No, Yennefer didn’t have peak confidence all throughout Season 1 of The Witcher, but Anya Chalotra seemed to be oozing with it while playing the character. However, while on an episode of Collider Ladies Night in celebration of the launch of Season 2 of the hit Netflix series, Chalotra admitted that wasn’t really the case. In fact, there was a point during the filming of Season 1 when she had to call a mentor for help.
For about half of the season, Yennefer is a young woman struggling with a curved spine and facial paralysis who’s often ridiculed. When it’s discovered that Yennefer has magical abilities, she’s taken to Aretuza to study to become a mage. After much struggle, Yennefer not only ascends but also insists that the Aretuza enchanter change her physical differences. He does and she’s reborn, stepping back out into the world buzzing with power and confidence.
Prior to The Witcher, Chalotra’s screen credits were limited to the drama series Wanderlust and the BBC One mystery mini series The ABC Murders. The Witcher was on another level. During our Ladies Night chat, Chalotra highlighted one key piece of advice she received when making the leap to such a substantial production:
“I have a mentor called Niamh Cusack and I rang her I think four months into Witcher filming and I said, ‘I can’t do this. I need help. Where do I go? I can’t stop thinking about the whole plot. I can’t stop playing the end at the beginning.’ She was like, ‘Just play the scene. Just play the scene. Don’t think about the end. Obviously you’ve got all the information you need, what’s passed. You’ve kind of lived that experience if you’re going in consecutive order so trust that work. Don’t necessarily think about it and play the scene.’ And that really helped with the scale of the show.”
As you’ll hear in the video at the top of this article, I’m a big believer that Chalotra delivers exceptional work from start to finish in The Witcher, making Yennefer's storyline one of the most striking of the bunch in Season 1, so it came as quite the surprise to hear there was a point in production when Chalotra thought, “I can’t do this.” Here’s what she said when asked what precisely sparked that need to reach out for help:
“I trust my work whenever I do it and then hindsight, if I’ve had a break, I’m like, ‘Ugh.’ Because you have no choice but to trust your work. It’s a professional job and you leave your shit at the door and you come in and you do your job and to the best of your abilities you play the best version of the truth. You try to. And whenever I played the younger Yennefer, I really struggled because there was so much of her physicality that felt inhibiting at the time because I had very little time to form the younger Yennefer, so I struggled to connect with things that I would have like to pay more attention to.”
If you’re looking for more from Chalotra on her earliest inspirations and her experience working on The Witcher, we’ve got you well covered in that department. Check out her episode of Collider Ladies Night at the top of this article or listen to the uncut version of the conversation in podcast form below. Yes, Yennefer has been through quite a bit at this point, but she faces quite the challenge in Season 2. As Chalotra noted during our chat, the character’s “been given an amazing opportunity this season, more so than any character will ever get, to find out about themselves.”