The Witcher’s Freya Allan is the actor that found womanhood between make-believe realms
Freya Allan courtesy of Wonderland Magazine
This article was originally published in the Winter 2021 issue of Wonderland, find it here.
Freya Allan was aflame with talent in The Witcher’s first season. Playing an orphaned Princess Cirilla, forced to escape her fallen kingdom, she stumbles into the thicketed wilderness to seek a beast-hunter proclaimed, by dying relatives, to be her destiny. The young actor – with her infectious charm and dainty complexion – could actually pass for an ethereal fairy if she wasn’t becoming Hollywood’s next burgeoning starlet. Her superlunary manners shine with a gentle mystique; her sweet, girl-next-door demeanour on webcam is humble, yet she also has a ferocious, magnificent eloquence about her. A presence that is dangerously radiant among The Witcher’s black-clad Nilfgaardian armies and murky hinterland settings. Despite her bright affinity for acting, Allan was born and raised in Oxford as the first in her immediate family to pursue the career. “It’s an academically-inclined and competitive place. What I gained was a great work ethic – which is exactly what is required in the industry,” she says. So be it destiny or magical coincidence, then, that the 20-year-old attended the same school as Harry Potter’s wand-slinging Emma Watson.
After sinking her teeth into a villainous wolf play, Allan joined a touring theatre company aged 11, where she became enthralled by performance. “I’ve loved acting since I was tiny, but that was a defining moment when I knew I’d completely caught the bug.” In 2019, she assumed her pivotal position in The Witcher, which has its second season primed for mid-December. Based on the novels by Andrzej Sapkowski, the series follows Ciri, alongside sole witcher, Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill) and sorceress, Yennefer of Vengerberg (Anya Chalotra), as they slay their way past fiendish demons, complex laws and romantic calamity on a doomed continent. It’s an eight-part fantasy that spells out tropes familiar to most Lord of the Rings aficionados: equal-parts mythological and murderous. As the fictional Northern Kingdom of Cintra becomes a charred ruin and our own world reels from a pandemic, the show has given Allan a chance to question her reality.
“There's no reason for anyone to treat me any differently. I'm happy to sleep on someone's couch at flat parties – I’m literally just an average 20-year-old,” she shares. Except, to her, some facets of life feel about as distant and otherworldly as Cintra itself. “I still walk into photoshoots and get weirded out but I’m learning to navigate it better; put less pressure on myself.” For much of the eight months she spent in Budapest, Hungary, filming the first series, Allan would find herself disguised with bleached eyebrows and slathered in white face paint – both concealing and misconstruing her identity. “As a 17-year-old girl, it’s the first time you’re coming into yourself as a woman,” she says. “It was hard to adjust to, every day questioning: ‘Am I a child or an adult now?’ I would worry about what I was going to look like [on the job], and while that’s a very normal thing to go through at that age, it was something I struggled with. Working that out in front of many people was difficult.”
Allan’s experiences form a pleasing symmetry with her own character Ciri, an icy-haired force of nature who is cusping womanhood and finding her independence. Ciri rises from the ashes, after her family are mercilessly killed, scorching incandescent with hope, and clear that her vocation is to thrive. “I think she's stubborn, very driven. She uses her voice and that’s completely like me,” describes Allan, smiling as she speaks. “In season two she’s trying to work everything out, experiencing these new people. Similarly, I’m out of my hometown now and I’m seeing the world.”
Going forward, Ciri pulls on inner tendrils of strength to become a sword-hurling heroine, as trained by Geralt. “Actually, he is holding her back a little bit – and that feels equivalent to making the series. I kept saying, ‘I want to do more, guys, give me a fight please!’” she laughs, flipping her blonde hair back jovially, going forth to recall her love for stunt-training. “Myself and Henry built immense trust as time went on. Another actor that I learnt from massively this season was Kim Bodnia who plays Vesemir. It was like going to school whenever I had a scene with him, when it was his last day on set I was crying.”
Often, it is assumed that youth comes with a lack of resilience. Yet Allan is already strongly attuned to her self-worth. “I haven't let anything in this industry poison my mind. It’s so important to express when you don’t feel comfortable with something. Figure it out, rather than let your creative side diminish because of somebody else,” Allan advises. Creativity, in fact, bubbles abundantly from her cauldron pot of passions; artist, dancer, tennis player and – following her father – photographer. “He always worked with film, he's incredible at it. I'm learning that right now, which is so much fun.” Allan has always found immense support in her parents. Even as a girl, who, at the ironic age of six, decided she wanted to write and illustrate children’s books.
In a comforting full circle motion, Allan now tells stories for a living. “Even if I've never experienced something myself, watching it on screen can be educational. I’ve done many fantasy jobs, with monsters and creepy scenarios. I'd love to play some very real people in very real situations. I think that can teach an audience sympathy,” contemplates Allan. “Something the world definitely needs a little bit more of.”