Henry Cavill Suffered A Nearly Career-Ending Injury Filming The Witcher Season 2
Henry Cavill might be bowing out of "The Witcher" prematurely, but you can't say the man didn't suffer for the show. The former Superman actor has always demonstrated a remarkable commitment to the physical aspects of his job, which he really refined as Geralt of Rivia on the Netflix series. In fact, Cavill basically became an unofficial stunt coordinator on "The Witcher" season 3, bringing a focused approach to his final season as the White Wolf that saw him designing fight sequences and, of course, performing lots of the action himself.
Previously, the now 40-year-old demonstrated this unusually committed approach on "Mission: Impossible — Fallout," where he was the only other actor that could keep up with the king of doing his own stunts, Tom Cruise. You might have read Cavill quoted before, explaining his "mental stamina" to The Hollywood Reporter and saying of a particularly challenging helicopter stunt, "What you believe is your physical boundary is actually just a mental boundary. It was extraordinarily uncomfortable; my body did not want to keep getting back in the helicopter, but I just kept doing it."
Of course, throwing yourself that hard into performing your own stunts is bound to come with its share of injuries. And when he wasn't giving himself tinnitus and literally freezing his face on "Fallout," Cavill was almost tearing his hamstring from the bone for the sake of a scene in "The Witcher" season 2.
Monster hunting doesn't come without injury
Liam Hemsworth is taking over the role of Geralt in "The Witcher" season 4, and he has a lot to live up to. Henry Cavill famously lobbied for the role prior to the show's debut, out of an abundance of love for the source material — Andrzej Sapkowski's book series. Since being cast, he's devoted himself to portraying the White Wolf as faithfully as possible, right down to performing many of the action scenes himself.
What's surprising is that Cavill managed to injure himself not by slaying any horrific monsters or performing some outlandish stunt, but during a scene where he was running through some woods while shooting season 2 of "The Witcher." In fact, the actor almost managed to rip his hamstring away from the bone. Back in December of 2020, Cavill was filming an episode of the show and, as he told The Hollywood Reporter, suffered a "very, very bad" hamstring tear. As showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich recalled, "I remember Henry stopping up short and all of us going, 'Did he trip? Was there a rock?' I went to his trailer and he said he was in a great amount of pain." Cavill added, "I was very lucky that it wasn't a complete detachment of the hamstring."
The "Man of Steel" star revealed more about his injury in a 2021 Instagram video where he showed an MRI of his leg that demonstrated the seriousness of the issue. He explained, "My physiotherapist told me that if the tear was any more severe, it would have been a rupture. That means that the tendon and the muscle leave the bone, which would be really rather nasty."
Working through the pain
But this being Henry Cavill, he didn't let a problem such as almost literally detaching his muscle stop him. In fact, the shooting schedule for "The Witcher" season 2 was adapted to allow the actor to keep working while recovering, saving all the physical scenes for the end of the schedule. As he told THR:
"The difficulty was working while I was injured. Because I wanted to do more for the production — I know how important it was for them to get stuff done. So it was having to find that balance between, 'Yes, let's push, push, push,' and, 'Whoa, hold on, if I tear this further, it's the end of my action career.' That was my worst moment of the past year — professionally."
Cavill's physiotherapy course sounds almost as grueling as his challenging shoot schedule, with the actor revealing via Instagram that he'd wake up between 4 and 5 am every day for an aerobic flush session that involved sending "little electrical charges" through his left hamstring, and massaging both muscles. He'd then perform a full workout, starting with a stationary bike session to warm up, then performing prone hamstring curls, calf raises, cable hip flexions, elevated side planks and stretches, followed by a 15-minute run and sprint. After all that, he'd finally show up to "The Witcher" set to start shooting at 7am.
All of which is just a testament to the man's superhuman dedication to his work — and a reminder of why Cavill was a great Superman who never got a good Superman movie.