At the heart of The Witcher saga is the once-hunchbacked and marginalized Yennefer. In the first season of the Netflix series, she was unveiled as a young woman whose life was forever altered through sorcery like Henry Cavill portrayed Geralt of Rivia’s. Later, she would go on to become among the most powerful in all the Continents. Magic gifted her with not only beauty but also extraordinary magical prowess. For Anya Chalotra, who portrayed her, the challenges to achieving this feat were immense.

Instead of taking to the books that Andrzej Sapkowski created Witcherverse was based on, Chalotra had to resort to reading scripts because of this reason.

Why did Anya Chalotra not receive help from the books?

In 2019, Anya Chalotra told Decider how she prepared for The Witcher before the first season was released. According to her, the “main source of information” for her was the scripts. This was because her character had barely received a backstory in the books that the show is based on. To combat that, Chalotra would go over her script “again and again”. With each read, she would get “more familiar” with her character’s “thoughts” and conversation style.

Besides the minimal history of Yennefer present in the novels that an actor would generally refer to, deviations from the source like her character’s infertility are a given in any cinematic adaptation. So, to understand her character, the Wanderlust actress would have “conversations” with Lauren Schmidt-Hissrich. She would also engage with other crew members to make a plan for how to “best portray” Yennefer.

After figuring out a solution to this initial challenge, Chalotra took on the many others.

Other challenges that The Witcher Season 1 posed for Chalotra

In the first season, Anya Chalotra had many hurdles to jump through. Besides the shortcomings in her backstory, the rapidly changing age of her character was another factor. From ages 14 to 70, she had to portray Yennefer through many phases of her life seamlessly. Not to forget all the intimate scenes that the script demanded. Ultimately, she chose to use a body double for only the first one and was otherwise “happy” about how they turned out. 

In addition to these, another physical challenge presented itself in the disabilities her character suffered for which various prosthetics needed to be used. She revealed that it was “difficult” to wear the ulcer-inducing mouth guard. Despite all that she had to rise up against, the Sherwood actress surely mastered her character, considering how powerful her portrayal of Yennefer has been. 

Did you know Yennefer’s history was less explored in books than in the script? Tell us your answer in the comments.