That includes co-star Anya Chalotra, who plays powerful sorceress (and Geralt love interest) Yennefer on the series, and who said, “I cried” when asked about her initial reaction to the news. “I remember it so vividly. It really impacted me. We were so bonded to these people, and to lose such an important member of the team… I’ve put everything into this character. I started [Witcher] having not much work under my belt, and this show means the world to me. So it hurt.” Freya Allen, who plays Geralt and Yennefer’s adoptive daughter, Ciri, added that “He was Geralt for Ciri for so long and that’s sad to let that go.” But also, she’s pretty clear that the show goes on: “I was also really excited to see what Liam’s done with the role. Me, Anya, Joey [Batey], we’re all still here.”
Series showrunner Lauren Hissrich also addressed the departure, albeit without going into details about alleged creative differences that might have prompted Cavill leaving. Noting that plans for Cavill to leave were in motion “for a while” before anything was announced, Hissrich said, “He had plans for other roles that he really wanted to commit himself to. And for us, you don’t want to hold someone and force them to be doing something that they don’t want to do. I think that’s why it felt like a really symbiotic decision.” (Cavill didn’t comment for the EW article, but it’s well known that he thought he’d be coming back in a serious way for a new run as Superman around the same time he left The Witcher—plans that evaporated when Warner Bros. announced that James Gunn and Peter Safran would be rebooting the DCU. He’s currently working on Chad Stahelski’s Highlander reboot.)
As for Hemsworth himself, he apparently spent the last year just trying to keep his head down and out of the line of fan fire, saying, “There was quite a bit of noise and I had to put that aside. It started to become a distraction. I dealt with that sort of thing in the past a lot and, you know, at the end of the day, I love making movies and I love telling stories and acting. I just don’t want any of that to affect my way of telling the story that I’m trying to tell. I jumped off social media and the internet most of last year.”
The Witcher returns for its fourth season some time later this year.
