Showrunner Rafe Judkins and lead actress Rosamund Pike offered to answer questions after Amazon Prime dropped the first teaser trailer for The Wheel of Time season 1, Below are the questions and answers from Instagram:
Question from @DovieAndiSeTova: How do you expect us to work today?
Rafe: Don’t! If I’m your boss, you have the day off.
Rosamund: I expect you to focus, and do your best as always. Sincerely, Headmistress.
Question from @GLAJake: Which part of the trailer are you most excited to see the full version of in the show and why?
Rafe: I’m really thrilled for fans to see more of Winter night.
Rosamund: Shadar Logoth, the city where you really feel how the dark is a material substance that chases and consumes. The visual effects and the extremity of this sequence haunts me.
Question from @HeartoftheWitchsPath: For Rosamund: What was it about this story that spoke to you and made you want to play such an amazing female?
Rosamund: The way the women of the Aes Sendai harness the elements of the universe to unleash incredible power: that interested me a lot. Playing an amazing female is always better than playing a mediocre female.
Question from @KatieWang_: For Rosamund: Is this your first experience acting with CGI effects? Is it harder than expected?
Rosamund: It was great. I did a full body scan on day one and then I never had to show up!
Question from @HMG099: What excited you most about this series?
Rosamund: The amazing cast and the bond we all have!
Question from @KitSuneGari_Chans: How many nightmares did that flaming Fade give you?
Rafe: Not many, as I will always remember him as Dan, who was spinning in circles on his horse on a Slovenian mountain doubling the Westwood.
Rosamund: His very feminine lips, concealing rows and rows of teeth give me nightmares…. And don’t get me started in the skeleton mask his horse wears.
Question from @ThinkPol: How much will Season 1 cover? Book 1 or spread across several? Looks amazing!!!
Rafe: Season One will cover Book One, plus some of Book Two and even Book Three. But also not all of Book One, as some of it is in Season Two. Cryptic enough?
Question from @Nano_Verse: What’s your favorite aspect of the WoT series?
Rosamund: My Warder.
Question from @AlbrightWrites: Is the scene with Egwene in the water about her One-Power/Wisdom testing?
Rafe: I can answer that question at the end of the Season.
Question from @HXZYDXZE: Which location was your favorite to film at, Specifically, in the show and in real life!
Rosamund: The world inside the walls of Shadar Logoth is particularly affecting and eerie. Our production designer created a powerful, sinister set for the abandoned desolate city.
But for me as an actor: the city of Tar Avalon was so rich; it was built from the ground up with the most intricate detail. It is stunning.
Question from @Ecano13: How excited are you to see your audiences responses after such a long wait?
Rosamund: I love how warm and welcoming the Wheel of Time fan base have been. I hope we offer escape, excitement, mystery and something to keep people inspired through the end of the year.
Rafe: This is a complicated thing, because as a fan of many epic book series, seeing them brought to life is simultaneously thrilling and a little bit sad, as it changes forever a world that you saw in you own head while reading.
Question from @HamBoningDonut: Can you bring the release date back a bit to like tomorrow or something?
Rosamund: Ask Rafe.
Rafe: Ask Amazon.
Question from @Avroth.Elnor: For Rosamund: What’s your favorite Moiraine speech?
Rosamund: Moiraine can be very silent so when she speaks, we listen. In the books it’s the “Weep for Manetheren speech”. The idea that in the people of the Two Rivers, the “old blood runs deep
Question from @D_SANDOVALXO: How were you able to come up with how the weaving of the One power looks?
Rosamund: I needed to feel that you would believe Moiraine had this power if there were no visual effects — the most important thing for me, was that I felt connected to something greater than myself. Robert Jordan is so eloquent about what it feels like to channel, the feeling of the one power filling your veins, the risk of it, the risk of drawing too much and the necessity of respecting it and being trained to use it.
Rafe: All of the VFX teams looking at the One Power we’re going off documents of descriptions of it pulled straight from the books, and using that as jumping off points.
Question from @Fentropy: How have you kept this trailer under wraps for so long? Omg — it is perfect.
Rosamund: Thank you. The only thing we wanted was that it made people feel.
Question from @HierEducationPod: What is the show rated? Will people be able to watch it with their teenagers?
Rafe: People should certainly be able to watch with their teenagers.
Question from @MoralFilth: For Rosamund: How did you feel seeing Moiraine’s powers visually for the 1st time?
Rosamund: I felt like a badass. I said to Rafe when I first saw it, “I need this video of me shooting fireballs to show to my sons again, and again.
Question from @Mansi_One9Zero9: My question is — What do you think Moiraine’s favourite food is? (2) Does she prefer coffee or tea?
Rosamund: I don’t think Moiraine cares too much about food. (Rafe thinks she likes buffalo wings). She eats to live. But don’t worry, you will only ever see her drink tea.
Rafe: Buffalo wings.
Question from @LoganorSomething: How much of the myrddraal is practical effects?
Rafe: The Myrddraal, like almost all elements in the show, is as much practical as we could manage, enhanced by VFX. I always think that gives a more disturbing and real-feeling quality than full VFX creatures.
Question from @Martyna_Vil: For Rosamund: How different is acting in a high-fantasy TV show from your previous work?
Rosamund: The biggest most important challenge with fantasy is making the stakes your own, making the concepts and ideas that are so outside our own experience feel real and immediate.
Question from @Samsonignatius: Can we get some information on the composer or the score for the show? So excited for this! Thank you both so much for bringing this to life!
Rafe: If Amazon let’s this answer go through, this is me proudly announcing that we have the most incredible composer working on the show by the name of Lorne Balfe. You’ve gotten a tiny hint of his music with the reveal of the Logo, and what he’s doing is really special.
Question from @PooJamK15: For both Rosamund and Rafe — How do the final visuals with completed visual effects align with what you had in mind when reading the script/filming on location?
Rosamund: It’s so important to have a living vivid world inside you imagination when you are shooting sequences that will be competed with CGI, and the production have always made sure that we had plenty of visual references for how things would look as we went along. We have never worked on a set in which at least part of the world is not built. We have always had elements of the texture and atmosphere of the finished world to work with.
Rafe: Making a TV show at its best is about collaboration, about seeing how your initial vision for something is lifted and changed and made better by the people around you. So my favorite visuals in the show are ones that are far better than I’d ever imagined writing the scripts.
Question from @Tahminna: Will there be a second trailer?
Rafe: Yes! And longer! What’s the thing you’d like to see most in it?
I'm just a farm kid that grew up loving fantasy and science fiction. The Wheel of Time is my favorite book series. I love watching sports, reading, playing video games, and learning about the film making industry.
Thank you