High fantasy is a genre that has fascinated audiences for decades, and continues to do so with its promises of adventure, magic, and worlds we can hardly fathom for ourselves. With the popularity of shows like House of the Dragon and Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, audiences have any number of chances to be swept away into beautiful, magical worlds filled with adventures beyond their wildest dreams, an escape from reality that never grows old.
But there’s one particular project that’s making a return to the scene, that is sure to fascinate children and families alike during the holiday season: Willow. Nearly thirty-five years after the original film premiered in theaters, Lucasfilm is taking audiences back to the kingdom of Tir Asleen (and the lands beyond!) for an all-new adventure in their upcoming series, which follows the titular Nelwyn sorcerer (Warwick Davis) as he joins a new band of adventurers in an effort to save the son of Queen Sorsha (Joanne Whalley) and protect the now-grown Elora Danan, the future empress of Tir Asleen, from sheer destruction. But, just as before, things are never as they seem, and Willow and his new friends must fight tooth and nail to save those they care about from the forces of darkness.
Collider was excited to sit down with series stars Erin Kellyman and Amar Chadha-Patel, who fill the series’ standing warrior roles: Jade, a knight-in-training and protector of Queen Sorsha’s daughter, Kit (Ruby Cruz), and Boorman, an adventurer with a rocky past who may know more than he seems. During this interview, they discussed the intense training process required to become a fantasy warrior, as well as their characters’ journeys, what they hope audiences take away from the show, and what it was like for Chadha-Patel to add another high fantasy notch to his belt.
Check out the interview in the player above, or read a transcript down below, and be sure to stream Willow on Disney+.
COLLIDER: So lovely to meet you. I love the fits. You guys look really, really good.
ERIN KELLYMAN: So do you. You joking?
AMAR CHADHA-PATEL: You have sparkles on. I have sparkles on. She has sparkles on. We’re sparkly.
[We’re] matching! And you guys, I guess in a sense are also matching, because you fill the standing warrior roles for this series, and you do a little bit more of the heavy lifting than the rest of the party. Can you talk me through a little bit of what the training process was like? How do you learn to fight with the sword or do all the other fantastical things that you do for the show?
CHADHA-PATEL: Yeah. Well, we did a 30-day long bootcamp where we, before we even started on camera, we learned to sword fight and horse ride, and we did a little rehearsal and character building time, and then we did around two hours of personal training a day. We all got quite strong and quite fit, which gave us the stamina and the sword fighting was intense but incredible. That period of time gave us the opportunity to develop a fighting style that was our own and unique to the characters and, so it became organic, and it was really great.
Amar, you also are in the Wheel of Time, which is a separate high fantasy series. Are there similarities between working on that and working on this or is Disney and then that, two separate realms entirely?
CHADHA-PATEL: Yeah. I think the scale of that show is so tremendous and the story is so rich, and it prepares you for this world that you have to step onto and not be too blindsided by the fact that you're in a ginormous castle film set. It's helpful to have been there and meet those incredible actors and work on it. Willow, although it has a similar sense of scale, it was a much smaller concept really. It was like, let's take this motley crew and push them through to their limits and see how they develop and that was a really lovely thing to do.
Erin, you play into the knight and princess romance trope quite a bit in this show, and it's very much the emotional core of the series. What was that like, I guess, being the emotional core of the show?
KELLYMAN: I think it is quite ironic because I think when you first meet Jade, she has a really hard time expressing her emotions, and she pushes a lot of stuff down. I just think there's a lot of things from her past and how she feels. I think she finds it quite hard to express herself, and it's quite nice you see her go on this journey and ease up a little bit, and she realizes she doesn't have to quite keep everything in.
Similarly to that, the original film is very much a story of hope, and perseverance, and togetherness, and obviously the show exudes that quite a bit. What do you guys hope people take from this series that's maybe a little bit different from the film?
KELLYMAN: I think it's just modernized in the...is that a word?
CHADHA-PATEL: Yeah.
KELLYMAN: Modernized in the issues that are addressed. I think the things that the characters go through have just become more modern as the world has changed, and I think the things that are in this magical world are just metaphors for more real life things that people are going through.
CHADHA-PATEL: I don't think it's overtly political or anything like that. It's just a diverse group of personalities more than anything, all learning that they're going through something together and trying to figure out who they are and what their purpose is, and that's reflective of the real world. That's the nicest thing about it, is it does that with humor and magic and in beautiful forests.
Willow is now streaming on Disney+. For more from the series, check out Collider's interview with the show's producers Jonathan Kasdan and Michelle Rejwan below: