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The Wheel of Time showrunner Rafe Judkins talks about invention vs. adaptation, balancing the expectations of fans, and his own favorite character.
Although The Wheel of Time is new to television, it carries a long history in the fan-favorite 14-volume book series by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. In the book series, its fantastical world is delved into deeply — establishing an intricate magic system and a lengthy history of civilizations with legacies that span even before the main story begins. Additionally, The Wheel of Time series contains a wealth of characters whose lives are continually interweaving and carrying the plot — making it no easy task to adapt to the small screen.
In an exclusive interview with CBR, The Wheel of Time showrunner Rafe Judkins — himself a longtime fan of the books — talked about what it was like to handle a tale with such a legacy. He also delved into how the show invites new fans into its storied magical world.
CBR: Adaptations of course have to update the source material, and there’s a transition from the page to the screen. So how did you decide what to change while keeping the spirit of the original story?
Rafe Judkins: A lot of times we tried to fall back to the characters. I think that is the core of what people love about the series, and what I love about The Wheel of Time book series. There are so many production choices that need to be made, so many things that need to be trimmed, just because we only have eight episodes to tell the story. So whenever we were in doubt, we would lean back on that, and ask, “What are the pieces of this story that we need to tell the emotional journey of each of these characters?”
Characters are definitely at the heart of it. You also worked on Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., so I’m curious about what separates The Wheel of Time from your previous projects like that one.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was interesting because it’s an adaptation in some ways, but obviously a much looser one. It’s really taking characters that are inspired by the comics and bringing them to life in this small new story. Wheel of Time, it’s a much more definitive adaptation. We’re really taking the books that are there and then trying to figure out the best way to bring them to screen, so there’s much less invention involved. It’s really my job is more about breaking down, taking apart, putting back together, than it is about pure invention. And so — which I love, too — like the source material is so wonderful. So, most of my difficult moments come from worrying about if we are putting these pieces back together in the right way.
So on that note, I know who the Dragon Reborn is, but you’ve really kept that secret amazingly well. So how have you managed to balance the expectations of book fans like me with the first-time watchers coming in?
I think that’s a piece of it — taking these elements that are so inherent to the series. You sometimes forget, too, when you’ve gotten to the end of the 14 books and you remember the first one a certain way, but then when you really dive back into it, a big piece of it is, “Who is the Dragon Reborn? What does it mean? How do we understand each of these characters in the story?”
I think not knowing that right from the beginning really will help a new audience lean into these characters, and be picking apart everything about that, and trying to figure out who it might be. Hopefully, it will let the audience really lean into the ensemble nature of the storytelling — which is very true to The Wheel of Time series as a whole, but not as much so to the first book [which] is a much more singular POV.
Absolutely, and which character do you relate to most personally?
I have always been an Egwene lover. For me, she’s really the character that I relate to. I always try to find a piece of myself in all of the characters that I’m writing, and that’s true for an adaptation as well. You have to find these pieces of yourself that you love in each of them or hate. That’s definitely true for this series. But I think for me, the one I always identified with is Egwene, and I think the great thing about these five core characters from the Two Rivers is that everyone might have a different one that they relate to the most.
The Wheel of Time premieres its debut season on Prime Video on Nov. 19.
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