If you somehow weren’t already aware, Henry Cavill portrays Geralt of Rivia in Netflix’s The Witcher, and he has a very specific way of talking. According to an interview during the recent WitcherCon event, however, Cavill did not always give Geralt the gravel-infused voice that fans have become enamored with since the series first released. According to the actor, he didn’t even mean to do it. He was supposed to use his normal voice. He played a scene with King Foltest “in the wrong voice” and then ultimately decided that he liked the wrong one better. So, production worked around it, and thus Cavill’s Geralt voice was born.
According to Cavill, the voice is clearly inspired by The Witcher games voice actor Doug Cockle’s take on the character. “I know it’s very similar to Doug Cockle’s amazing work,” Cavill said during WitcherCon. “That was definitely a concern of mine. I thought, ‘Well, I don’t want to seem like I’m plagiarizing another professional’s extraordinary work.’ And I had a look at it, had a listen to it, and I thought, ‘actually they are different enough. It’s clearly inspired by—but I did my own thing,’ and then I spoke to Alec and I spoke to Lauren, and they both said, ‘It’s OK, actually, if you want to do that, we can go with that, and we’ll redo the rest.’”
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This is far from the first time that Cavill has spoken about his take on Geralt’s voice. “For me it wasn’t necessarily about giving Geralt a specific accent which was different from everyone else, because that would be impossible because there are a lot of English accents and eventually you’re gonna run into someone who has a similar accent because they are trying something different,” Cavill said in early 2020. “So for me, it was about bringing a voice to Geralt which was expressing the essence of who he is in the books and bringing that to the space in the format that was allowed within the show.”
The first eight-episode season of Netflix‘s The Witcher is now available on Netflix. Making The Witcher, a documentary special, is also available to stream on Netflix. The first season of The Witcher: A Look Inside the Episodes is also, also available to stream on the platform now. The Witcher Season 2 will launch on the streaming platform on December 17th. Lauren S. Hissrich serves as showrunner on The Witcher. It stars Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivia, Anya Chalotra as Yennefer, Freya Allan as Ciri, and Joey Batey as Jaskier. New cast members for Season 2 include Kim Bodnia (Killing Eve) as Vesemir, Yasen Atour (Young Wallender) as Coen, Agnes Bjorn as Vereena, Paul Bullion (Peaky Blinders) as Lambert, Basil Eidenbenz as Eskel, Aisha Fabienne Ross (The Danish Girl) as Lydia, Kristofer Hivju (Game of Thrones) as Nivellen, and Mecia Simson as Francesca — among others. You can check out all of our previous coverage of Netflix’s The Witcher right here.
Are you excited about the new season of Netflix’s The Witcher? What do you make of the new interview with Cavill about how Geralt voice? Let us know in the comments, or feel free to reach out and hit me up directly over on Twitter at @rollinbishop to talk about all things gaming!
[H/T PC Gamer]
