Making the Witcher

- -

My initial interest in The Witcher

came from a chance experience with The Witcher games.

Then I heard that Netflix were making a show

and so, I-- I hunted down the opportunity to play Geralt

and when I'd spoken to-- had my first meeting with Lauren...

she had mentioned that it was based on the books.

The books, I absolutely loved,

and they are an extraordinary source of a wonderful story.

So, Andrzej Sapkowski wrote this series of books.

Talking to him about it is fascinating.

He traveled all over the world as a traveling salesman,

and he started to write the original short story of The Witcher

and submitted it to a magazine and it got published,

but he had never intended for--

for it to take hold the way that it took hold.

- -

There's something unique about the way...

Andrzej Sapkowski wrote... wrote The Witcher.

It's a-- a harsh yet relatable world with some extraordinary characters in it.

-The south needed reminding who was Queen. -

What excited me the most when I went to pitch Netflix...

What did you wish for?

...was planting all of the seeds

of Geralt, Ciri and Yennefer coming together.

Find Geralt of Rivia.

It took me a while. I went through several versions.

And then I-- I literally had one of those "Aha!" moments in the shower.

"Can I tell all three of these stories at the same time

and not have it be too confusing?"

It's been interesting because I do think that

television audiences are really savvy now.

And as a writer, as a creator, we have that on our side.

So, we do jump through time a lot,

but I think it's an exciting journey for fans and for, you know,

even audiences that have never seen The Witcher before.

- -

So, what's really interesting is digging into these stories,

and one of the first things that I did when I sold The Witcher

is I booked a plane ticket to Poland because I was really interested

why this book series was so important to this nation

and how it reflected the spirits of the people

and that was important to me for developing the series as a whole.

Witcher is a big part of myself, I think.

Witcher became part of my...

brain and body and mind a long time ago.

But for the rest of the world, Witcher is a great story,

it's a great character, it's a great world.

For kingdom and glory.

Tomek Bagiński, who's one of our Polish producers,

he's very well-versed on the books and the lore of The Witcher

and there are certain things that are not necessarily described in the scripts.

We would run those things by Tomek and his team

to make sure we were staying true to the source material.

It's a big part of the pop culture history of Poland,

which is also, I think, quite important.

And...

it's a game, it's a book, it's a TV show,

it's plenty of things.

It's very, very hard to just box Witcher into a very simple explanation.

And I hope that we can present this world

to... a much, much wider audience.

I like to say that, for the series,

we actually get to find the story

that's happening between the lines in the books.

We're trying to be a really true representation of the books

and trying to honor that material,

but the books also skip over a lot of things.

That's my lute. Give that back!

There were a lot of new ideas coming from the writers' room,

which, eh, some of their--

some of those ideas were very risky, but all of them were brilliant.

In the writers' room for The Witcher,

we get together and we bat around ideas for a while

until we have a clearer picture of what we're doing for this season,

and once we do that, we go into individual episodes

and draw from the books.

Like, "What from the books do we want to bring into this season?"

Once we decide that,

Lauren sends us off and we write our individual scripts

and we have certain story lines

that carry through from one episode to another

that we keep batting back and forth

to make sure that we're always giving new information to the audience.

When you get assigned a script, it, uh--

It's very exciting because, "Oh, I'm dealing with this story, great!"

When I got Law of Surprise, people were like,

"Glad I didn't get that one!"

because it is tough to explain.

Asking for payment with the Law of Surprise

is as old as mankind itself.

-Don't lecture me, Eist. - It's an honest gamble...

as likely to be rewarded with a... bumper crop,

as a newborn pup or...

a child of surprise.

Trying to get that out, in a script and in a way

where the actor doesn't look at you and just slap you, it was difficult.

But that's essentially what it is,

the Law of Surprise, in a nutshell, is claiming something...

from the person, em... that is a surprise.

When they return to that house, whatever the first thing they encounter

that they didn't know they had before they left... that's it.

Fuck.

Yeah, it's just--

it's a lot of different ideas with a lot of different perspectives,

which is important, I think, for The Witcher

because it is ultimately... kind of about all these different groups,

whether it be elves, gnomes, dwarves, and their perspectives on the world.

So to have the room also, kind of, represent that type of diversity

is-- is very useful for the storytelling.

What's great about this and what we've done with the story is

we've focused on the humanity and all those human struggles.

One thing that most interested me is the women in the books.

They're very, very strong women, um, that are surrounding Geralt,

the protagonist.

And I asked Andrzej,

I said, "You know, for books written during the 80s,

I'm really surprised the women are so strong."

And he said to me, "You know, you've never met my mother, have you?"

His point was that for a nation that was so war-torn,

um, had so much conflict,

they-- they lost a lot of their men, um, in those conflicts,

and women became quite the centers of communities

and even the workplace, not just homes.

That's the spirit that Andrzej brought into these books.

These characters are survivors.

When I got the audition through, um, there were two scenes,

which had been written for the audition,

and, um, one of them was between her and Geralt

and she was kind of very... feisty and stubborn.

And then in the other scene, she had...

She was trying to convince someone not to stay and die, and she was...

You could really see, like, her heart in it,

and, um, and a more, kind of, gentle side to her.

So, I liked the fact that she had both of those

just shown through these audition scenes and it wasn't just like,

"Oh, she's going to be a really cool, badass girl,"

which is brilliant, but it also showed

another strength, which is-- which is more gentle and kind and soft.

It must have been such an undertaking to try and find an actress

that can really, um, embody a character like Ciri,

just because it comes from such lore but also it's such an important character.

There's so much that Ciri brings.

Ciri is this world, you know, she's the key for almost every character.

I mean, she's the element that brings everyone together.

Every time she's on the screen, there is something truly

special about her, there's something magical,

there's something in her eyes,

and I do think that speaks to the character

and, you know, that Ciri's got that thing inside her

and she's young, she doesn't quite know what it is yet,

and I think Freya's done an amazing job at bringing that character to life.

So, we went through the books and we found all of the places

where Andrzej had talked about these characters' pasts

and then we wove those things together into a sort of new story

for both Ciri and for Yennefer

to make sure we're really digging into their backgrounds,

because to me, find the character, learn the character

and then see how they change when they meet one another.

That's the most exciting part.

Before we met,

the days were calm...

and the nights were restless.

But now...

you're important to me.

You get the rough idea when you're in the room

of what this is gonna be and you beat it out.

"These people are gonna go here, that's gonna go there."

Then you have the joyous part where you get to go home as a writer,

by yourself, outside the room, and come up with cool shit.

And monsters, it's like,

"This is the greatest thing, I get to write monsters!"

Who doesn't want to do that?

The world of monsters and men... in Witcher,

those worlds are blended and it's very, very hard to--

to put a straight line and say, "Okay, this is where the humans starts,

this is where monster world starts."

The Continent that we know was actually, um, inhabited by elves.

And when the Conjunction of the Spheres happened,

it really opened the floodgates for monsters, a lot of monsters.

One of the very interesting things about how these...

species interact...

is...

that some aren't from this place, which we call the Continent,

and indeed all the monsters that populate the Continent,

some are from there, some are created by magic,

and others,

even though they're monsters, or considered monsters,

are from a different place or multiple different places

and they...

probably view mankind...

just as much as monsters as we view them.

That's all due to something called the Conjunction of the Spheres.

It's exactly what it sounds like:

it is a bunch of different dimensions smashing into each other

and-- and changing the world as we know it.

It's really just a refugee situation.

All these creatures and beings from another universe

got dumped on this Continent that's not theirs, as refugees,

and the humans were the ones who were barbaric enough,