By Filming of The Witcher season 3 is in full steam now with director Gandja Monteiro currently shooting her second week. Monteiro is directing episodes 3 and 4 of the Henry Cavill, Anya Chalotra, and Freya Allan staring Netflix hit. Meanwhile, we have some fresh casting news about an interesting character.
Frances Pooley as Teryn
We have learned that Frances Pooley will play a character named Teryn in Season 3 of The Witcher. Pooley’s recent credits include such projects as Bridgerton, Versailles and Doctors. Although Teryn sounds like an original character, we believe she is ‘False Ciri‘ from the books.
Teryn = False Ciri?
Frances Pooley is the same height and age as Freya Allan and her appearance is very similar as well, as you can see in the pictures here:
Months ago, there was a casting call for a character named ‘Parsons’, describing her as “a student that is brainwashed into believing they’re someone else“. And naturally, Witcher fans immediately recognized the character as ‘False Ciri’.
Moreover, Pooley has recently been at Longcross Studios to film her scenes. Bart Edwards (Emperor Emhyr) too revealed via his Instagram that he had returned to The Continent to do more Emhyr. Our assumption is that Edwards and Pooley have started filming their scenes together.
In the books, False Ciri is brought to Nilfgaard to Emperor Emhyr as is presented as Cirilla Fiona. Only Emhyr knew she isn’t her daughter.
In fact, Andrzej Sapkowski never revealed False Ciri’s real name to the reader as she refused to give her name to Emperor Emhyr when he asked. Perhaps the writers simply decided to give her a name this time. Hence, Teryn.
It will be interesting to see how Teryn will feature in the story since Emperor Emhyr has already told his court that Ciri is his daughter in the Season 2 finale. And if the court knows, it won’t be long until Dijkstra knows too along with the rest of the North.
Two False Ciris
On another note, The Witcher had already played the False Ciri card back in the first season when Queen Calanthe tried to trick Geralt by presenting him a random girl, when he returned for his Child of Surprise. Geralt saw right through that and was quickly imprisoned.
The girl was played by Viola Prettejohn and we don’t believe it’s meant to be Teryn so this isn’t a recasting. That incident with Calanthe and Geralt happened either days or hours before Nilfgaard sacked Cintra, so her survival at that point couldn’t be very likely. Teryn must be an entirely new character created for The Witcher Season 3.
Season 3 of The Witcher is in production until September 2022 for a 2023 release. The live-action prequel The Witcher: Blood Origin is in post-production after two weeks of reshoots and is currently eyed for a Christmas 2022 release. Stay tuned to Redanian Intelligence and do pop into our Discord server to join in on The Witcher conversation.
