Showrunner Lauren Schmidt-Hissrich also explains the massive scope of Season 3.
While the first two seasons of Netflix’s The Witcher made many changes to Andrzej Sapkowski’s original story, Season 3 will be a faithful adaptation of the novel Time of Contempt, reveals showrunner Lauren Schmidt-Hissrich. While Season 3 of The Witcher was still in production, Collider was part of a handful of international press outlets invited to tour the set and speak with the show’s cast and crew. During the set visit, I learned more about Schmidt-Hissrich’s creative process and the massive scope of Season 3 of The Witcher.
During the set visit, the journalists invited to take a tour through the Continent had the opportunity to talk with Schmidt-Hissrich about what fans can expect from Season 3 of The Witcher. Of course, one of the main topics in the discussion was how much the series would keep changing Sapkowski’s novels, especially since Season 2 strayed far away from the second book, Blood of Elves. While Schmidt-Hissrich is open to criticism, she still underlines how any adaptation needs to change the story to suit new media better. In Schmidt-Hissrich’s words:
“The truth is that we always obviously start from the books. But I talk a lot in interviews about the fact that you cannot go straight from a page to a screen. And so what we try to do and what I’ve always talked to Sapkowski about is keeping the tone of the books the same. And I think as long as we do that, as long as we’re trying to invest in those stories in the way he wanted to tell them. Which is really about a family coming together, then I feel like we’re in safe territory.”
Still, Schmidt-Hissrich is aware fans didn’t like some of the changes she introduced in Season 2. Even so, as the showrunner explains, these changes were unavoidable due to Blood of Elves’ lacking action. As Schmidt-Hissrich puts it:
“Season two obviously had a lot of… There was a lot of controversy about how much we changed. I’m personally with you. Obviously, I’m biased. I thought that ‘Blood of Elves’ was incredibly difficult to adapt, because there wasn’t a lot of big action. And as much as you can talk to book lovers and book purists and say like, ‘But no, this could have been beautiful!’ It could have been. But I actually believe over eight episodes, it would’ve been too slow to keep its momentum. Certainly to keep an audience interested.”
While it makes sense to change a written story so it becomes a better visual spectacle, Season 3 of The Witcher will please all sorts of fans. That’s because Time of Contempt is much easier for Schmidt-Hissrich to adapt. The showrunner underlines how “season three, especially on the heels of season two, is a much more direct adaptation. Again, just from a basic writing perspective, the book is so easily adaptable. And it really is… It can be broken down into big events.” That doesn’t mean Schmidt-Hissrich is ignoring some of Season 2 changes, as the previous season was written in a way that would allow Netflix’s The Witcher to explore the events of Time of Contempt properly. So, as Schmidt-Hissrich puts it, after adapting Blood of Elves in Season 2:
“We knew what we wanted to do this season. So we used season two, even when we changed the story, to set up all of the things that we knew that we wanted to play now. So I think, for me, I think it will be exciting enough and have enough romance and family and heart, and then all of the battles and the monsters that people expect. And I think we’ll keep audiences engaged, but I also think we’ll really keep the people who were there because they fell in love with the Witcher that Sapkowski wrote. I think it will keep them equally happy”
Lauren Schmidt-Hissrich on the Scale of The Witcher Season 3
While fans of the original The Witcher novels will be pleased to know Season 3 of Netflix’s show will stick closer to the source material, everyone should be excited about what comes next. As Schmidt-Hissrich told us, “I’ve been not shy about saying Time of Content is my favorite book. To me, it was the easiest to adapt, but also had the biggest moving parts and big battles and exciting stuff.” All of these critical events give Season 3 massive stakes for every character. One specific scene, the adaptation of the Thanedd Coup, will even bring the whole cast together on screen for the first time. Schmidt-Hissrich tells us that:
“Everyone is there. I don’t think we’ve ever had that big of a set piece th at all of the actors get to be at and get to be out on a daily basis. And everyone, Jaskier has a big part. Ciri has a big part. Obviously, Yen and Geralt do. We have, I think 25 or 30 full-time cast members there. Not to mention hundreds of extras in the most beautiful garb you’ve ever seen right now, dancing across a big stage.”
If a scene like that sounds impossible to shoot, it’s worth remembering the Thanedd Coup is the highlight of only one of Season 3’s episodes. So, there are still many eye-popping surprises Schmidt-Hissrich and The Witcher team have crafted for fans. And many of these scenes forced the cast and crew to globetrot in search of the perfect environment. Taking about the scope of Season 3 of The Witcher, Schmidt-Hissrich said:
“I won’t lie. It’s a really hard show to make. This year, guys, where have we shot? We have shot here, obviously, [at] Longcross [Studios]. We’ve been in Italy, Croatia, Slovenia… Morocco, we just got back from. And we don’t move in a small way. We move hundreds of people and monsters and costumes and huge stunt teams. It’s big, and I think what I always ask for when we’re hiring new crew and certainly the conversations that we have every year is like, ‘I need you to be excited about this. We’re the leaders, so we have to show up.’ We just talked about this in Morocco. Morocco was the hottest place I’ve ever been and probably the hardest shoot I’ve ever had. But we’ve got to show up every day excited to be here and exciting the crew to be here. And it works, you know?”
Season 3 of The Witcher will be the last to feature lead star Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivia, a role Liam Hemsworth will take over starting in Season 4. Season 3 of The Witcher will be split into two parts. Volume 1 debuts on Netflix on June 29, with Volume 2 coming to the streamer on July 27.
