Warning: This article contains spoilers for the sixth episode of The Witcher season 2.
We can think of few actors who are as dedicated to and passionate about staying faithful to the source material as Henry Cavill is with Netflix’s The Witcher.
A few years ago, when the streaming juggernaut announced that it was working on a live-action adaptation of Andrzej Sapkowski’s novels and had cast Cavill as the titular protagonist ⏤ a sensical move, given that Cavill was a huge fan of both the books and CD Projekt Red’s video game trilogy ⏤ a lot of people were skeptical of this choice. After all, performers should be cast on merit and their acting chops alone, right?
Well, it’s been a while since then and fans have already gone through two seasons of The Witcher. If anything, Cavill has proven all his naysayers wrong, continuously giving Geralt his all and perfectly embodying the White Wolf despite his many complexities and subtleties. But another thing that fans really admire about the actor is his love for Sapkowski’s novels. Cavill has explained in the past that he wants the show to remain as loyal to the books as possible, and it seems that he’s even willing to go out of his way and get into trouble with the producers to make sure that that’ll be the case as the series plays out.
In a recent interview, the Man of Steel star broached this subject by revealing that at one point, he went in front of the camera and performed a few lines of dialogue from the books that didn’t make it to the script.
“There is a fragment right at the beginning of Blood of Elves where Geralt loses consciousness on Sodden Hill. Geralt experiences a vision at the moment and talks to Death. Then, beautiful words are uttered about crossing the meadow and the fog,” he said. “There was no such scene in the series and these words captivated me with their poetry, they were so wonderfully ‘Sapkowski’ that I wanted them to be spoken by my Geralt. However, I did not feel like having long discussions about whether I could add this bit somewhere. So I just did it, said the words in front of the camera, and was ready to face the consequences. Eventually, this issue hit the mark in Season 2.”
Rather than Blood of Elves, the scene in question actually takes place during “Something More” from The Sword of Destiny. Cavill took the opportunity to add in this dialogue during Roach’s final moments in episode six. “Enjoy your last walk across the meadow and through the mist,” he whispers to his dying mare, calling back to the same conversation with Death.
Of course, the actor further noted that as far as his influence is concerned, there isn’t much he can do when scripts are written other than making some minor changes such as this one.
“As far as my issues are concerned, a lot of meetings took place. On the other hand, I often just fiddled with dialogues, sitting in an armchair, while my make-up was applied,” he continued.
So far, we’ve rarely felt the personal touch of Andrzej Sapkowski in Netflix’s adaptation, but let’s hope we’ll get to see more of his beautiful prose in future seasons of The Witcher.
