Netflix has announced its official casting for The Witcher Netflix Ciri and Yennefer. The upcoming TV show based on Andrzej Sapkowski’s series of novels will star Freya Allan and Anya Chalotra as Ciri and Yennefer, respectively. Last month, it was revealed that Man of Steel‘s Henry Cavill will be playing the titular protagonist Geralt of Rivia in the highly-anticipated fantasy TV series.
Freya Allan has previously starred in AMC’s Into The Badlands while Anya Chalotra has featured in the TV show Wanderlust. Cavill, Allan, and Chalotra will be joined by an entire cast of actors and actresses. These include the Game of Thrones‘ Jodhi May as Queen Calanthe, Fortitude‘s Bjorn Hlynur Haraldsson as Eist Tuirseach, Knightfall‘s Adam Levy as Mousesack, MyAnna Buring as the Rectoress of Aretuza (which could be one of three characters), Millie Brady as the outcast Princess Renfri, as well as Mimi Ndiweni and Therica Wilson-Read as apprentice sorcerers.
These casting choices were revealed by The Witcher Netflix writer and showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. She also confirmed that a total of 50 people have been cast for the upcoming TV show. It took an extensive search and sifting through 200 potential women before finally settling on Freya Allan for the role of Ciri.
Fans of both characters will be glad to learn that The Witcher Netflix Ciri and Yennefer will be receiving more prominent roles in the TV series. According to Hissrich, the reason why Freya Allan and Anya Chalotra were chosen to portray Ciri and Yennefer was that they both “embody the spirits of the characters.” She ended the interview by confirming that The Witcher Netflix is already in pre-production and filming will be “coming up soon.”
“Yeah, what’s interesting is the first couple books are told from Geralt’s perspective and when I was reading them I saw that there are all these other characters who are very strong and powerful; not just the women, by the way,” she said. “They can be pulled to the forefront so it doesn’t always feel like just Geralt’s journey, because the journey of one man is never going to be very interesting. It’s only going to be as interesting as the people he interacts with. That’s why these characters are rising in prominence in the series.”
