The Witcher, a Netflix series, is popular for its unique narrative style, and for Henry Cavill’s grunts and silence. He barely spoke in season 1. However, there are reasons he hardly had any dialogues in season 1.
The Witcher has been adapted from the book series by the same name. The book was written by Andrzej Sapkowsi. The Witcher premiered on Netflix in December 2019. The series was renewed for a second season even before the first season was premiered. However, the release date of season 2 has not been announced yet.
Although, ‘The Witcher,’ has incorporated some details from the video games based on the series, most of it’s details have been based on the books, which is why Geralt’s lack of dialogue comes as a shock to some.
In the series, the character used to grunt and made use of facial expressions instead of speaking most of the time. This also gave rise to a lot of memes. However, this was a decision made by the creator of the show, Lauren Schmidt Hissrich.
Several viewers of The Witcher pointed out to the fact that, in the books, Geralt is more talkative than in the series. Some justified this by suggesting that the character would need more dialogue in the books due to the format, but this might not be necessary when translated to a web series.
While in a Reddit AMA session, Hissrich admitted that Geralt is “incredibly talkative in the books.” She also admitted that as she read the book further, she thought that his chatty nature would be too much. Hissrich added that in the first episode, he had a lot of dialogues, but a big part of his dialogues was cut because “it didn’t feel real or how a person would actually talk.” Hissrich said that Henry Cavill’s acting brought depth to Geralt’s character; hence they didn’t find the need for him to have any dialogues.
In another interview, Henry Cavill said that Geralt’s grunts were mostly added by him.