The Wheel Of Time's Rand and Perrin on the secrets the show made them keep
Josha Stradowski and Marcus Rutherford on the new Amazon Prime series' voracious fandom and storied history
Considering The Wheel Of Time series of books has been around for over 30 years, it makes sense that a television adaptation of the high fantasy novels would have a rabid built-in fanbase.
But as Wheel stars Josha Stradowski (who plays Rand) and Marcus Rutherford (who stars as Perrin) tell us in the video above, they haven’t really encountered the fan frenzy, in part because they were making the show in Prague during the pandemic. As Stradowski put it:
We’re kind of in a bubble, you know. If you go online, you start to become aware [of the community]. But if you don’t, then you are in this creative bubble and and you’re just busy with your character and trying to figure out what the essence of Rand is and what state of mind he’s in. I guess that’s up to every actor to participate in or not. I guess it can motivate you in a way as well.
Rutherford weighed in on the pressure to keep secrets, even though some of what’s in the books is decades old. As he told us:
It’s been secretive right from the beginning. Even the audition process was. I was auditioning for a guy called Peter and [Josha was] auditioning for Ridhan, so all the names were changed… I remember [showrunner] Rafe [Judkins] saying when he was creating the show that people were going through his bins looking for scripts and stuff like that. So we realized then that the fans are extremely passionate. We have to stay mum about about some things because we don’t want any spoilers. But like [Josha] said, there’s a real small bubble out here in Prague, and I think that’s the best way to keep it real.
New episodes of The Wheel Of Time are available every week on Amazon prime Video. You can read our views on the series right here.