3 Hunger Games veteran, who’s taken over from Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivia on The Witcher, leaps through a stained glass window while decked out in heavy armor. You can see the sweat hanging off the medieval wigs on the background extras and seeping through the back of the gaffer’s T-shirt. Every time the director calls for a reset is a chance for cast and crew alike to cool off.
Freya Allan, playing Princess Cirilla of Cintra, might have it the worst. She fans herself with her hand in between takes while donning a plumy tearaway gown over trousers.
“That was hell,” she tells Entertainment Weekly of that balmy, closed-off stage. “That was actually probably the hottest the stage has got, to be fair.”
Outside of the sweltering action sequence, it’s a breezy summer afternoon in early May at the U.K.’s Longcross Studios, where production is underway on The Witcher’s fifth and final season. The cast and crew — many of the former decked out in medieval courtroom garb — congregate in the center of the studio lot, where they have their own local coffee shop.
“I go back to my tent where I’ve got an air conditioner and just try to get some air up the back of my chest plate,” Hemsworth recalls of his experience on set that day. “It takes two or three people to put it on and off, but it looks really cool.”
This interview marks the first time Hemsworth has spoken about the show since Netflix announced the brother of Hollywood’s Thor would succeed Cavill for season 4 (all eight episodes available Oct. 30), a recasting that shook the fanbase. As the top executive producer, Lauren Hissrich, tells it, the conversation of Cavill’s departure was underway “for a while,” with the actor personally wanting to end his time as Geralt. Rumors at the time suggested creative differences, but Hissrich acknowledges that phrase could mean just about anything these days.
“He had plans for other roles that he really wanted to commit himself to,” the showrunner says from her office at Longcross Studios, sitting in front of a painting that depicts the lightning strike of season 3’s sorcerer bloodbath, known as the Thanedd coup. “And for us, you don’t want to hold someone and force them to be doing something that they don’t want to do. I think that’s why it felt like a really symbiotic decision.”
Reps for Cavill did not respond to EW’s request for comment, though his fans know the broad strokes of the story:
Cavill posted on Instagram in 2022 that he would return to play Superman on the big screen “after being told by the studio” to do so, only to learn from the new heads of DC that they were moving in a new direction for the franchise. The actor has since pivoted to developing a TV series based on one of his favorite games, Warhammer 40K, for Amazon. He’s also set to star in the new Highlander movie from John Wick filmmaker Chad Stahelski, which recently paused filming due to an injury Cavill endured on set.
“My journey as Geralt of Rivia has been filled with both monsters and adventures,” Cavill said in a statement released in October 2022. “In my stead, the fantastic Mr. Liam Hemsworth will be taking up the mantle of the White Wolf. As with the greatest of literary characters, I pass the torch with reverence for the time spent embodying Geralt and enthusiasm to see Liam’s take on this most fascinating and nuanced of men.”
“I cried,” Anya Chalotra — playing Yennefer, Cavill’s onscreen love — recalls of hearing about his impending departure. “I remember it so vividly. It really impacted me. We were so bonded to these people, and to lose such an important member of the team… I’ve put everything into this character. I started [Witcher] having not much work under my belt, and this show means the world to me. So it hurt.”
Allan adds: “[The Witcher is] a big part of our lives, and any changes like that hold a lot of weight to them.”
The main stars said their goodbyes properly to Cavill over a phone call, and Allan has since messaged him a few more times.
“He was Geralt for Ciri for so long and that’s sad to let that go,” she continues, “but I was also really excited to see what Liam’s done with the role.”
Allan understands the massive fan sentiments around Cavill’s leave, but “Me, Anya, Joey [Batey as the wise-cracking bard Jaskier], we’re all still here,” she emphasizes. “Some of Ciri’s most exciting storylines are really coming to fruition in season 5. It’s good to remind people that there’s still the original people and there’s something exciting to be able to see a new version of that Geralt character.”
Hunting for a new White Wolf
Hemsworth remembers the moment the recasting news broke.
“There was quite a bit of noise and I had to put that aside. It started to become a distraction,” he says. “I dealt with that sort of thing in the past a lot and, you know, at the end of the day, I love making movies and I love telling stories and acting. I just don’t want any of that to affect my way of telling the story that I’m trying to tell. I jumped off social media and the internet most of last year.”
Hemsworth was the first actor Hissrich spoke with when the question of succession came up, in between seasons 3 and 4. She says, “His name has been out there for a very long time.”
Hemsworth was a vocal fan of The Witcher because of the video games. He estimates he played the 2015 entry The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt several times, though he doesn’t recall ever actually completing the main story. He still refers to it as “one of the best video games of all time.”
“It came out of nowhere,” Hemsworth says of production’s initial offer. “I was as surprised as anyone.”
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He had his doubts but decided he needed to dig more into the books and the first three seasons of the show to see what he could potentially bring to this character. Both literally and figuratively, the 6-foot-1 Cavill left big shoes to fill.
“I’m a massive fan of Henry’s, and I’m a fan of what he did in the show,” he says.
What he gravitated toward was the lighter, more human side that exists underneath the stoic veneer of Geralt. He related to the character’s protective instinct, noting how his dad, Craig Hemsworth, worked in child protection as a social service counselor.
“We were brought up with this real sense of taking care of people around you,” the actor recalls. “There’s elements of that I felt connected to.”
Hissrich remembers chatting with Hemsworth about Geralt’s sense of humor and sex appeal, two things they both wanted to lean into with season 4.
“The other really great thing about Liam is he takes this really, really seriously,” she says. “I think he knew that he was stepping into big shoes. It was really important to him to have certain things [for] continuity — and also certain things that he could invent so that his Geralt could stand on his own two feet.”
Hemsworth hopes to avoid any comparisons between his performance and Cavill’s, though fans are likely going to do that anyway, as they did when paparazzi photos from set revealed Hemsworth had recreated at least one scene previously shot with Cavill, the Geralt-versus-Vilgefortz beachfront fight from the end of season 3.
Hissrich teases that those kinds of shots relate to how they are introducing Hemsworth’s White Wolf to audiences.
“We absolutely play with time,” she comments. “We [are] having the most fun we’ve ever had with it.”
Those involved feel confident viewers will return to see someone else play Geralt. Plans are already locked for Hissrich and the writers to see their full vision for the adaptation to its proper conclusion, with season 5 wrapping production on a final eight episodes sometime in October ahead of a projected 2026 bow.
“We never really had serious conversations about the show not continuing,” Hissrich says. “The show is bigger than one actor. It’s bigger than me. There’s a book series, there’s a video game. We are the third entry into this. So The Witcher lives whether or not we go.”
The road ahead
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Since the beginning, the man-of-few-grunts maintained a neutral air as a monster hunter for hire with supernatural abilities roaming the Continent. That is until season 3 when The Witcher adapted a crucial book moment in which the Butcher of Blaviken (another of his many nicknames) shed that neutrality and placed a higher value on his found family — including Ciri, his adoptive “Child of Surprise” with immense magical ability who’s running from the prophecy looming over her, and Yennefer, an adept sorceress and Geralt’s longtime love.
The events of season 3 left these three core characters dispersed. Ciri was portaled to the far-off Korath Desert and now lives a life among the Rats, a group of young thieves running amuck in a province of the Nilfgaardian Empire.
“She gets to be the rebellious teenager,” Hissrich says, describing the arc.
Meanwhile, on the home front, Yennefer is actively fighting to make the Continent safe for Ciri’s eventual return. But that requires killing Vilgefortz (Mahesh Jadu), the seemingly unstoppable sorcerer with a nefarious plot to reshape the world who is also hunting the Cintran princess.
“It’s not necessarily that he’s more powerful,” Chalotra clarifies. “It’s that he’s clever and he is playing mind games with us all. But we’ve got a lot of minds that are coming together in season 4. Yennefer is gathering mages to help get to him from all angles.”
Hissrich calls season 4 the actress’ “woman on fire season.”
Chalotra elaborates, “She’s fighting for something so much bigger than her. She’s fighting to save her daughter. Also, at the end of season 3, we see her mother figure die, her mentor [MyAnna Buring’s Tissaia]. So with that gone, she has to step up.”
Geralt, too, is off on his own solo adventure, fueled by the need to find Ciri and keep her safe at any cost. That journey now includes assembling what’s referred to in the books as his “hansa,” a word derived from the Nilfgaardian phrase “aen hanse,” meaning an armed gang bonded by friendship. Netflix confirmed Meng’er Zhang will play the archer Milva, a key member of this hansa, and, of course, Batey as the bard Jaskier — both dedicated to Geralt’s cause to bring Ciri home, with others joining along the way.
Hemsworth found these proverbial “cracks in his armor” to be the most interesting aspect of the role.
“The beginning of season 4 is pretty close after the battle with Vilgeforz,” he continues. “He’s not in a good place at that point, physically. He’s severely injured. Mentally, he’s dealing with things that he’s not used to, which is self-doubt and this frustration. Now all of a sudden, you’re seeing the very human side to this person, but what you’re also seeing is the determination to fix it.”
Hemsworth likens his first days on season 4 to “changing school halfway through the year.” But from Batey’s perspective, “The chemistry between us was immediate.”
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Chalotra believes it was important to acknowledge and “honor that change” in the lead casting.
“You’ve got two very different people leading the show, and we’re so impacted by that energy,” she explains. “It brings in a new energy, too.”
As the storyteller and the connective thread tying together the world of The Witcher, Batey forecasts a darker atmosphere on the Continent in season 4, saying, “We are faced with all-out terror and war.”
Though this isn’t the official Netflix branding, he sees the final two seasons as parts 1 and 2 of the grand ending envisioned for the show. The penultimate, in particular, “has the real momentum that strongly would suggest that this is ramping up to something quite spectacular, and something quite final and momentous,” he adds.
Part of that involves Regis, another key figure who joins the hansa. Portrayed by Laurence Fishburne, what struck the actor most about this character is the fact that he’s a vampire who swore off blood, and how that fact plays into the relationship between he and Geralt.
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“One is a monster killer and one is a monster. Under normal circumstances, they would be enemies, but in the story that they’re trying to tell, because Regis has sworn off blood for the last 50 years, he’s not a threat,” the star of The Matrix and Apocalypse Now explains. “Geralt actually takes him at his word about that and allows him to join this merry band of misfits that we call the hansa. Also, there was the idea that because Regis is 400 and some odd years old, he’s got a lot of life experience and accrued a lot of wisdom. He’s able to share that with Geralt as he goes through this odyssey of trying to find Ciri.”
Where the writers really had to get creative was with Yennefer’s part in all this.
Hissrich mentions needing to fill in a lot of the blanks left in that character’s story in the books. To take down Vilgefortz, she needs allies. And with the Brotherhood of Sorcerers now splintered after the Thanedd coup, the disparate mages are looking for leadership.
“Having had the prospect of motherhood taken from her and being rejected as a child, understanding what feeling accepted and loved is through Tissaia was the one thing that kept her on track or destined for something greater than her rage,” Chalotra says of her character. “She knows, because of this connection, how powerful that could be for Ciri. She understands Ciri in a way that she believes no one else will because of what she’s been through.”
The mission is truly all about Ciri, for the characters and the show itself. As Hissrich points out, she is the titular Witcher of Andrzej Sapkowski’s books, and the remaining two seasons of the adaptation are designed to see that destiny fulfilled. Season 4 follows Ciri’s psychological training to become a full-fledged Witcher, while we can consider the last season as her final physical exam.
“I only started realizing that might be the case deep towards the end of season 4,” Allan comments of her character’s place within the larger Witcher narrative. “Obviously, people have said that to me, but feeling it as the character and feeling it as Freya, that only really began to happen in season 5.”
For Allan, it goes back to Ciri’s trials in the Korath Desert in the season 3 finale. It’s a moment where she renounces her magic, shuns her royal responsibilities, and takes the name of Falka, her ancestor who came to her in a vision.
“It’s like a bridge to her leaving her childhood behind and trying to discover something new, something that’s quite separate to everything that is linked to her name,” Allan muses. “It’s also, unfortunately, a catalyst for bringing up a lot of her really deep-rooted fears of abandonment and whether she is good or bad, all of these big questions that have always haunted her.”
Emerging from the desert in Geso, Ciri joins up with the Rats, a group of young criminals comprised of Asse (Connor Crawford), Iskra (Aggy K. Adams), Kayleigh (Fabian McCallum), Reef (Juliette Alexandra), and Mistle (Christelle Elwin). The latter quickly becomes a romantic interest for Ciri/Falka.
It’s through her journey with these misfits that Ciri gets in on more of the action. Allan reveals she even gets her own oner, something we’ve primarily seen Cavill execute up to this point.
“I’m trying to think of how many people I killed. Such a casual comment to be making,” she says through laughs. “I think I killed one, two, three, four, five, six, seven people, I wanna say, in a row.”
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In the way Ciri learns how to fight from Geralt, Allan believes she subconsciously learned how to pull off a oner from watching Cavill do it so many times.
“I think there is definitely an element of Henry’s physicality in fighting that I’ve, in some ways, adopted,” she says. “Also, sometimes even in the way I’ve been walking, I weirdly found was like him, which is bizarre.”
As far as her friends on the show’s makeup and costume teams are concerned, Allan is that girl.
“It’s a joke sometimes… They say that I’m the Witcher,” she says, “which is nice.”
Are viewers ready to embrace Ciri as a Witcher, though? We’ve seen how gamers responded to the announcement trailer for the next Witcher video game, which revealed the character as a full-blown monster hunter and the lead of that next chapter. The misogynistic noise became so loud that even Doug Cockle, who originated the role of Geralt in the games, chimed in.
“I didn’t realize it on our show until we had the episode in the Korrath Desert, which is such an important part of the books,” Hissrich says of facing similar backlash on the series. “The comments that we got back [were] like, ‘Why is Geralt not in this episode?’ It never occurred to me that people would feel like that wasn’t The Witcher. I love [the fans] for their passion and their opinions. I also know when to say, I’m gonna stay true to those novels.’ We never leave Geralt behind. He still exists. That’s when I have to let those voices go.”
Teeing up the endgame
Hissrich’s office at Longcross Studios is a treasure trove. Her desk is actually a prop: Vilgefortz’s torture table from his secret laboratory. The leather straps for restraining limbs are still there on opposite ends underneath stacks of paper. A Labyrinth poster, a season 4 wrap gift, hangs on her wall as a nod to the 1986 movie classic often referenced when developing The Witcher scripts. (For a successful writers’ room pitch, she says, “Just compare it to something in Labyrinth.”) There’s also a small golden dragon statue resting on a small bookshelf that looks like the winged drake seen on the show’s first season.
It’s an assemblage of trinkets and artifacts that all carry memories from her time making the show over these past several years. When she speaks with EW, only a couple of months remain before they pack it all up, maybe for good. But then again, the future is still murky as to whether more Witcher stories could be told after these final two seasons. Hissrich certainly feels there’s more to mine here, but is ultimately grateful to actually make it to the finish line. There are other fantasy dramas that haven’t had that opportunity. (R.I.P. The Wheel of Time.)
“It’s obviously going to be a huge life shift,” she acknowledges of ending the show next year. “We always knew that we were going to end it where we needed to end it, which was at the end of [Sapkowski’s fifth Witcher novel,] The Lady of the Lake,” she adds. “My only goal was to know when we were ending it so that we could ride ourselves gracefully to that.”
Chalotra finds it difficult to process the show coming to an end.
“Right now, I’m not sleeping,” she says. “I feel like my body knows it’s gonna end, but my mind’s not quite there yet…. I honestly think it’s so big I haven’t really confronted it because I probably wouldn’t be able to whilst I’m filming at the moment. I’m trying to be present with the work.”
Batey takes a similar approach in not wanting “any wistfulness to impact the work that we’re doing.”
Allan, however, shares, “I cannot tell you how many times I’ve cried this year — as Ciri but also as myself. I’ll just be sat in my kitchen rereading a scene or something, and my housemate will walk in and see me crying. ‘Oh, here she goes again!'”
Back at Longcross Studios on that boiling stage, there isn’t much time to think about the future. Hemsworth has more pressing matters in the present.
“I’ve got an issue with my boot!” he calls out to the crew. The costume department hustles to reattach a limping sole as the star breathes through the heat.
It wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t a stunt-heavy day, each shot requiring one take with the principal actors, one with the stunt doubles, one with the mats on the floor, one without the mats, etc. As the team breaks between takes, a producer muses to EW about the season 1 striga fight scene in which Geralt slams down on the ground and drops through the floor: “That was two seconds. It took us four hours.”
The call then comes from the first assistant director: “Okay, going again!”
