Henry Cavill's gravelly tone in The Witcher Netflix show was actually inspired by the games
You may have noticed in recent trailers for The Witcher Netflix series that Henry Cavill's voice has taken on a different, but familiar tone.
The most recent trailer for Netflix's The Witcher gave us our best look yet at Geralt, played by Henry Cavill. That is to say, we got to finally hear him be as reluctant as ever.
You may also have noticed that he sounds a bit like Doug Cockle, the legendary actor behind Geralt in The Witcher games. That, according to Cavill himself, is not a coincidence.
"I initially went in with something very similar to my natural accent, and I quickly realised something like that would fit into the nature of what the books are," he told IGN.
"The first book especially, you have pages and pages and chapters of Geralt talking. So you had a very intricate understanding of who the character was, because of the complexity of the books."
Cavill went on to explain that the show's first season condenses the first two books, so there was no time for the audience to get to see Geralt change into the man he is now. In order to solve this problem, Cavill needed to "show the truth of what Geralt is on the outside straightaway."
"For me, that boiled down to something like a voice (grunts, expression) because it was a lot more simple. When I heard Doug Cockle's incredible performance in The Witcher 3 - which I've heard time and after time for playing the games a lot - I realised that I could utilise something like that and create the stony exterior.
"I wasn't gonna make him American - like Doug Cockle performed him in [the games] - so I kind of blended my natural accent with that gravelly tone which Doug uses. My tone tended to be a little deeper, his was more into the whisper range. That was going to show the boiled down essence of who Geralt was."
The Witcher premiers on Netflix on December 20.