And now you see how the priorities of the show have been off since Day 1. The Witcher casting director Sophie Holland’s recent interview with Variety reveals how off the motivations and priorities behind adapting the show was from the beginning.
You really can’t make this stuff up.
In a recent interview with Variety Magazine, The Witcher and frequent Netflix-associated casting director Sophie Holland made it perfectly clear the show and the people behind its creation cared more about inserting “modern-day representation” and “diversity” into its casting and story-telling than actually adapting the brilliant novels. And, it’s just sad this is the state Hollywood has divulged into nowadays.
Now, I’m sure most of you guys reading this have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about or have any clue who the hell Sophie Holland is, and that’s perfectly fine as this really isn’t too shocking of a story anyways.
I mean, it’s quite clear The Witcher writers, showrunners, producers, and obviously casting valued 21st century values of “representation” and “diversity” over actually adapting the story, characters, themes, and messages being told by the author (in this case Andrzej Spakowski), but this article makes it sound like it was the only thing they cared about.
Holland flat out said, “I am always the first to champion diversity in all its glory. One that springs to mind was the character of Yennefer on “The Witcher.” Lauren Schmidt Hissrich is the showrunner and we work so well together and she’s so open to conversations.
In the book, she’s described as the most beautiful woman in the world….But when you think about people’s unconscious bias – especially in the fantasy world, it felt like these worlds were predominantly white. And I remember saying, “I feel like we need to challenge what people think of as the standard of beauty. And having a woman of color in this role does incredibly powerful things to the people watching.”
(Netflix-The Witcher-Official Teaser Trailer)
I’m sorry, but this not only shows how little the CASTING DIRECTOR AND SHOWRUNNER actually cared about faithfully and honestly ADAPTING THE SOURCE MATERIAL, but it also sounds like they used the show to try and brainwash and propagandize the audience.
I hate using those words as I find them way to overused in nearly all conversations nowadays, but how else do you describe these sentences, “But when you think about people’s unconscious bias – especially in the fantasy world, it felt like these worlds were predominantly white. And I remember saying, “I feel like we need to challenge what people think of as the standard of beauty. And having a woman of color in this role does incredibly powerful things to the people watching.”‘
First off, who the hell is saying that “woman of color” are not “the standard of beauty” as they quite clearly haven’t been living on Earth for very long if they believe that? Maybe this is just my personal opinion, but there are hundreds of millions of beautiful, gorgeous “woman of color” (which is such a broad, undescriptive term as every woman has a “color”, whether it be peach/fair, bronze, olive, tan, brown, black, etc.)
There’s no such thing as a clear-skinned woman, Sophie Holland) all around the world. We are all born with melanin…which, along with the UV rays from the sun, is responsible for shading our skin tones. Skin tones only enhance beauty in the same light facial features, body structure, hair color, eye color, personality, etc. do.
Nevertheless, I’d put that number up into the billions and I, for one and I know there are many others, am more than happy to champion the cause of these “woman of color” being the standard of beauty…because I think they already are a part of it.
And what does she mean when she said, “we need to challenge what people think as the standard of beauty. And having a woman of color in this role does incredibly powerful things to the people watching”?
Again, Anya Chalotra is a very, very beautiful woman and most definitely a part of the established “standard of beauty” by every stretch of the imagination but using her as some sort of propaganda piece or mind-controlling device (which is what the casting director sounds like she’s doing) just feels really wrong and manipulative.
Thankfully, Chalotra has been a very good Yennefer and one of the few actors in the series who has portrayed their, respective, characters well, but it sounds like Holland and Schmidt-Hissrich only casted her because of her skin tone and how said skin tone would do “powerful things to people watching”.
And that’s just wrong as it not only distorts the original vision and message the author of the series intended, but it also dismisses Chalotra’s acting talents to the side in favor of her skin tone and disregards her personality and humanity as nothing more than a useful propaganda piece to push THEIR agendas and ideas. Not Spakowski’s, Chalotra’s, and the character (in this case Yennefer) within the works.
But, as for what I found to be extremely appalling in this interview is how dismisses and just kind of racist Holland views “white people”.
She claimed that fantasy and the world’s created in the genre are “predominantly white”(as if being “white” is actually something more than an incorrect way people have been describing skin tones and cultures for the last hundreds of years), yet such a sentiment just blends together thousands of unique cultures and ethnicities into one massive, bland, and flat-out unmatching group.
It’s true fantasy world’s generally have people with fairer skin tones and complexations…because they’re mainly based off Germanic, English, and Norse mythology and set in fantasy-inspired medieval England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Germany, France, Scandanavia, etc. settings. You know, places where our skin’s melanin has been forced to evolve and adapt to synthesize more vitamin D from less sun light.
That’s already a very complex, unique, and different set of cultures, heritages, and ethnicities being adapted into these fantasy worlds, but Andrzej Spakowski’s works are completely different as they are one of the few to convert medieval Polish and Slavic mythology and history into a fantasy setting.
Yet, if you listen to Holland, you’d think someone from Poland is the exact same as someone from England or Germany or Norway or Scottland or France because they all have a similar skin complexion due to the complex ways their bodies synthesize vitamin D.
Such a mindset is the literal definition of bigotry if not outright racism…which, according to Oxford dictionary is, “the belief that some races of people are better than others, or a general belief about a whole group of people based only on their race.”
(Netflix-The Witcher-Official Teaser Trailer)
And this is why The Witcher has failed as the people behind the show only care about forwarding their own agendas and messages rather than the complex, unique, and creative ideas, themes, messages, character lessons, and character growth Spakowski wrote in his beloved novels.
Images Source: Featured Image: (Netflix) (THE WITCHER | MAIN TRAILER | NETFLIX – YouTube)
In Text Image 1: (Netflix) (The Witcher | Official Teaser | Netflix – YouTube)
In Text Image 2: (Netflix) (THE WITCHER | MAIN TRAILER | NETFLIX – YouTube)
In Text Image 3: (Netflix) (The Witcher | Official Teaser | Netflix – YouTube)
