Today is the Day! The second season of The Wheel of Time arrives on Prime Video and we couldn’t be more excited for the world to see these brand new episodes.
Source: Jan Thijs / Prime Video
Global Grind Sr. Content Director Janeé Bolden spoke with Daniel Henney and Madeleine Madden about the upcoming second season of The Wheel of Time on Prime Video. Check out the trailer for season two below:
If you watched the first season of The Wheel of Time, which is based on the best-selling Robert Jordan fantasy series of the same name, you were introduced to Rand al’Thor (Josha Stradowski) and his friends Mat Cauthon (Dónal Finn), Perrin Aybara (Marcus Rutherford), Egwene al’Vere (Madeleine Madden) and Nynaeve al’Meara (Zoe Robins) as they leave behind their home following a deadly attack by dark forces. The group is guided by two powerful beings, Moiraine Damodred (Rosamund Pike) and al’Lan Mandragoran but ultimately their paths break into separate directions. In the new season, Rand discovers that even though he thought he destroyed the Dark One, evil is not gone from the world. In Season Two, threats new and very old seek out the young friends from the Two Rivers, now scattered over the world. The woman who found and guided them is now powerless to help, and so they must find other sources of strength.
Source: Jan Thijs / Prime Video
In the new season both Madden and Henney have their closest relationships tested. In Henney’s case, al’Lan Mandragroan and Moraine Damodred find their romantic partnership may be over, while Madden’s character Egwene feels her sisterhood with Nynaeve al’Meara on rocky grounds. Much like Rand, most of the characters are feeling more alone than ever this season.
“With The Wheel of Time, the stakes are always incredibly high right?” Daniel Henney told GlobalGrind. “We’re always edging closer to the last battle that is eventually going to take place and so the stakes are always high and also there’s trust issues throughout the show with all these characters. I mean where their allegiance lies, who you can and can’t trust, who’s telling the truth, who is not. Questions about the people you were close with and jealousy, like Maddie and Zoe’s characters, there’s this beautiful jealousy that comes up. She was like their sister. It’s a very interesting world and so you always play those stakes but for myself with Rosamund, we just play it like we’re having marital problems. We just keep it as real as possible. We make sure that we try everything we can try. That’s the beautiful thing about our amazing cast, is that everyone’s up to trying things, so those scenes that you saw, there was a lot that was left out there. We tried some crazy stuff and some stuff was cut and so what you see was what we ended up with. It was a lot of fun and you’ve got to press these characters to see where they’ll go, so we’re happy with how it ended up and now we’re kind of on these separate little solo journeys.”
Source: Jan Thijs / Prime Video
“To echo what Daniel said, our characters are on the solo journeys and I think I can speak for all of the cast when I say that we were very lucky to have a director like Thomas Napper who is so emotionally in tuned with his actors and the characters in the story,” Madeleine Madden added. “It’s really important for us as actors, but also for the audience to know where our characters are emotionally at the beginning of this series because it just happened at the end of last season. It’s like they all have a bit of a hangover, a bit of a trauma dump hangover, so it was really wonderful to work with Thomas who was just so in sync with where we were at emotionally and like Daniel said, someone that you can play with and that is willing to play with us actors and collaborate on that level.”
The pair also addressed what it’s been like being part of a series that is based on a hugely popular collection of books.
“I think that the show is just a a new turning of The Wheel,” Daniel Henney told Global Grind. “There are going to be differences. It’s incredibly difficult to cram 4 million words into an hour. I mean not one hour, but the hours. There’s going to be changes made, there’s going to be. People are precious about these characters and that’s why we’re here. We’re lucky to have our fanbase. We wouldn’t have a show if it weren’t for the fans and they’re going to come with opinions and passions and it’s going to all be there. There will be people who love the direction the show, there’s going to be people who don’t necessarily love it. But hopefully they can find something in the spirit of what we’re doing that resonates. We try to make sure that we honor these characters as much as we can and Season 2 was great because we got a chance to do a complete season. Season 1 we had some internal struggle and we had to change some storylines, but in Season 2 we were able to at least know where we were going. Despite COVID we were able to get there, that’s why it feels more complete and you know we honor all of that.”
Season 2 of The Wheel Of Time is streaming now on Prime Video
‘The Wheel Of Time’ Season 2 Exclusive: Madeleine Madden And Daniel Henney Talk About The Growing Cracks In Their Character’s Relationships was originally published on globalgrind.com
