The Witcher Report Reveals New Details on Henry Cavill Leaving
Last week, Netflix announced that Henry Cavill was leaving his role as Geralt of Rivia in The Witcher following Season 3. Taking over the role for Season 4 and beyond will be Liam Hemsworth. At the time of the announcement, zero insight was provided by any party as to why Cavill was leaving. The prevailing assumption was that it was due to scheduling conflicts, but it may not be this simple.
Not long after the news broke, a report surfaced claiming that Cavill simply felt it was time to move on from the show, which was difficult to star in due to the overseas nature of its production. This initial report more or less echoes the aforementioned assumption, but an additional report has since surfaced that injects a few more revealing details,
According to Redanian Intelligence -- a premier source when it comes to the show -- Cavill was contemplating moving on from the show after Season 2 due to disagreements with the producers in regard to the show's content and Geralt's role. And we don't necessarily need the report to know this. As Redanian Intelligence points out, Cavill expressed his frustrations throughout the promo tour for the second season.
"The toughest part for me was finding that balance between the showrunners' vision and my love for the books, and trying to bring that Geralt to the showrunners' vision," said Cavill. "It's about treading a fine line there. It's the showrunners' story and so it's an adaptation. The tricky bit for me was finding Geralt from the books' place within that and being able to serve both as much as I could. The things that I pushed for, it was not necessarily just more dialogue. It was bringing a more book-accurate Geralt to the screen. [...] All of my asks and requests were along the lines of just being faithful to the source material."
As you may know -- and as that quote demonstrates -- Cavill is a huge fan of the source material. It's our understanding that there are prominent members of the show's production who are not, so it's not surprising to hear about friction.
In the years to come, Cavill and others involved with the show will likely have more details and insight to share, but, for now, fans are left with lots of speculation about what has gone wrong.
Speaking of the fans, some have started a petition that has amassed nearly 50,000 signatures in four days that calls for Netflix to bring back Henry Cavill and replace the show's writers.