The Witcher Season 3 Location That Made Two Stars Cry Their Eyes Out
The brutal world depicted in Andrzej Sapkowski's "Witcher" novels is so bleak that it can be easy to forget how many of its harsher conditions exist in reality, too. Season 3, Episode 1, "Shaerrawedd," of Netflix's live-action serialized adaptation of "The Witcher" sees Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill), Yennefer of Vengerberg (Anya Chalotra), and Cirilla of Cintra (Freya Allan) travel to the farthest reaches of the Continent so that the witcher and the sorceress might train their eager protege in comparative safety.
One of their "havens" is a hut in the middle of a snow-laden field. It's a beautiful visual that perfectly captures the solitude that Geralt strives for. Unfortunately for the requisite cast members, the sequence was filmed onsite in Slovenia, a Central European country well known for its frigid temperatures.
During a 2023 interview with Digital Fix, both Chalotra and Allan confessed that Slovenia was so cold that it caused physical and emotional damage. "Yeah, it was cold," said Chalotra. "It was very cold [in Slovenia], and on the second day of shooting, I remember bawling my eyes out because I couldn't feel my feet, so that was when my journey began this season." To this, Allan added, "I remember bawling my eyes out too because I was like, 'This is just too much!'"
Netflix's list of filming locations in Slovenia includes Kransjka Gora, St. Jerome's Church, Predjama Castle, and Nanos Plateau. At its average worst, Slovenia deals with seasonal temperatures in the middle teens, a solid 12 (or more) degrees below freezing.
Netflix's The Witcher loves to film on location
Slovenia is joined as a frosty filming location for Netflix's "The Witcher" by Laghi di Fusine, a lake in northern Italy that, according to photos taken onsite back in March 2022, was wholly frozen over. During the winter months, that region of Italy can experience sub-zero temperatures, meaning that it was likely below freezing (or right at it) when the cast filmed there. Other filming locations for Season 3 were less physically destructive. Netflix utilized a beach in Croatia, a fort in England, a quarry in Wales, and a desert in Morocco, to name a few. None of these locales should have caused the same levels of distress, although it is difficult to imagine a desert serving as a pleasant worksite.
The list of real locations extends even further when previous seasons are taken into consideration because, despite "The Witcher" being fantasy-driven media, there is a sense of realism and scale that can come from filming without a bluescreen. Of course, creating dark fiction on a foundation of reality has its detractors, as both Anya Chalotra and Freya Allan revealed. Hopefully, their dedication to the craft will still feel worth it after production begins on the widely controversial and currently delayed Season 4.