The Witcher's Freya Allan Opens Up About Her Relationship With Henry Cavill
It's a little uncomfortable that society expects performers to be friends outside of their respective mediums, right? Like, sure, the end result of their work hopefully shows powerful or otherwise compelling chemistry between multiple figures, and that can lead to the natural assumption that anyone involved is inherently close, but that's literally their job. If the bond they forged was genuinely believable – good! That was the whole point of the thing they did!
This fun invasion of privacy leads to interview questions that heavily imply an expectation for spicy, personal detail and, sometimes, the performers under scrutiny handle the prying with more grace than a figure skater. Case in point, Season 1 of "The Witcher," a high fantasy series on Netflix that's based on Andrzej Sapkowski's novels of the same name, features Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill) accidentally adopting a princess, Ciri (Freya Allan), via the law of surprise.
In Season 2, Ciri is a young adult fighting to follow in her adoptive father's footsteps. During her journey, viewers collectively realized that Geralt is an awesome dad, and the scenes featuring Allan and Cavill are some of the best work portrayed in "The Witcher," period. Because of this, Allan was asked: How did they accomplish that feat? What did they do to make us believe in their endearing, familial bond? Fortunately, Allan had the perfect, professional response.
Freya Allan believes in organic acting
In an interview with The Wrap, Freya Allan was asked what homework went into developing her on-screen relationship with Henry Cavill's character in "The Witcher." "I think it was honestly something that we discovered as we went along more so than establishing beforehand," she replied. "I think you often can't until you're there in the scenes and experiencing properly through the character what's happening. There's only so much you can plan beforehand."
For those who are less familiar with acting strategies, this might sound as if Allan is intentionally doing less work and framing the results as better because of it, but that's not necessarily the case. There is a prevalent school of thought in the performing arts that, once the initial understanding of a role is established, everything else must follow organically, or in the moment. This is known as the Meisner Technique.
Essentially, it's professionally guided, structured improv, which can work wonders if all parties are on the same wavelength. If all the positive reviews for Season 2 of "The Witcher" are to be believed, it can be, at least in part, attributed to the successful work between Allan and Cavill.