By Huw Fullerton

Published: Sunday, 21 November 2021 at 12:00 am


After two years in limbo, Marcus Rutherford’s life might be about to change.

“Some of season one started filming in 2019. It’s been a whirlwind,” the 26-year-old actor tells me. “With COVID, we had two shutdowns that lasted roughly about five months each. It really felt like that first season took forever to get out. I think there’s some shots in the first episode where we look about 10.”

So far, so standard for the world of COVID drama production – but Rutherford’s new project The Wheel of Time is a little different from your average TV show. Based on a 14-book series of fantasy novels that began over 30 years ago and sold over 90 million copies worldwide, it’s a huge undertaking for the new cast, and a potentially big commitment – season two is already filming.

And after two years of working in the shadows, Rutherford and his co-stars now have to stand in the light as the world finally sees what they’ve been working on. If it’s a hit, they could be in for a Game of Thrones-length engagement, forced to move their lives permanently to the series’ production base in the Czech Republic and potentially play the same characters for years.

Or…it could flop, and they’ll just go back to normal life. No pressure, then.

“Finally having this reception that will come in the next week or so, it will be really, really amazing,” Rutherford tells me over Zoom, around a week before Wheel of Time’s release date (three episodes dropped on Amazon on Friday 19th November, with five more coming week to week).

“It’s something you think about, but I think until we see how people respond to it, you can’t assume that we’ll be doing it forever,”

“We’ve not relied on the idea that we’re going to be doing these characters for 10 years or whatever, but I think we’ve definitely thought about where our characters end up, and where they’re going to go.”

Helpfully, they have a guide in the mighty book series written by the late Robert Jordan, which painstakingly details the lives of Rutherford’s and the other characters as they battle the forces of evil, the darkness within themselves and even each other over the course of the massive, sprawling series.

Before all that, though, the story starts smaller. Specifically, it starts with five young people from a backwater village, one of whom is the reincarnation of a legendary figure who died thousands of years ago but has been called back to face a supernatural being called The Dark One.

"The
The Wheel of Time cast
Amazon

The problem? Whoever is the Dragon Reborn will probably go mad with the tainted magic he or she wields – and they have no idea which one of the five kids it is.

“I play Perrin, who’s one of the kids,” Rutherford says. “Moiraine, who’s played by Rosamund Pike, goes on a quest to find the Dragon Reborn, which is sort of a prophecy that comes with each turn of the Wheel. She believes it’s one of these five kids from this village.

“Perrin is sort of the big, gentle giant of the group, the local blacksmith. And he’s a very introverted deep-thinker. Quite quiet. And I think on his journey, especially throughout season one, he has to really come to terms with how violent the world is around him. And I think it’s something that he really struggles with.

“If he is part of this prophecy, is there a way to do it where he releases a part of himself that he thinks can be quite destructive and quite dangerous?”

Soon forced to flee home and travel through strange lands, the so-called “Emond’s Field Five” are put through their paces in the dangerous fantasy world the show creates – and offscreen a similar bond was forged between Rutherford and the young cast, which includes Josha Stradowski, Zoë Robins and Madeleine Madden (another, Barney Harris, has been recast for season two).

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L-R Marcus Rutherford, Zoë Robins, Paul Henney, Rosamund Pike, Madeleine Madden and Josha Stradowski at the Wheel of Time premiere in London (Amazon)

“It’s funny, man, you really do feel as though you’ve gone on a journey with these people,” Rutherford laughs. “It was quite a daunting experience for all of us at the start. I’d only done some really indie films. Maddie and Zoe had maybe done a bit more, but they were coming from such a faraway place [specifically, Australia]. And then Josha [who’s Dutch] was mastering a different language at the same time.

“So seeing everyone grapple with their own kind of challenges at the start was amazing. It definitely does give us a sense of unity, and the idea that you’re starting a journey together. I think that having us all at the same level of experience at the start – a naivety in terms of actually making the show – probably permeates into the actual characters when we start as well.

“And then we’re getting more mature, and more experienced as we go through it. Which I think is adding to the maturity of the characters in two.”

In preparation, Rutherford has been reading the books – he’s currently on book three, the Dragon Reborn, noting he likes to be “one or two ahead” of where they’re shooting – and quickly noticed that there were a few changes in his character from the version Jordan wrote on the page.