Thread by @perseruna

🧵debunking all the lies you’ve been told about Henry Cavill in The Witcher; a thread

“Cavill is a long time fan of the books and The Witcher was his passion project”
He actually didn’t know the books existed until the showrunner told him about them.

Cavill says he’s a huge games fan and admits he believed the books were tie-ins to them, even though one of the first things that you learn in the games is that they were based on the books by Sapkowski. For such a huge fan of the games, he hasn’t even played any of the DLCs.

He admits he didn’t feel the “need” to prepare himself for the role because he knows the games so well. But the games are not the books. The show is not adapting the games, it’s adapting the books.

And especially game Geralt and book Geralt are quite different, and they’re in very different points in their life. It seems to me like Cavill was never interested in playing book Geralt.

He also admits himself that he hasn’t read the books since ‘just before he got the role’ so that would be around 2017/2018 which isn’t really at all impressive especially when you compare it to someone like Joey Batey who’s read the saga over three times by now.

or people like Therica Wilson-Read, Mecia Simson and Cassie Clare and how dedicated they were in their research and preparation for the role.

And saying that this was his “passion project” is utter nonsense. You don’t get paid over 1 million dollars per episode for your passion project. Cavill also went on record admitting that he “doesn't do it for the art” but rather the money.

“He was fighting the writers for a more book accurate Geralt”

Cavill decided to cut most of Geralt’s lines and grunt instead, even tough Geralt is very talkative and eloquent in the books. Geralt is not a stoic brooding alpha male caricature, but that’s what Cavill made of him.

Cavill admitted to frequenting Reddit forums and to getting his feedback from those circles. After S1 had premiered and people weren’t big fans of how stupid those grunts made Geralt look, he decided to reverse his decision.

Throughout the entire S2 press tour he kept preaching how it was his life mission to make Geralt more intellectual, and it was the writers who were at fault, which was entirely untrue.

He said that those lines he cut were never important, which we know is not true because Joey literally had to take HC’s lines and make them his own so that the plot would make sense and move forward.

He claimed that it was just so impossible for Geralt to have more lines because the story had “too much of women”. Which is entirely BS because the books have always had a strong female presence, and they're often driven by female characters.

It all looks like throughout the S2 press tour Cavill made it his life mission to drive a very specific, very incel-y part of the fandom against the showrunner, the writers and the female characters and in favor of himself.

“Cavill would change scenes to be more book accurate”

Cavill has gone on record admitting to changing a lot of the script himself, but when you look at all those instances closer, you find that all the things he changed are just diverging even further from the source material.

I think the most popular instance of this is when he bravely put his foot down when the evil showrunner wanted to make Roach’s death a joke, so let’s look at that one first.

This is the line he ended up using on his own. Which is said to Geralt by Death in the books in the short stories, when Geralt is at his lowest and thinks that Yennefer had died, and he’s got nothing left to live for essentially.

The original line was “You were my favorite Roach.”, which isn’t a joke nor is it comedic. If delivered the right way it’s a lovely bittersweet goodbye and in my opinion works a lot better and is more in character for Geralt while the Death line seems out of place and clunky.

Cavill didn’t want Geralt and Triss to find platonic comfort with each other, even though it’s a scene straight from the books.

He refused romantic scenes between Geralt and Yennefer.

Geralt and Yennefer were originally scripted to have a sex scene in S2, but Cavill refused it because he claims that that’s “not how [the character] behave” which to me is an insane thing to say, because that is exactly how they behave.

Geralt and Yennefer are inherently a very sexual couple especially in the short stories and ToC, they break up, make up, they come crashing in and out of each other’s lives while having very passionate sex.

Cavill went on record that he doesn’t “understand sex scenes” which is an embarrassing thing to admit as an actor imo. I absolutely understand being uncomfortable with them as a performer, but then you don’t sign up for roles that require them and are important for the character.

We also know that body doubles were offered for actors for intimate scenes, but he wanted total and utter control of Geralt’s character. Also, it’s quite interesting that he was only vocally against romantic scenes only after an intimacy coordinator had been hired for S2.

He didn’t want to play Geralt with any character flaws whatsoever.

Geralt being a struggling father is very much a big theme in Blood of Elves. He doesn’t always know what to say to Ciri or how to help her, but he’s always trying, which is what makes his character so enjoyable, but Cavill was very much against that.

Geralt basically doesn’t grow at all as a father, he just is a perfect one from the get-go because HC refused to play him in any other way. Lauren then goes on talking about the idea of “balance” with Ciri’s parental figures.

So, if you can’t have a struggling Geralt you have to go with a struggling Yennefer. So, it’s fair to speculate that the controversial Yennefer Betrayal Arc happened because Cavill refused to play a book accurate Geralt and then other storylines had to suffer.

He also didn’t want to play Geralt and Jaskier as “buddies” like they are in the books.

When he was defending his choice to cut Geralt’s lines, he claims that he only cut “unimportant” bits like things about emotions and feelings. So, it’s fair to speculate that that’s why Geralt and Jaskier’s friendship felt so one-sided, especially in S1.

Freya Allan and Joey Batey stated multiple times how collaborative the writers and Lauren are. They’ll ask the actors’ opinion on things and will put very specific bits from the books for them. eg. Joey asked to put he Vespula scene in S3, which is taken straight from the books.

So Cavill bravely patting himself on the back for changing an entire scene and not discussing it with anyone else just reads as being a bad team player, and if you know anything about working on a film/tv project is that you have to be a team player or nothing’s going to work.

“The showrunner said Cavill’s passion for the books was ‘annoying’”
Lauren jokingly called Cavill ‘annoying’ after his team was bombarding her with phone calls and emails to get him the role, he himself even admits to being annoying, so that claim is pure rage bait.

“The writers hate the books”
That entire claim was made by Beau deMayo, who was recently fired from Marvel’s X-Men ‘97 and stripped of all of his writing credits for alleged sexual abuse. He was also fired from the Witcher for alleged emotional and physical abuse.

After his Marvel firing he went off to make a variety of wild claims such as that Marvel had fired him because “because he was too popular” or “because he was gay” so it’s not hard to look under the surface and see that he could've been vindictive,

and started lying about his ex co-workers in a way that he knew could hurt them which is what happened as implied by one of the writers.

Demayo was also good friends with Cavill, and it sure is an interesting coincidence that his claims slamming the writers came out only six days before Cavill’s exit was announced.

Cavill was allegedly fired for his outrageous on set behavior and rampant misogyny.

The story came from Deuxmoi and while a controversial figure let’s not pretend as if her sources aren’t correct a lot of the times.

There are a lot of details here that match; Cavill’s aversion to romantic scene, him trying to hold up the production because of a fired writer was about Demayo, HC wanting to have complete creative control, his past misogynistic behavior and comments etc.

I’m more prone to believe that a famous man with a big ego got himself fired than that he bravely quit a production that was paying him millions because he was the only person to care about the source material on the entire set, which was an entirely false belief.

Cavill’s comments on the Me Too movement were disgusting and could label him a rapist apologist by spreading the harmful rhetoric that women lie all the time about their abuse for fame and money.

He dated a teenager when he was a fully grown 33 year old man. He also dated Gina Carano, known for her bigoted transphobic views. And I do believe that the people you chose to keep around yourself tell a lot about you. Also, the way he talks about women is an embarrassment.

He was never a team player and made his cast mates’ lives on set much harder.

I can’t imagine the stress of being a newcomer actor, on your first big production and the lead man acting opposite you is refusing to say his lines, and it falls on you to drive the scene forward. But that’s exactly what Cavill did to people like Joey Batey and Anya Chalotra.

Through the entire three season run, Cavill only ever did exactly two interviews with the rest of his co leads. Cavill couldn't even respect his co workers enough to sit down and do a press junket with them. It was always Henry and then Anya, Joey, Freya together.

As a lead man he couldn’t even say anything and stand up for Anya from the rancid racist abuse she was getting, to the point of death threats, but he actually defended and encouraged the toxic fans and claimed that they were in the right and simply "passionate".

(But he could make an entire IG post defending his gf when she was getting called out for doing blackface.)

He allegedly broke COVID protocol to film the Superman cameo and endangered his cast mates, which resulted in the production getting shut down. It was clear from the few public appearances that they had that the girls were never truly comfortable around him.

And of course the cast will say nice things about him, they’re professionals on a press tour promoting a show that he’s also leading, but you can’t tell me that from the few public appearances they had they look at ease around him.

During his goodbye at TUDUM the girls look so uncomfortable and closed off, barely smiling when he’s addressing them, which is a stark difference to how they were behaving around Joey mere seconds ago.

Cavill made Geralt a horrible caricature to the point where people now believe Geralt is an unfeeling brooding alpha male stereotype of a character, which couldn't be further from who he actually is.

He has a very limited range, basically all the characters he has played are from the exact same mold. He doesn't have chemistry with anyone and all his scenes in the show have to be carried by either Anya, Freya or Joey while all he does is grunt and look constipated.

Henry Cavill was directly responsible multiple times for Geralt and the show straying from the source material, and was responsible for cheapening Geralt’s interpersonal relationships.

Like the series, don’t, watch it, don’t watch it, I don’t care but acting like Cavill was the only good thing about it & the only person who cared about the books is factually incorrect and calling him a “Witcher visionary” is ridiculous and an insult to Andrzej Sapkowski himself