Liam Hemsworth Breaks His Silence on Replacing Henry Cavill in ‘The Witcher’

Liam Hemsworth is opening up for the first time about taking over the role of The Witcher hero Geralt of Rivia after Henry Cavill’s departure from the Netflix series.

Cavill’s recasting ahead of the fifth and final season of The Witcher shook the show’s fanbase, which Hemsworth told Entertainment Weekly was something he had to tune out.

“There was quite a bit of noise and I had to put that aside. It started to become a distraction,” he told the outlet. “I dealt with that sort of thing in the past a lot and, you know, at the end of the day, I love making movies and I love telling stories and acting. I just don’t want any of that to affect my way of telling the story that I’m trying to tell. I jumped off social media and the internet most of last year.”

Hemsworth admitted that production offering him the role “came out of nowhere,” and that he was “as surprised as anyone” to be offered Cavill’s role.

“I’m a massive fan of Henry’s, and I’m a fan of what he did in the show,” the Hunger Games actor revealed, saying he hopes to avoid any comparison between his performance and his predecessor’s.

Executive producer Lauren Hissrich told the outlet that the conversation surrounding Cavill’s exit from the show was underway “for a while,” before the news was announced in October 2022, with the Superman actor expressing interest in leaving the role.

Cavill is currently developing a TV series based on the Warhammer 40K game for Amazon and is set to star in the new Highlander movie.

“He had plans for other roles that he really wanted to commit himself to,” Hissrich explained. “And for us, you don’t want to hold someone and force them to be doing something that they don’t want to do. I think that’s why it felt like a really symbiotic decision.”

At the time, Cavill released a statement announcing his exit from the show and Hemsworth’s casting as his replacement.”My journey as Geralt of Rivia has been filled with both monsters and adventures,” Cavill he said in October 2022. “In my stead, the fantastic Mr. Liam Hemsworth will be taking up the mantle of the White Wolf. As with the greatest of literary characters, I pass the torch with reverence for the time spent embodying Geralt and enthusiasm to see Liam’s take on this most fascinating and nuanced of men.”

The Witcher will release all eight episodes of Season 5 on Oct. 30 on Netflix.