The Witcher Director Reveals Henry Cavill’s Exit

“The Witcher”
Director comments on Henry Cavill’s exit: “I trust him”

Henry Cavill starred in The Witcher for three seasons. His sudden departure is still a mystery to many fans, now director Marc Jobst expresses himself.

The third season of the fantasy series “The Witcher” started at the end of June Netflix. But even before the season started, it was clear that lead actor Henry Cavill would no longer take on the role of Geralt of Rivia in the next sequel. Instead, “The Hunger Games” star Liam Hemsworth is following in the 40-year-old’s footsteps – and will take on the leading role in the Netflix hit in the future.

“The Witcher” director: Cavill’s commitment was “extraordinary”

In an interview with “Screenrant”, director Marc Robst spoke for the first time about Cavill’s departure. He is understanding and goes into more detail about the achievements of the actor: “Henry has done three series. It was very demanding to work on these shows, you know, they are huge,” he explains. Cavill did all his stunts himself. “He doesn’t even allow a close-up of another hand to grab a sword. It has to be his hand. Normally a double would be used,” says Robst. And that’s exactly what makes him so “extraordinary,” says the director.

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So it’s not surprising that Cavill is “tired” after three seasons. “You work with an incredible athlete who goes through his workout hours beforehand and also afterwards, when he has already done 12 hours of shooting,” says Robst and emphasizes: “He attaches great importance to his work. (…) And because he has given everything he can, I trust him.”

Weeks of training for one scene

Cavill has been on board since season one and has shot in four different countries over the past five years. That was extremely time-consuming and exhausting, since the “circus has to travel to different places, learn stunts and rehearse them,” Robst explains. Even the cameraman had to train for four weeks for the great Blaviken carnage in the first episode to capture the scenes in one take without a cut. It must have been at least as complex for the actors themselves.

Hemsworth will take on this demanding task from the fourth season, which is scheduled to start shooting at the end of the year at the earliest. Describing himself as a “big fan” of the series, he shared a post on Instagram last year with the words: “I may be following in big footsteps, but I’m so excited to enter the Witcher world.”

Cavill has yet to comment on his exit. The dominant assumption online is that he didn’t agree with the direction the series was taking and that’s why – after lengthy discussions with showrunner Lauren Hissrich – he decided to quit. In his opinion, the book adaptation should have followed Sapkowski’s template more closely, but Hissrich is said to have disagreed.

How should the transition from Cavill and Hemsworth look like?

Now it remains to be seen how the creators of the series will handle the transition between Cavill and Hemsworth. statements from Producer Tomek Baginski told the Daily Express so far that the production team could take advantage of the opacity of the Witcher world. But Baginski rejected this theory in another interview with the Polish newspaper “Wyborcza” and indicated that the team would use the book template for the fifth part “The Lady from the Lake” as a guide.

In a framework story of the book, set in the future, magic students learn about the legend of the witcher, but are at odds over what Geralt and Ciri actually looked like since there are no pictures of them. Bagnski says: “Maybe Ciri had a different eye color or was a different character and maybe the events were very different from the elves’ perspective.”

So fans can stay tuned to see how this scene will be implemented in Season 4. Due to the postponement of filming due to the Hollywood strike, the sequel can be expected in 2025 at the earliest.

The new episodes of the third season “The Witcher” are available to stream on Netflix.

Source: “screenrant”, “Daily ExpressUS”, “Wyborcza”