The Witcher Star Was Chased Off Of Social Media By Intense Fan Negativity

Landing a major role in a popular franchise might seem like winning the proverbial golden ticket, but there are some caveats ... especially when the most toxic segment of the property's fans see an opportunity to engage in sexism, racism, or other hateful words and deeds. The 2016 "Ghostbusters" reboot faced plenty of hate-filled backlash, and Leslie Jones got the most of the fan toxicity. "Star Wars" similarly failed Kelly Marie Tran after "fans" pelted the internet with hateful comments about the "Last Jedi" star, while trolls targeted "Captain Marvel" star Brie Larson in the lead-up to the film's release. Even Rachel Zegler found herself having to fend off toxic Disney fans as a result of her starring role in "Snow White" earlier this year.

Unfortunately, Netflix's "The Witcher" hasn't been exempt from such disgusting activity, either. In an interview with The Guardian, Anya Chalotra — who stars as Yennefer of Vengerberg on the show — described her experiences with fan hostility when he joined the mega-popular fantasy franchise, which prompted her to quit social media altogether:

"I'm not on social media. I stopped. I haven't been on it for a long time. The first season, for me [...] There was a lot of negativity. A lot of positive as well, but obviously the negative [...] This was one of my first jobs. It hit me hard. I learned very quickly that it can all be quite intense."

The "Witcher" fandom is also responsible for another, pretty well-known hater story: the one prompted by Liam Hemsworth replacing Henry Cavill for the show's fourth season and beyond. In the interest of comparing how a male actor's backlash experience might compare to the cases mentioned above, though, it's worth mentioning that Hemsworth had a very different personal experience from Chalotra (who, again, withdrew from social media altogether). Here's how the Geralt 2.0 actor described the situation to Variety:

"There was quite a bit of noise, and I had to put that aside. It started to become a distraction. I dealt with that sort of thing in the past a lot and, you know, at the end of the day, I love making movies and I love telling stories and acting. I just don't want any of that to affect my way of telling the story that I'm trying to tell. I jumped off social media and the internet most of last year."

Recall that the Geralt recasting backlash was a big thing that caused a lot of noise. Still, without taking anything away from the actor's no doubt nasty experience of being unfavorably compared to Cavill during this time, Hemsworth says he effectively shrugged it off simply by going offline for a while ... and at the end of the day, many "Witcher" fans showed support for his Geralt upon actually seeing him in action. Meanwhile, small, vocal toxic fandoms continue to attack women and minorities in well-known franchises over the most trivial of reasons, and studios have been getting increasingly nervous about shutting them down. It's almost like there's some kind of pattern here. 

"The Witchers" seasons 1-4 are streaming on Netflix.