Video Showing Why Henry Cavill Left The Witcher Goes Viral
Henry Cavill left The Witcher over creative differences with the showrunner, Lauren Schmidt Hissrich.
Over the last several months since Henry Cavill stepped down from his long-running role on The Witcher, fans have been wondering how things jumped so far off the tracks so quickly. A very back-and-forth situation, the blame has been placed on both the show’s leading actor as well as its showrunner, Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, with the majority of belief falling on the idea that Cavill was such a die-hard fan of the video-game-turned-series, that he departed after finding out that the show would deviate from the original storyline. In a recently shared Twitter video, which you can see below, this theory definitely seems to be the case as a very annoyed-looking Cavill sits in silence while Schmidt Hissrich explains what the writers were going for when they first planned to pair the devastating death of Roach with some lighthearted comedy.
Lauren Schmidt Hissrich explains the writers’ thoughts behind the traumatic Season 2 death that shook the fandom to its core, saying that her first pass at penning the horse’s death was to give it a meta-comedy edge. Explaining the humanity behind this initial decision, she said that humans handle these types of heartbreaking moments “with humor,” something that she thought would play well in a goodbye scene between Geralt and his beloved steed. As we now know, thanks to a Polygon interview with Hissrich, Henry Cavill was so unhappy with the way this scene was initially scripted that he pushed to have it changed.
While he may look unhappy in the interview, Henry Cavill indeed had the final say in the way audiences bid adieu to good ol’ Roach. Using a touching moment from the original game to base his speech on, Cavill revealed that he framed his eulogy around a moment between Death and Geralt in which the two are conversing about the end being a walk “across the meadow and through the mist.” Translating this to the on-screen production, Cavill said that he wanted to make sure this bit of Geralt’s personality made it into the Netflix series, which in turn helped him mold his final poetic words to Roach.
The buzz surrounding Henry Cavill’s audition process for The Witcher is one of the most dedicated campaigns in history, with the actor admitting that he was annoying for both his own team as well as for Schmidt Hissrich. Not even having the series completely fleshed out when Cavill began his bid for the leading role, it would be a long time and many auditions later before the Man of Steel star would be handed the part. While he proved to be up to the task, Cavill’s true dedication to the story is what would ultimately lead him to exit the series, with Liam Hemsworth stepping in for the show’s upcoming fourth season.
It was a rough year for Henry Cavill as, after he stuck to his guns and stepped away from The Witcher, he came to find out that he wouldn’t be reprising his role as Superman after all, something that seemed like a set deal. After DC Studios was taken over by Peter Safran and James Gunn, the duo announced that they’d be moving in a completely different direction and scrapped the multiple setups put forth in films like Black Adam. As for his upcoming projects, audiences can expect to spot Cavill in The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare and the ever-elusive Argylle.
