The Witcher’s Joey Batey Was A Bit Nervous About Jaskier’s Radovid Romance In Season 3

It’s honestly refreshing to hear an actor talk about putting a lot of thought into a queer storyline, given the way so many genre shows like “The 100,” “Voltron: Legendary Defenders” and “Supernatural” have come under fire for mistreating or hedging their LGBTQ+ characters over the years. “The Witcher” fans are notoriously polarized by the show — later in the interview, Batey was asked about potential negative responses to the storyline and said that “in this fandom, there is a very vocal negative space” that he believes is actually the minority — but three seasons in, Lauren Schmidt Hissrich’s take on the material has grown into its own unique adaptation. The Jaskier-Radovid plotline is part of that, and it’s a part the creator and showrunner was apparently thinking about very early in the season 3 planning.

“I was actually approached by Lauren before the scripts were even written and she told me about her intentions with the character and the romance,” Batey told Gay Times. In the end, he said, the plan for the pairing “took an awful lot of conversations with Lauren and endless essays of emails to try and figure out exactly how to do this, how to have queer characters in a fantasy world and not reduce them to stereotypes or let them become tokenistic.” Batey also noted that he’s thankful Hissrich let him give so much input, saying, “I applaud Lauren for that collaborative spirit.”