Posted to the show’s Facebook.
Wow, I love their choice for Renfri. Just perfect.
She’s 22. It’s a bit uncomfortable to have her as a romantic interest for 35 year old Cavill.
Yennefer is over 100 years old in the books, but looks like someone in their 20s, maybe 30s. Geralt, in the books, has the vigor and appearance of 30 while being likely beyond his 60’s.
So I’m fine with that.
Why? Specifically?
In one of the books–I forget where the passage is–Yen is described as looking like one of the 20-year-old maidens in a village or something similar.
Mostly because this dynamic is never ever reversed. Why cast a 22 year old? A 35 year old would be more believable as a 100 year old witch.
Not given the source material, no.
And you still haven’t said why it is “uncomfortable”.
I did say. It’s because you never see a younger man with an older woman anywhere in pop culture, or if you do, it’s notable. Pairing a young woman with a man 13 years her senior falls right in line with pernicious cultural ideas of womens’ declining worth as they age and the virility of older men. I mean it’s ok, but it’s also uncomfortable.
So it is an age as a number thing. That’s fine and I understand.
Well ok.
(post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 24 hours unless flagged)
She doesn’t look 22 in that picture, not in the age of CW, but I’ve seen others where she looks older…
I mean, I can get behind this with some casting. When they’re putting 25-year old Bond girls on 60-year old Sean Connery, yeah. That feels weird now.
But the reason it feels weird is that there’s a sense of exploitation going on.
I am looking at 35 year old Henry Cavill and wondering how it is exploitative that a 22-year old woman might be cast – and cast, btw, by a female showrunner and head writer and a female casting director – as his love interest/foil in a show based on a fictional work in which the character in question is described by the author as looking like a young woman.
It’s the inevitable argument about whether something – anything – is sufficiently woke.
The cast looks good. Yennefer actress doesn’t much resemble Yennefer I would imagine (or saw in the game), but I am open minded - I assume Lauren Hissrich had a good reason to pick her, and she might be perfect when embodying her. We’ll see.
I admit I do prefer her over Eva Green. Everybody and their mother wanted Eva Green, but not me.
Eva Green is overexposed. And I mean that in every possible sense.
I was curious how Anya Chalotra looks/sounds/acts so I got second episode of Wanderlust…and she has about a minute long scene in it, playing high school student…and I gotta say, she does NOT sound like Yennefer at all here and i have hard time imagining her as such, but as I said, open mind, actors are actors for a reason so I hope she will do very well.
.
Maybe you should re-read what you just wrote for a second.
— Alan
anyhow the Ciri casting works, superficially, for me. Reasonably close to the depictions we’ve seen.
My initial reaction to the Yennifer casting is ‘my god she looks young’. I know, sorcresses use their magic to affect their looks and all that. But the look in the games is about 30, and that is about right for her characterization. Young and beautiful, but also serious and earned experience. The actress looks like a teenager, though that may also be a factor of the role she played being of a teenager.
But, having not read the books, the games are the definitive voice of the characters for me. So it is hard to break from that. Cavil they can age up with some facial hair and hair dye. Hopefully the makeup artists and costumers can make it so Yen feels like the mother figure to Ciri, rather than her school age BFF.