TWN: Witchers
So! I was minding my own business a few nights ago, playing a game on my phone, when I thought to look up the names of the actors who played witchers in TWN season two. My train of thought was as follows: "Oh, TWN didn't give us much personality for many of the witchers, maybe the actors that played them have had other, similar roles I that actually had personality, which I can use as a basis for their witcher’s personality. Alternately, I could stalk their social media so see what kind of a person they are." Lo and behold, IMDb had only officially credited the actors who had been credited by Netflix in the show. Said actors, the witchers they acted as, and their Instagram account handles are as follows:
Basil Eidenbenz - Eskel (basil.eidenbenz)
Paul Bullion - Lambert (paulbullion)
Yasen Atour - Coën (yasenatour)
Nathanial Jacobs - Everard (n.amosjay)
Jota Castellano - Gwain/Gawain (jota.castellano)
Chuey Okoye - Merek (chueyokoye)
Kim Bodina - Vesemir (doesn’t have one)
Henry Cavill - Geralt (henrycavill)
Now, that's all well and good, but in the wide shot in S2E2 where almost all witchers can be seen in one frame (here's a link to a tweet that has said picture, and some close-ups), we can see eleven (11) total witchers, and Eskel, who barges in right after said wide shot, makes a total of twelve (12) Netflix-canonical witchers. Didn’t Geralt say that there were 20 of them, when he last counted? What about the other 8 TWN? Turn on your location, I just wanna talk —
Speaking of Netflix-canonical facts, I figured refreshing my memory of TWN's page on the witchers who died in their sleep (Everard, Gawain (spelling discrepancy), Merek) couldn't hurt. Disappointingly, said page revealed no other information about said witchers.
So I went back to IMDb and saw that on the full list of credits, two more actors are credited:
Joel Adrian - Hemrik (Instagram, S2 wrap post)
Max Kraus - Tolbert (Instagram, Instagram post about 'The Good Part' of working on TWN (the few shots of using google maps to get to what i can only assume is the set is a Mood))
They're both uncredited for four (4) episodes, which is HALF THE SEASON. I am EXTREMELY angry about this. What the fuck.
Up to 10 named witchers, yaaay.
The tweet I linked to of the wide shot with almost all witchers visible in it gave the remaining two witchers the names of Diever and Vartok. However, google is unhelpful, as is instagram. And yet I persisted.
I swear to goodness I waded through IMDb for at least an hour trying to find names of stunt performers who were in both S2E2 (Kaer Morhen) and S2E8 (Family, in which there was a big battle at KM), but my search was unfruitful. Desperate, I went to Instagram.
Now I’d like to rant here a moment about how I Do Not Like Instagram. It’s hosted by facebook — sorry, “Meta” — and on the iOS app, you have to hit the screen Six Different Times to get to posts you’ve liked. That’s at least four times too many, in my opinion. So this was unfamiliar territory for me. I thought I’d be able to use IG’s search function, and it would work, and I’d easily find the actors’ names and wash my hands of the whole thing.
So you can imagine my disappointment when IG’s search function failed me.
Nevertheless, I stomped through the metaphorical swamp of IG, and I have emerged successful.
Just so we're all on the same page, I was trying to find the actors/stunt doubles who played the witchers labeled Diever and Vartok in the wide shot. Any sort of canonical confirmation. Their names would be nice, but not necessary. From the other images in that tweet, I was looking for an Asian man and a white guy with a beard. Can't be too hard, right?
lol NOPE
For those curious, my actions were as follows:
Jota Castellano has a picture on IG of him and five other witchers. (I’d post the pic here, but I’m on mobile, and I need to sleep but I need to finish this post more, let me live)
In the description of said photo, he tags all the TWN-canon witchers. #Vartok gets you literally nine results, so I decided to look under #Diever.
Before perusing said tag, I decided to go in reverse chronological order using the “Recent” tab, as opposed to the “Top” tab.
Y’all. I don’t think I can properly express the feeling of excitement that overtook me when I saw what I can only guess is a character poster for an Asian witcher. I was honestly about to jump out of bed, but I resisted and clicked on it.
Lo and behold, I’d like to introduce y’all to Nicolas Wang, who played Diever in TWN.
Since Nicolas Wang seems to care about giving proper credit, I was pleasantly surprised to see that he tagged a handle I was unfamiliar with.
Meet Lachlan Parkinson (edit: this used to say 'Peterson', I was wrong, his last name is Parkinson), who played Vartok in TWN. As of the time I’m posting this, their most recent IG post is of Peterson’s eyes blacked out with black veins around them, similar to the effect we saw on Cavill’s face when Geralt took whatever potion he took in I think S1.
So far as I can tell, neither of them has been credited on IMDb or in the Netflix credits. I don’t know if that was a stipulation in their contracts, but here we are: all twelve TWN witchers have names and actors.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk, I guess?
