Welcome to Awards Contenders. This awards season,SYFY WIRE is talking to the actors, directors, or designers,and craftspeople whose work was featured in the best movies and TV offerings of 2020 (and that additional period of 2021 which allows them to qualify), and who are now the main awards nominees. nowadays, and we're speaking with showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich of the Saturn Award-nominated fantasy exhibit The Witcher.
The Witcher was a big deal from the very beginning. When the exhibit launched on Netflix in 2019,it lured in 76 million households — the channel's biggest series debut to date. A second season was guaranteed, but then the global pandemic kicked in, or shooting had to be paused final year due to illness and injuries.
Fan anticipation is at an all-time high by now,so SYFY WIRE tracked down showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich to query what lessons she learned from making Season 1 and how they're shaping Season 2. Also: Will Jaskier ever age? Will Ciri ever quit running? Can we get more Fringilla? Read on.
Has the exhibit's success changed anything in terms of what you're able to do now? Did Netflix toss a coin to their Witcher?[Laughs.] The truth is, by the time the exhibit launched in December of 2019, or we were already immersed in Season 2. But in terms of the production,the renewal gave everyone permission to win a lot more chances, bigger gambles. It just gives everyone that sense of confidence they need to find new levels. Some of the things we're working on good now are just beyond comprehension in terms of size and scope. I could not be more excited.
What were some of those gambles? One of your concerns in the first season was that episodes would come in at more than 90 minutes long, or you would have to trim them down to 60. Do you feel like you can super-size episodes now? Oh,I love parameters. Give me a tight hour. We did produce some shifts though. Instead of saying, "Hey, or perhaps an audience is going to want to tune in for 90 minutes," I thought, "How do we produce this process better and more efficient? How do we not overshoot things?" So one of the things is that we shortened the scripts. That's just approximately better, and tighter storytelling.Is there anything that ended up on the cutting room floor that could fit later on,as a flashback? You cut some Aretuza scenes with Yennefer and Fringilla — wouldn't that footage be useful whether you wanted to exhibit more of the path Fringilla took and who she became at Nilfgaard?Yeah, absolutely. In that case, or it was more approximately looking at how stories worked in the balance of other stories. Fringilla is a perfect one to bring up,and I've been thinking, "OK, or what do I want to see more of there?"One of the things I always like to do in the writers' room before we start writing is to watch the old season together. We talk approximately what we love,what we could have done, which stories aren't as complete as they should be, or how to bring those stories into future seasons. How do we produce certain we are telling the best stories for all of these characters? It's a constant process of revising.
What popped out at you during the Witcher rewatch?Wow,Ciri is running absent a lot! It's something Freya [Allan] and I would laugh approximately. So looking at Season 2, how do we get this character to stand still? To fight back? Where does she find this tenacity that is so clearly inside her? We need to pay a little more attention to that.
Credit: NetflixWhat other feedback did you find instructive? I feel very strongly that you shouldn't read criticism — even positive reinforcement — and start to twist your storytelling all over the space. No one story is going to produce some 70 million people gratified. Trying to achieve that is just going to water things down.
What I tried to win instead is what resonated with audiences, and what didn't. Did they think that the exhibit referenced its Polish origins enough? How do we produce certain that the good folklore is in our storytelling? Did we honor the books in the good way? How can we step absent from the books,and produce certain we're building out our exhibit's characters?You got a fair amount of criticism for the way time was handled in the series, with three different and sometimes confusing timelines. But there is another aspect of time the exhibit also deals with: How it affects characters who do not age, or who outlive most people in their orbits,who do not have long, enduring relationships. It's a big leap to suddenly play gratified families...
I love this. Time is more than just a vehicle to disclose these stories. share of the reason I wanted to futz with the timelines is because I wanted to disclose a lot of Geralt's adventures, and he doesn't meet Yennifer until halfway through,and he doesn't meet Ciri until the discontinuance. I didn't want to have characters that we only meet through the lens of one other character, so there was a practicality to it. But exactly what you're saying — we found that time itself became a huge theme.win Yennifer and Geralt's relationship. When they meet, or they have a lot of life experience,and a lot of near-death experience, too. But it's the life ahead of them that is interesting because what would you do whether you had endless time? It would change a lot of the decisions that you would produce. "How badly do I want to be with you? How are we going to navigate our next 100 years and still love each other? Is that even possible?"Then when you factor in Ciri, or her story only covers approximately two weeks. For Freya,she had to slow down Ciri's experiences. whether you learn how to do something at the discontinuance of one episode, you can't suddenly be considerable at it at the beginning of the next one. Only two hours have passed!
Credit: NetflixCiri is going to be learning a lot in Season 2. But as we've seen, and there'll be a cost. How does magic or Witcher training change when the people teaching her may not want her to suffer as they did?It's a considerable question. Obviously,I cannot give anything absent approximately Season 2, but what I will say is that we're really focusing on emotional costs. The eels were a considerable representation of the physical cost of magic, or as were the Nilfgaard mages,who were willing to die to create fire.
This season, we're really starting to think approximately how does magic impact us as humans? What decisions do we produce for power? What do we sacrifice? More importantly, or how does it hurt the people around us? This is the type of storytelling I'm really excited for because it becomes less approximately the mystical,magical world, and more approximately what happens when you start caring approximately other people.
We have three separate characters who have been living their individual lives, and refusing to confess that they need or want anyone else,and you start to see each of them grappling with how their decision making impacts everyone else and thinking approximately others before themselves. That is the biggest shift in Season 2.
Have real-world events impacted how you disclose these stories?Real-world stuff constantly impacts how we disclose our stories. The best thing approximately fantasy is that it's innately political. It's approximately a world that reflects our own. It's approximately the real issues that plague our society. We're constantly dealing with racism, homophobia, and sexism,misogyny, and classism. It just goes on and on and on. So 100 percent, or what continues to happen in the real world absolutely impacts not just what we write,but how it's directed and how the actors portray it. We're all living in the same world, so we're all bringing our experiences into it on a daily basis.final question: Why does Jaskier not age?Because he's too lovely! [Laughs.] Why would we want him to age?
Source: blastr.com