'The Witcher: Blood Origin': Jodie Turner-Smith to Star in Netflix 'Witcher' Prequel Series

As Netflix's The Witcher continues to film its upcoming second season, more information has been released about a prequel series, The Witcher: Blood Origin. Deadline reports that Jodie Turner-Smith has been cast as a lead role in the prequel, which will be a six-part, live-action limited series. The Witcher: Blood Origin takes place 1,200 years before the events of The Witcher and will tell the story of the creation of the first prototype Witcher and the events that led to the "conjunction of the spheres."

Turner-Smith will play a warrior named Éile, "who was blessed with the voice of a goddess and leaves her clan and role as the queen's guardian to follow her heart and embark on a journey as a nomadic musician. A grand reckoning on the continent forces her to return to the way of the blade in her quest for vengeance and redemption." Turner-Smith is a British actress whose breakout role was in the 2019 feature Queen & Slim, and she will soon be seen in A24's After Yang opposite Colin Farrell and Amazon's Without Remorse opposite Michael B. Jordan. She will also star as Anne Boleyn in a three-part mini-series for U.K. broadcaster Channel 5 and has appeared on Syfy's Nightflyers, TNT's The Last Ship and HBO's True Blood.

Declan de Barra, a writer on Season 1 of The Witcher, will act as executive producer and showrunner for The Witcher: Blood Origin. The Witcher executive producer and showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich will act as executive producer for the prequel, which does not yet have a premiere date but is expected sometime in 2022. Netflix describes the prequel as being set "In an elven world 1,200 years before Geralt of Rivia, the worlds of monsters, men and elves merge to become one — and the very first Witcher arises."

"A question has been burning in my mind ever since I first read The Witcher books—what was the Elven world really like before the cataclysmic arrival of the humans?" de Barra said in a statement when the series was announced in July. "I've always been fascinated by the rise and fall of civilizations, how science, discovery, and culture flourish right before that fall. The Witcher: Blood Origin will tell the tale of the Elven civilization before its fall, and most importantly reveal the forgotten history of the very first Witcher." The Witcher stars Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivia and Season 2 of the show is expected sometime this year. In addition, Netflix also has an animated feature, The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf, on the way.