For three seasons, Henry Cavill played the role of Geralt of Rivia, a taciturn monster hunter skilled with weapons and bad at conversation, on The Witcher. Fans immediately took to Cavill’s performance, delighting at how grumpy and deadpan he was even in the most extraordinary of circumstances.
Take the scene from the first season when Geralt kills a water-bound monster called a Selkiemore. Afterwards, he walks into a tavern and ordered a drink, absolutely covered head to toe in monster viscera.
This scene is played for laughs, but it was actually a harrowing day for Cavill, as he recalled at WitcherCon 2021. Because while he was playing this silly scene, there was a chance that his dog Kal could die.
The life of Henry Cavill’s dog was in question while he was covered in monster guts
On that day, Cavill’s dog Kal, an American Akita, was with him on set. “This day, Kal had run out of my trailer,” Cavill remembered. “And there [were] these metal stairs outside the trailer.” The stairs had holes in them to prevent rainfall from gathering on them and making them slippery, but they ended up injuring Kal. (Just to reassure you ahead of time: he ended up being fine.)
“Kal got one of his claws stuck in it as he jumped off and all I heard him do is yelp,” Cavill said. “And I thought, ‘Oh, he’s landed badly on his shoulder or something.’” But it was worse; Kal had “ripped his claw all the way off apart from a little bit.”
This happened right as Cavill was being called to set. His assistant Leah Gyimah was able to take Kal to the vet. As Cavill was getting slathered in yogurt and fruit dyed to look like monster guts, he got a call from her. “Leah says, ‘Right, vet says it should be fine. They’re just gonna remove the nail. And they need to put him under. And the vet has just warned and said, look, dogs going under, they may not necessarily wake up.’”
Cavill describes this as “a particularly rough moment.” He was “sitting there thinking, ‘I’m never going to see my dog again’…And I’m here on set, doing this, rather than with him.”
Again, Kal ended up pulling through, and thank goodness; I’m sure this is a harrowing story for any pet owner to hear, but at least it has a happy ending.
Kal is alive and well to this day, but his owner won’t be playing Geralt of Rivia again. Cavill is stepping away from the role; he will be replaced by Liam Hemsworth when The Witcher eventually returns for season 4.
