Henry Cavill Called Annoying By The Witcher Showrunner, Was He A Problem For The Show?
Henry Cavill was so determined to get cast as Geralt in The Witcher that he kept "annoying" the showrunner until she caved in.
Henry Cavill is often lauded for his intense, almost fan-boy-esque dedication to The Witcher books and video games. In fact, this is one of the many things that endears him to fans and turns them into fan-boys and fan-girls. According to FandomWire, though, the series’ showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich did not find his enthusiasm endearing at all. In fact, she found it “really annoying.”
I know, I gasped too. Henry Cavill? Annoying? Impossible! How could such a genuine, handsome, talented, professional, and passionate actor be annoying? Well, when it comes to Henry Cavill and The Witcher, it is actually kind of true.
Apparently, Henry Cavill heard about The Witcher video game being turned into a series in the very early stages. Being a huge fan of this game in real life, the Man of Steel actor felt that he just could not miss out on the chance to play this role. No one knew more about the character of Geralt than he did, and no one could connect more than he could to the character, he was sure of it.
So, Henry Cavill pushed his agents to set up a meeting with Lauren Schmidt Hissrich about The Witcher. He wanted the chance to convince her that he was the perfect Geralt, because, well, he kind of was. The only problem is, Hissrich wasn’t ready to audition anyone for the role yet. She turned down the meeting with him because she hadn’t even written the script for the show and, thusly, was not ready to start casting.
But, Henry Cavill didn’t give up on The Witcher. He kept nudging his agents to keep nudging her to meet with him until she finally relented. “He was really annoying,” she said, and she apparently couldn’t see any other way to get him to let it go other than to sit him down and tell him the truth: “The show is not green-lit. There is nothing. Thank you. Now I have to go write the show.”
Over the next few months, Hissrich sat down and wrote out the scripts for the series, and Henry Cavill wondered if his dreams of playing The Witcher were over. In Hissrich’s opinion, they were… until she auditioned a whopping 206 other actors for the role and continued working on the scripts. The more she wrote and the more she saw of these other actors, the more convinced she was that Henry Cavill was the only choice for the role.
None of the other actors who auditioned knew the source material like Henry Cavill did. In short, Henry Cavill was the Witcher.
So, Henry Cavill was hired and became the Witcher on screen. Although he has now departed the series (reportedly based on writers’ refusal to remain faithful to the books and games it is based on), he gave his dream role everything he had. He trained in sword fighting so that he could do the action scenes without a stunt double, he got into peak physical shape, and he played the character as close to the video game version as possible.
Henry Cavill even admitted to himself in another interview that he “annoyed” his agents about getting The Witcher role, but that’s all water under the bridge now. He was obviously the perfect choice to play Geralt. Who cares if he was kind of a pain in the neck when convincing everyone else of that fact?
