Last week, the showrunner of The Witcher Netflix series, Lauren S. Hissrich, took to Twitter to talk about how she deals with the haters that inevitably flock to her mentions and inbox every time a slither of news or information about the series surfaces.
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Fast-forward to this week, and Hissrich once again took to Twitter, but this time to talk about something more positive than Internet trolls and pitchfork mobs: writing the show. In the process, the showrunner also slipped some insight into the casting process, which she describes as, “basically impossible.”
I haven’t talked about writing in a long time, but it’s important to know what happens to all those words when they fly off the metaphorical page and collide with a very real production.
Most of the time, a lot changes. It has to. There are logistics to consider:
— Lauren S. Hissrich (@LHissrich) October 19, 2018
Creative vision alignment. Director notes. Cast notes. Horse notes. Self-flagellating notes. Budget. Run time of episodes. Rain. Snow. Stage availability. Crew availability. Actor availability.
— Lauren S. Hissrich (@LHissrich) October 19, 2018
(Side note: HUGE PROPS to anyone who’s cast before. It’s basically impossible. There’s talent to consider, obviously, but also interest, schedules, budget, negotiation, options, exclusivity, location, dozens of moving pieces to get ONE actor hired. And spoiler, we have hundreds.)
— Lauren S. Hissrich (@LHissrich) October 19, 2018
Anyway, I take all those factors back to my computer, and start what we call the revision process. There’s a lot of cool coding in revisions, stars and pretty colors, but let’s be honest, often it’s where the fun dies. Writers — as we colloquially say — must kill our babies.
— Lauren S. Hissrich (@LHissrich) October 19, 2018
Here’s the thing about #Witcher. No babies have died in this process.
— Lauren S. Hissrich (@LHissrich) October 19, 2018
In the months since I wrote it, I’ve only done two sets of revisions on the pilot. There have been notes, of course, but everything’s fallen into place. And everyone on the ground here is aligned, committed to honoring our initial vision. I’ve never seen anything like it before.
— Lauren S. Hissrich (@LHissrich) October 19, 2018
Basically, it’s fun to produce this show. That’s what I geekily came to say.
❤️⚔️🐺
— Lauren S. Hissrich (@LHissrich) October 19, 2018
It’s interesting to hear that Hissrich and her writing team didn’t have to chop too much during the editing process, which is normally a sign of a great script. And when you consider the talent serving on the project and the collective passion for the IP, it’s not very surprising that no babies were harmed in the writing of the show’s first season.
The Witcher Netflix series currently doesn’t have a release date, but it is expected to release sometime next year.
