Henry Cavill promises a more talkative Geralt in Season 2 and other WitcherCon interview highlights

The first WitcherCon on July 9, 2021 was a treat for Witcher fans worldwide, who got plenty of surprises and news and reveals on the upcoming Season 2. One of them was the interview with Geralt himself.

Henry Cavill in an interview with Josh Horowitz spoke at length about his character, his approach to the role, and what we can expect from Geralt in Season 2. Here we picked some of the most relevant comments from Henry Cavill regarding the upcoming season:

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A more talkative Geralt in Season 2

One of the biggest criticisms for Geralt in the first season, and a big source of jokes, was the fact that Geralt grunted a little too much and didn’t talk as much as his book counterpart did. As Henry explains, this was intentional:

“I played Season 1 deliberately like that which was him in the wilds without the opportunity for vast wades of dialogue. I thought it best he speaks less because it looks like he thinks more. That was the intention then.“

Henry also revealed that this will change and Geralt will indeed talk more in the upcoming season:

“But in the Season 2 scenario, he is in Kaer Morhen, his home space, amongst the people he knows, and, in my opinion, I was to be verbose and be intellectual because that is what he is. He’s not a brute.”

Cavill elaborated and reassured that Geralt’s depiction in Season 2 will be more representative of a man who has been alive for dozens of years, as it is in the books:

“For me, it was very important to bring Geralt as close to the books as the vision and plot would allow. And I wanted him to be more verbose and more intellectual and more representative of a man who has lived seventy years and has a philosophical lean. He can be mopey at times, but he is also wise. He has been around. He is a nice guy despite having moments of unpleasantness, and capable of extraordinary violence, but his intentions are pure. I wanted to reflect on that as much as possible.

It is very easy to fall down the line of him being the grumpy snowman and there is a comedy aspect to that, and I wanted to lean away from it in Season 2.“

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Henry Cavill on Geralt’s relationship with Ciri

Asked about his approach to Geralt’s relationship with Ciri, Cavill said the following:

“Geralt is a wise man. He is seventy. This is definitely a new situation to him, but he is seventy and he has probably seen a few children in his life and knows what they are like, and he has heard stories from people about children far more difficult than Cirilla would be.

I wanted him to be warm. If not a father figure, then definitely an older brother figure and have this kind of caring nature to it. He is not going to be super soft because he has himself had a very hard life and she’s about to lead a very hard life. She is no longer a princess and so he is not going to be softening her up any further, but he is going straight down the line.

That was very important to me that Geralt has this sense of humor while also being tough and intellectual and wise and I tried to lean on it as much as possible when it came to the relationship with Cirilla.”

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Henry Cavill on Yennefer and Vesemir in Season 2

Cavill would not disclose much about Geralt’s relationship with Yennefer or Jaskier in Season 2, but he has promised the fans plenty of surprises. On Geralt’s relationship with Vesemir, Cavill said,

“Kim (Bodnia) and I worked together a lot to create a bond between the two that is warm and genuinely caring. We wanted it to be sensitive. We wanted that to be the core element of their relationship and not too driven by any kind of conflict being introduced.”

Answering a fan question if the loss of Yennefer will affect Geralt in season two, Cavill answered:

“For me, it is important to draw from the source material and I wanted to keep it as close as possible to that. The loss of Yennefer is a great blow for Geralt, and it is something he buries deep, but he is a man of action, a wise man and his focus is Cirilla. He has lost plenty of people in his life, but he has a job to do and is focused more on being there for Cirilla.”

To another fan question, if we will see more signs used in season two, he replied in affirmative. To other questions he replied, Vesemir is the character he is most excited to see in the second season, and Blood of Elves is one of his favorite books in the Witcher series.

Finally, asked about whether we’d see any new bathtub scenes, Henry replied: “For me personally there’s no bath tub scenes, but people will not be disappointed because there’s plenty of man flesh to be observed.“

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The entire interview can be seen here.