The Witcher is an epic tale of fate and family. Geralt of Rivia, a solitary monster hunter, struggles to find his place in a world where people often prove more wicked than beasts. But when destiny hurtles him toward a powerful sorceress, and a young princess with a dangerous secret, the three must learn to navigate the increasingly volatile Continent together. Tracking #thewitcheredit #witchernews
Rising from the dead to gather a little bit of wild gossip in one place. Take this with many grains of salt, but mounting evidence seems to suggest that Henry Cavill was fired from The Witcher for creating a pretty toxic workplace environment.
The fandom has mostly bought into the unconfirmed narrative that Henry left because the writing wasn’t honoring the source material. This new theory shared by Deuxmoi on their Deux U podcast doesn’t deny that there were creative differences; in fact, it doubles down on that read of the situation. Rather, in addition to those differences, it paints a bleak picture of an actor’s escalating disrespect toward the women on set.
This podcast alone isn’t evidence of much because it’s anonymous celebrity gossip. But paired with recent comments on Reddit by individuals who claim to be familiar with the writers and crew, there seems to be some fire to go along with that smoke. For her part, showrunner Lauren S. Hissrich says she’ll have something to say about Henry’s exit in six months, presumably when season 3 airs.
This doesn’t even touch on the whole situation with Beau De Mayo and what his fellow writers have alleged about his behavior in the writers’ room, but it is worth noting that he’s the gamer/writer in question that Deuxmoi says Henry allied with in trying to undermine production. If anyone needs a primer on the Beau situation, let me know.
Anyway, read on for a transcript of the podcast’s statement as well as some screenshots of relevant Reddit comments.
Transcript of the podcast segment on Henry’s exit:
There’s something I really really wanted to read to you guys. It has to do with why Henry Cavill left The Witcher. I know that was something that you guys were super interested in when it happened, and I just recently got this message. Somebody was like “Hey, do you want to know what really went down?” And I was like “Sure!” So let me just read it. It says: At the beginning of the show, Henry was good to work with. A lot of difficult demands that made people feel like he wasn’t a team player, but that’s not unusual for a really big star. Though in TV it truly usually doesn’t happen until the second season. But in season two and three something shifted and he became really impossible for women to work with, which is always a big problem, but even worse here because the showrunner is a woman.
He would try to overrule her and try to get changes made last minute across the board without her knowledge, which, if you know anything about showrunning, is completely fucked. The showrunner has to sign off on every miniscule detail down to the buttons on a costume. Female writers and directors were suddenly being completely ignored on set, unable to do their jobs.
Every department head was complaining. He started making comments—it wasn’t a sexual thing, he wasn’t grabbing anyone or being lewd, but it was disrespectful and toxic all the same.
He is deeply addicted to video games, to the point where it was like working with any other addict. He was distracted, he was late, he was obsessive, and a lot of people think the misogyny came from the gamer world. Video game bro language is not how you talk to coworkers, and he wouldn’t stop. Someone on the show compared it to watching someone get brainwashed by QAnon, like his whole personality shifted. Eventually, his disrespect escalated.
He would rewrite scenes without even alerting the other actors in the scenes until it was time to shoot. He decided that he didn’t want any romantic scenes at all—no kissing scenes, no shirtless scenes, et cetera. He wanted complete control of storylines but really had no idea of the limitations of TV, structure, budget, et cetera.
He formed a weird alliance with one writer who was also a gamer, who eventually got fired after multiple HR complaints were made and after that writer left, Henry did anything he could to hold up production and cause problems. Eventually, top brass at Netflix was tired of him costing them money with delays and HR investigations and the showrunner was asked to construct a potential exit for him.
Netflix reached out to him personally and he was given one final warning, and violated that warning with an email he sent to the entire writing staff right after that meeting. That was it. It’s very disappointing. So it sounds like, which is kind of shocking, that gaming, video games, was the demise of Henry Cavill, which is wild. So wild I would have never guessed that. Anyway, just wanted to read that for you guys, I know you were super interested about it when it happened, and that’s it.
Reddit comments posted to r/deuxmoi in the last few months that shed some light on the situation:
And that’s it! Well, there is one more interesting thing: the industry seems to be taking note and, in responding, lending some credibility to the idea that whoever sent that tip to Deuxmoi is clearly in showbusiness and understands certain patterns of behavior. Below are the tweets of a well-respected writer who’s worked on Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul and The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power:
Okay! Now that’s really it. Feel free to draw your own conclusions. Just wanted to get this rumor down in full.
Created to kill. Destined to protect.
Lost in chaos. Destined to survive.
Forced to flee. Destined to fight.
THE WITCHER SEASON 2
Premieres December 17
