The third season of The Wheel Of Time kicks off with a bang, featuring magic balls of fire flying across rooms, shattering columns and crushing those nearby. A woman is sliced in half, another vomits blood, and one fighter bludgeons another to death – all within the first 10 minutes. It’s clear this fantasy drama isn’t for the faint-hearted. Scenes as brutal as these require not only strong performers but also strong stomachs.
“Fantasy action scenes come with challenges – it’s sometimes quite technical,” shares Natasha O’Keeffe, who has been part of the show since its second season. “You have to keep a real focus throughout the day, so there are a lot of sugar highs, lots of M&Ms! Then you get moments where Sophie Okonedo is screaming at Kate Fleetwood and throwing her across the room and it’s just a blast, and you realise we have the best job in the world.”
(Image: Courtesy of Prime)
Rosamund Pike, who stars alongside Natasha, Sophie, and Kate, and also produces the show, hints that the opening scenes are just a taste of bigger things to come in a season that aims to be even more epic than its predecessors. “We have wanted to grow this show season by season,” she says. “We delivered a second season that was better than the first, which is always the hope. It’s disappointing if your second season leaves people feeling that you fell off a cliff. And I think season three is four times as good as the last one. We’ve intensified all of the relationships, and we’ve intensified the jeopardy.”
Based on the Robert Jordan novels, The Wheel Of Time centres around a group of women known as the Aes Sedai, who can channel a magical force named the One Power, and their quest for a man referred to as the Dragon Reborn, who may possess his own power to either save or destroy the world.
By the end of the second season, Rosamund’s character, an Aes Sedai named Moiraine, has identified the Dragon Reborn as a young man named Rand (Josha Stradowski) and she intends to guide him, while also shielding him from a menacing entity, known as The Dark One, and his followers.
It’s a complex narrative – there are 14 novels and a prequel brimming with mythology that fans cherish – and Rosamund has fully embraced it. “I’ve immersed myself in it for the past five years since signing on to play Moiraine in March 2019,” she says. “My knowledge of Robert Jordan’s work has deepened, and now I have read four of the books on audio books, which has consumed hundreds and hundreds of hours of time!”
(Image: Julie Vrabelova/Prime)
Natasha, who portrays the deceitful Lanfear, confesses she wasn’t quite as committed as Rosamund when preparing to film the show. “I have to admit I haven’t read the books. It’s one of those things I’ve been meaning to do,” she laughs. “I do have the books beside my bed.
“I like to keep a job as simple as possible, and the fantastic scripts come to me and give me what I need. We also have an amazing book expert, Sarah Nakamura, who I would have on speed dial to ask her any questions. And Rafe Judkins, our showrunner, has been a great source, too.”
Rafe admits that transforming the books into a TV series is a mammoth task, as he has to create thrilling stories for the screen while also incorporating fan-favourite moments from the novels. “It’s a huge juggling act for us in the writers’ room,” he shares. “An iconic piece of the books is the different worlds that they go to, so we put in a lot of time and production effort building those worlds.
“This season, we go to a land called the Aiel Waste, so we all went to South Africa for months to build this place. The costumes, hair, make-up, music – every single person on the production is working their asses off to create a new place to take the audience to, because it is one of the most important parts of the books and one of the things people love most about them.”
Rafe is over the moon that the new season includes elements from the fourth novel in the series, The Shadow Rising, which is a hit with fans. “The Shadow Rising was really the moment when the books took off and became a colossal success internationally,” Rafe reveals.
“We’ve been lucky as we are telling the stories that fans really fell in love with when they first fell in love with The Wheel Of Time.”
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