How The Witcher's Anya Chalotra And Freya Allan Made Sense Of Ciri's Season 3 Arc
Some of the best scenes in "The Witcher" season 3 fast-track the show's central relationships. After two seasons spent splitting up and reuniting, Princess Ciri (Freya Allan), Geralt of Rivera (Henry Cavill), and the powerful sorceress Yennefer (Anya Chalotra) were finally in one place — and surprisingly happy. There was still some bad blood about that whole 'Yen almost sacrificed Ciri to a Baba Yaga-esque demon' thing, sure, but "The Witcher" pretty swiftly moved past it. The season premiere features a surprisingly endearing montage of the group evading detection together, all while Yen trains Ciri to be the hero she's meant to become.
These scenes worked well thanks to the cohesion of the core cast, who all have a familial chemistry that makes even a sped-up bonding experience look sweet and believable. According to Chalotra, though, it took some coordination between the actors to get the bond between Ciri and her adoptive parents just right. "Why would she trust Yennefer?" Chalotra asked in an interview with Vulture, explaining how tension between multiple interpretations of a scene was handled on the show. "Why would she lean on her to be a mother figure, let alone a teacher?" She says that eventually, the cast and crew all "realized that through teaching, [Yen] could become more maternal."
For an actor, preparation can only go so far
"Through this imperfect version of a mother that Yennefer embodied, Ciri would see that she can connect with a human being and forgive faults," Chalotra said. Before they could get to that point, though, it sounds like she, Allan, and the show's writers had to have some discussions about how to play these scenes. The topic came up when Chalotra noted that as an actor, no amount of preparation can ensure that she'll end up playing the character the way she planned. "I've also learned that on the day, everything changes. You are not in control of anything," she told the outlet. "The scene you thought you knew, the truth you thought you'd be able to bring — it's completely different for the person you're working opposite."
Chalotra said openness is key for situations like this. As she explained, it's not just another actor whose take on the scene you have to find common ground with, but a writer and director as well, leading to a situation with little room for stubbornness. "If you're stubborn and insist a scene has to be played a certain way, nothing is going to work," she said. "I've got to do enough prep to be freer to play." For her part, the actress says she prepares by reading the script repeatedly, "So I know where I've been and where I'm going." She also pulls quotes from the books that she can reference back to when playing the character.
'We had to work together to find the strength of this relationship quickly'
So what does this have to do with those Ciri and Yen scenes? When asked which scenes "had that tension," Chalotra noted that "a lot of the scenes with Freya [did], actually." She says it all came down to trying to figure out how to play Yen and Ciri together and establish their bond without a surplus of screen time. "It was a difficult road to go on because we had a limited amount of time to do it," she told Vulture. "There were different extremes of each scene that we could play, and we had to work together to find this strength of relationship quickly."
Hate-watchers who are always on the lookout for drama behind the scenes of "The Witcher" could take this as a polite way of saying that Allan and Chalotra butted heads with regards to their respective characterizations. But it sounds more like Chalotra, whose first on-screen role came just a year before "The Witcher" began, is giving voice to a vital lesson every actor has to learn eventually; that sharing a scene is a give and take, and she herself can't assume every interpretation she has of her own character will end up on screen.
The show's familial bond is one of its strongest elements
Whatever Allan, Chalotra, and the team did behind the scenes of the episode (Stephen Surjik directed the premiere, while Mike Ostrowski wrote it) worked. As a fan, I think there are plenty of things worth grumbling about in "The Witcher" season 3, but Ciri and Yen's relationship isn't one of them. It comes across as authentic and endearing, which makes their separation by season's end all the more nerve-wracking.
Their road back to one another next season is also likely to be rocky, given that Ciri just fell in with a cool ne'er-do-well gang called the Rats in the final scene of season 3. While Yen's loss of her own mother figure, Tissaia (MyAnna Buring), may galvanize her into taking on a more leaderly position among the sorceresses, it could be quite a while until she gets to step back into the mother role she established with Ciri in season 3. When she (hopefully) does, though, the pair's bond will be believable thanks to the strong emotional groundwork Allan and Chalotra laid this season. "The Witcher" season 3 is now on Netflix. Season 4 does not yet have a release date.