Henry Cavill has put in a lot of effort to play the gloomy and brooding Geralt of Rivia on Netflix’s The Witcher series. Besides spending hours in the gym to bulk himself up for the role and doing the stunts on his own, the actor apparently spent all day crying on the sets with his co-star Kim Bodnia, who plays Geralt’s mentor, Vesemir, and here’s the real reason why.
Created by Lauren Schmidt Hissrich and based on the eponymous book series by Andrzej Sapkowski, the series amassed a wide cult-like following due to the incorporation of a wide variety of fantasy and supernatural elements.
After a pretty riveting two-season run, Hissrich is getting ready for a third season, in addition to all the other subsequent projects for The Witcher-verse. To don the garb of the video game legend convincingly, Cavill has had to deal with aplenty physical and emotional exercises, exerting himself to bring the chiselled, calm and intimidating witcher to life.
To shoot the emotional scenes on set, the Man of Steel actor had “this thing” that helped him bring his emotions effectively to the fore. He would apparently relieve all his past traumas and conjure the bad memories that would have a negative effect on his mind all day that would make him cry on set.
He revealed how he “trained every day a new way of crying” he even asked his co-star, Bodnia, if the latter did something similar.
When Bodnia spoke about how he would have to dig deeper into his life to think about “if there is more to cry about”, Cavill opened up about how he channels all his negative memories to help add authenticity to his scenes. “I’ve emotionally processed it because I’ve been crying all day on set,” he said.
The Justice League actor also said that recalling memories to accentuate emotional acting skills is a good way of processing past trauma. He added, “I always thought that being an actor is also healing myself.”
The first two seasons of The Witcher are available for streaming on Netflix.
The third season is slated for a 2023 release.
