Kaylyn Hohn 
Netflix’s The Witcher series now has its two most prominent female leads.
Freya Allan (Bluebird, Into the Badlands) will be playing the role of Ciri, whilst Anya Chalotra (The ABC Murders, Wanderlust) is starring as Yennefer. Both will star opposite Henry Cavill, who was cast in September for the leading role of Geralt of Rivia.
In the Witcher universe, Ciri is a princess, and a daughter figure for Geralt. Yennefer is a sorceress, as well as a significant love interest for the game’s protagonist. She also shares a special mother-like bond with Allan’s character Ciri. Both ladies are incredibly important in telling Geralt’s story, and the Netflix series plans to present them as such.
“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,” said Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, producer for Netflix’s The Witcher series, in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
The Witcher was originally a fantasy book series from the 90’s by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. It was made popular again in 2007, when it was turned into an action role-playing series by CD Projekt RED. The most recent game, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, has sold over ten million copies since it’s release in 2015. Netflix’s adaptation, though, might tell a different story than players are used to.
“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,” said Hissrich. She, however, added that she’s a “huge fan” of the video game series.
Netflix’s adaptation of The Witcher will be available to stream sometime in 2019.
