Rafe Judkins (showrunner) AMA

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-Rafe Judkins did a Reddit AMA today which can be read here: Link

A few of his responses which I thought were pertinent to things we've discussed in this forum are below.

Q. Why are you not using any of the WOT swears? Every time the characters use modern colloquialisms it completely throws me for a loop. Those phrases mean a lot to me.

-Blood and ashes, give us some time. It's coming. And just wait until you meet Uno...

Q. Hi Rafe as I am sure you have seen a lot of fans of the books have had concerns about some changes, as I am sure you would have expected. However, a main one seems to be that a woman can be the dragon. Why was this change made if the Dragon is going to be the same anyway as it changes a lot in the world Jordan created e.g. the dragon if a woman can be trained by other woman in the tower etc, or touch Callandor.

-The change we made was not just with the fact that a woman could be the Dragon, the core change we made was that people are NOT 100% convinced that these 3000 year old prophecies are 100% accurate. I think it feels a little bit more true to the world, and you see the characters questioning the prophecies of the Dragon and the details of it much more in the show than in the books (although there are some scenes in the books that show this as well, we've just expanded on that). It seems quite trusting for the Aes Sedai, who trust no one, and especially Moiraine, who trusts less than no one, to believe with 100% certainty ANYTHING that was written thousands of years ago.

Q. Have you cast Aviendha yet?

-Yes.

Q. I am curious as to why the ruby was moved from the pommel to the crossguard on the dagger. There have been several changes, almost all of which I can understand why, but that one I've not been able to put my finger on a particular reason.

-We tried it there actually at first, a whole bunch of different versions, but it was never reading on camera. So we just wanted to make sure people could see it.

Q. Hey Rafe! Big fan of your adaptation thus far. Whose idea was it to have Perrin be married in the first episode? I think the choice was a smart one, but I’m curious as to how that decision came about.

-Well, firstly in the longer version of the script I'd had Perrin being the apprentice to the town blacksmith, who he then accidentally killed during the Trolloc attack. It really was important to me that he have an iconic moment of violence in the first episode that would underpin his long term journey with violence and whether he'd choose the axe or the hammer. So I'd made that blacksmith his mom. But as we had to trim a bunch of page length down in the scripts, it became a simpler story to tell it as his wife, and also felt natural that if these characters were in their early 20s in a small mountain village, that one of them likely would be married. There's a scene in the books where Perrin talks about if he'd stayed in the Two Rivers he might've married Laila Dearn, and voila, Laila was born. My only sadness is we couldn't have seen more of her. Helena Westerman who played her was AMAZING

Q. My biggest question so far is how the Whitecloaks have been so effective against the Aes Sedai, when in the books they were usually more of an annoyance rather than a true threat to women who can channel. Are ways to incapacitate channelers that show up later in the books being employed by the Whitecloaks?

-You'll find out more about this in Season One, and then even more in Season Three if we get there.

Read the whole thing for more.
 

Qamra Daielin

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Thank you for the link!
 

Elania al'Manir

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Clean_Commercial_815: How are you thinking of showing the range of emotions and other things Perrin is able to smell? Does Marcus have a special nose acting coach?
WoTshowrunner: He actually, genuinely does. Ha. And he's doing great with it.
 
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I think my favorite thing to come out of the AMA is ha! I was RIGHT! There was a "purist" thread awhile back where someone was complaining about moving the ruby from the pommel to the quillions, and I theorized that it was likely due to the pommel not being visible on film.

Rafe just said they tried it on the pommel first, then a few other positions, but none but the quillions was readable to the audience.

So I'm mighty proud of myself right now.
 

Merena Orithana

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:love Love that Rafe did this AMA.
 

Merena Orithana

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Thanks @Vealdan Annalin Gaidin - I was looking for a way to see if he replied to any replies...
 
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