The actor playing Ciri in Netflix's adaptation of The Witcher was originally cast in another role

Getting the casting just right for The Witcher has been quite the challenge for showrunner Lauren S. Hissrich. While there were certainly struggles finding the right person for Geralt, it turns out Ciri was the most challenging. In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Hissrich reveals that Freya Allan, the woman who plays Ciri in the show, was actually already cast as another character.

"Ciri was a really tough casting process, and we actually started by looking at someone much much younger. Ciri in the books is around 11 and we started there, and very quickly we sort of aged up the process.

What's great about Freya is that she was cast as another role at first. A much much smaller role in the first episode, and when we hadn't found our Ciri yet, we had seen over 200 girls and we hadn't found our Ciri, and Sophie Holland our casting director said 'I want you to think about Freya for this.' And I remember saying 'how are we going to call Freya's agent and say we know we cast you, it's not that we don't want you for that role but we may want you for something slightly bigger, and I flew into London and we met and cast Freya that day. So each of these processes were totally different but look at what we got."