But during the Season 2 press tour for the series, the cracks between Cavill’s genuine love of Geralt and showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich’s vision for the series began to show. In the same feature, Hissrich revealed that Cavill sent her several notes about Geralt’s dialogue for Season 2. “Everybody came out of Season 1 laughing and loving Geralt’s fuming. But Henry was saying that when you read the books you spend a lot of time in Geralt’s head. So how can we put that on the page?” Hissrich said.
During an interview with Philstar, Cavill clarified that he didn’t just want more lines in Season 2. He wanted to create a more book-accurate Geralt. It’s a fair complaint. As Cavill outlined, the book version of Geralt is far more complicated than the Netflix version. He often philosophizes and has interesting thoughts about the gray areas between good and evil he typically occupies. Sure, the novels have the judgmental silences and grunts that have come to define this character. But book Geralt is just as good at emo grunting as he is at delivering morose monologues and making snarky jokes
“It’s important for me to have the character be three-dimensional,” Cavill said in December of 2021. “And it’s tricky to do, as I was saying earlier, because there’s a certain vision and there’s a certain set storyline and plot. And so, it was about me trying to find Geralt’s place within that. All of my asks and requests were along the lines of just being faithful to the source material.”