Interview with ‘The Wheel of Time’ Season 3 Actor Callum Kerr

WotSeries had the opportunity to interview Callum Kerr (Galad) about Season 3 of The Wheel of Time, which was released on Prime Video on March 13, 2025.

Read more to hear his thoughts on the Trakand brothers, his experience auditioning, and more about our favorite quarterstaff fight. If you missed them, be sure to check out our other Season 3 interviews.

Cait: Hi, I’m Cait. I’m from WotSeries. How are you doing?

Callum Kerr: I’m good, thanks, how you doing?

Cait: I’m doing well. Thank you so much for your work on the show and for bringing the character of  Galad to life for us. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. We have. Can you tell us a little bit about how you came to that role and like what your audition process was like? We always wonder how you learned about the show or if you knew about Wheel of Time before you were cast?

Callum Kerr: Mm hmm. Yeah, so I hadn’t heard of Wheel of Time before. And I got an audition through for a show that was not called Wheel of Time. It was definitely using a codename. But my my agent managed to find out. Wheel of Time is so big that everyone kind of knew what it was. And so my agent sent me it was called, I don’t know, you know, the water of the well or something stupid. And we worked out that it was Wheel of Time. We couldn’t actually work out who the characters were, because they were using codenames for the characters as well. But what I didn’t realize was that I was kind of reading for both brothers. So I read, I read the script and I do this , you know, interpret it one way and then interpret another way as well. And I guess one of those ways was like slightly more kind of stoic and a little bit more, I don’t want to say emotionless, but very “Galad” in nature. And, and I guess, you know, they saw enough to then do an interview in a second, a second audition. And then the final step was a chemistry read with Ceara and Luke. So that was good. Everything seemed to go well. Two hours after the chemistry reads, they offered me the role. And they told me, yep, it is Wheel of Time. And you’re playing a character called Galad. And you’re flying out to Prague in two weeks. So I dove headfirst into learning as much as I could. And originally, I was thinking, Oh, it’s a book series. I’ll just read the books on the flight over and I was, when I found out there was 1019 books. Okay, okay, I’m not going to be able to read it on time.

Cait: [Gestures to shelf of books] Yeah they are all above my head and that’s missing two of them. 

Callum Kerr: Yeah. So I, you know, I told a few friends and a few friends, fortunately, had read the books, they filled me in on some information. And then, you know, there’s so much content online where you can download as much as possible about a character and opinions. And there’s, um, you know, backstories and stuff that you might not even see in in the show. So I dove into that as fast as possible and put to Prague two or three weeks later, and started training in stunts. And then a few weeks after that, we started filming the show. So it was a very fast turnover. But I think that by the time we’d started filming, I was quite locked in in terms of who I thought Galad was and what I could bring to it. And, you know, we pulled some things out of the script that Rafe had given us that we could add to make the character as as kind of fun as possible.

Cait: He’s a little bit more fun than we anticipated as readers, but I’ve had a really great time. You gave off that big brother energy very well, so good job.

Callum Kerr: I’m a big brother in real life, so hopefully that came across.

Cait: So the show that amazon announced you as Galad Trakand and you’re credited as a Damodred. And I know the answer in the books, but what insight could you give us as viewers about his family connections and what kind of backstory maybe you’ve gotten that the viewers haven’t seen?

Callum Kerr: As far as I’m aware the Trakand name comes from the Queen, however she was not Queen when I was born. And so I got the name of the man she was married to which is Damodred, although he is not my biological father, is that correct? I had a, I drew a family tree because I was trying to work out how I was related to Rand and the way that I remember it is that we are related through marriage as opposed to…

Cait: You are blood half-related to Rand and your half-related to Elayne, but Rand and Elayne aren’t related, which is an important thing maybe later.

Callum Kerr: Yeah, I remember looking up during the during the filming of it and drawing like a little family tree. But yeah, we filmed it two years ago. And, you know, I watched season two, but that didn’t obviously have us in it. So it’s like, I’m trying to now remember back. But yeah, so I mean, I would love to to see how they’re going to connect all of that within the series, or if they’re going to do that at all. Because right now, it obviously looks like they’re just kind of focusing on the brothers as Elayne’s brothers.

Cait:Well, actually, that was my question. If if we get more seasons, do you have any hopes for Galad’s arc? Should we anticipate him wearing more white? I don’t know if that means anything to you or not yet, but…

Callum Kerr: [laughs] It does. And I mean, I think I think it’s inevitably coming. I think what would be really cool is if we could see, I would love to see him maybe torn over something and then actually really seeing how he processes the information and actually why he makes the decisions that he makes. Because I think right now he’s very stubbornly sure of what he believes and I would love to see him challenged and then actually have to give answers to why he believes what he will eventually believe. And then how that will affect his relationship with his current family and his potential extended family, if we do get to see him with anyone else together. So yeah, I’d love to dive into that. I’d love to continue the kind of the playfully annoying relationship that he has with his brother and sister. And you know, yeah, we’ll see. There’s also like a cheekiness to him, like the way that he was when he was fighting, he was kind of looking at the girls. And there’s always the scene where Mat’s having a meltdown because next door, the brothers are up to something crazy. [laughs]

Cait: Fans also had a slight meltdown. We were like, what is happening? I mean, it works. It works really well. And yeah, I think we were all Mat in that moment.

Callum Kerr: [laughs] So I’d love to, I’d love to see that side of him as well, because it means that maybe there’s room for him to grow into what he will eventually become. And maybe, maybe right now, he isn’t quite as stubborn and dead set, maybe he’s got some exploration to do. And so if I could get to play any part in that, and taking him on that journey, I would love that, regardless of where he ends up and how much white he ends up wearing.

Cait: We actually got a chance to talk to both of the brothers today. And so we asked Luke (Fethersston) these questions, I’d like to ask you a few rapid fire, which brother questions just four of them. So which brother would drink the most with Elayne?

Callum Kerr: I think most often, probably Gawyn, I think volume when he would occasionally join would be Galad.

Cait: Okay, so which would get in the most trouble with Elaida?

Callum Kerr: Probably Galad, Gawyn would talk his way out of it, I guess. Charmed his way out of it with a smile and a flick of the hair.

Cait: I wish I had that hair. So which of the brothers is a better swordsman?

Callum Kerr: So I originally thought Galad, but I think they, they, they felt quite even when we had our little fight in the yard. Cut I think maybe pushing forward, I think Galad will probably take his sword training more serious.

Cait: Which is more popular with the ladies?

Callum Kerr: More popular with the ladies? Oh, Galad of course. [Editor’s note: Go watch the expression Kerr makes in our interview video after he says this. It is hilarious.]

Cait: Well, yeah, I think that’s on the page. Do you have any favorite moments of preparing for that iconic fight scene between the brothers? The one in front of the novices is great, but our favorite, as readers, is the one with Mat and the quarter staff. Can you share anything about that before we go?

Callum Kerr: Yeah, so I think definitely training for a full month before we actually filmed it. And then there’s two moments that highlight that really specially in my head, and one of them is the first time we got through it all together. So without any of the stunt guys who taught us, they took us from like not really having trained with each other or with those weapons before to doing a full fight scene. So the first time, Luke, Mat [Donal]  and I got through the whole thing, full speed in the training room was amazing. And we’re all high five and afterwards, like that was great. Well done.

And then I think one of the final takes on the day, we realized that this whole thing was coming to an end after five weeks of training, it really felt special. It felt like we’d been through it, actually. Like we’d had a fight. But instead of us fighting, it was like it was, you know, bonding. And it was really sweet that we’d all put in this work for it to pay off in in in what we thought was a really cool way. I thought it was lit beautifully. It was kind of dark and moody. And I thought that, you know, Donal clearly had put in loads of effort to work out how to use that quarterstaff. And yeah, it was a really proud moment where we I think we realized that we’d put the work in and done something really cool.

Cait: You did. It was a beautiful scene. So thank you so much for your work. I hope to see you back in future seasons. 

Callum Kerr: Fingers crossed.

The third season of The Wheel of Time, based on Robert Jordan’s fantasy book series, premiered on Prime Video on March 13, 2025. All episodes of the first two seasons of The Wheel of Time are now available on Prime Video. The series is co-produced by Sony Pictures Television and Amazon MGM Studios.

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Editorial note: For clarity and readability, we’ve made minor edits to this interview, such as removing filler words and repetitions. The responses remain true to the original recorded conversation.