Henry Cavill, who stars as Geralt of Rivia in Netflix's The Witcher series, recently shared his passion for both the video games and the novels written by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski.

Netflix's The Witcher: Cast vs. Video Game Characters 14 IMAGES

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Per an interview with French magazine Premiere , and translated by Reddit user u/Valibomba (so some nuances from the quotes may have been lost in translation), Cavill reportedly said, "I discovered the games, then I discovered the books, and the universe of The Witcher instantly meant something to me. I often thought about playing Geralt. When the opportunity appeared, I didn't let the chance pass me... I didn't even have the need to prepare myself for the role. Because I breathe, I live this universe every day. I already got numerous opportunities to think about this character while I was playing the games."Showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich told Premiere that her team "copied nothing from the games," since her adaption of The Witcher is based on Sapkowski's novels. "The books of Andrzej Sapkowski will always be there," Schmidt said. "The games too. So this show is the third version of this story. The goal, for me, was to recreate the soul of the books, to recreate these characters I fell in love with while putting them in a new coherent structure, to build a story that makes sense."She added, "It was important for the show to keep an authentic style. A superb video game already exists, and I clearly didn't want our show to look like it."The magazine also spoke with The Witcher show's production designer, Andrew Laws, who stressed that even though The Witcher shares similar narrative elements with other popular fantasy series, it's "not the poor cousin of Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings." Laws went on to say that he wanted to use as little CGI as possible, even during the fight sequences. "Personally, I don't want to see the actor play in front of a green screen, talking to a green ball," Laws explained, adding, "we wanted something real."For more on Netflix's The Witcher, be sure to check out our conversation with Henry Cavill about his experience playing The Witcher games multiple times the Witcher trailer breakdown from Comic-Con 2019 , and our Witcher book reading guide With Netflix's Witcher series fast approaching, catch up on the most important names, terms, and phrases needed for maximum enjoyment on the Continent in the video below:

David Griffin still watches DuckTales in his pajamas with a cereal bowl in hand. He's also the TV Editor for IGN. Say hi on Twitter