The first episodes in the second season of Amazon Prime’s other fantasy world epic, The Wheel of Time, deliver some revelations.
First, Rima Te Wiata is in it. She’s Sheriam Bayanar, the “Mistress of Novices”, a mother superior figure to the young women aspiring to become Aes Sedai. They are channellers of the One Power, the cosmic energy having proved problematic to males with a spark for channelling. Generally speaking, it drives them mad, bad or both. The Aes Sedai, though, bring a female balance to the Force, sorry, the One Power.
It’s Te Wiata’s first northern hemisphere screen role in the production, which shoots in Prague and the Canary Islands. Dressed in blue, she looks very regal.
Second, the show has got better. The first series based on Robert Jordan’s 14 books, which have sold some 90 million copies, certainly may have pleased his many readers, or entertained those with a forgiving love for mildly violent and occasionally sexy though still slightly YA high-fantasy telly. But it wasn’t exactly the new Game of Thrones.
It felt like a curtain-raiser for the platform’s bigger fantasy deal, The Power of the Ring. Though where that Tolkien extrapolation had Orcs, The Wheel of Time has the not-at-all-related-but-just-as-ugly Trollocs.
Third revelation? Our very own Zoë Robins, possibly Lower Hutt’s biggest acting export since Anna Paquin, has a lot to do in this one. More so than the first. If this was another world, her character’s surname would be Skywalker or Stark. Which isn’t bad considering her character, Nynaeve al’Meara, almost died in her channelling efforts in the big showdown at the end of season one. She was at the middle of a very big, very long One Power-surge.
That first Season finale looked like a long day at the office. Even if it’s just pretend, what’s it like having all that cosmic energy zapping through you? It must do something to your head.
Totally. You have to give something to commit to that physicality. Because obviously, spoiler alert, nothing’s actually happening on set, but you have to 100% believe. And you can’t half-arse it. It won’t translate. So there’s a lot of imagination required. And it’s a meeting of the physical and the emotional. We shot that over a week in Prague. We were actually supposed to shoot it in the Canary Islands and then Covid came along and derailed the lot.
Having seen the beginning of the second season, I get the impression the show is much more sure of itself.
Absolutely. We’ve kind of found this sweet spot. In the first season, just trying to establish a massive world like this, there’s a lot of world-building you must do.
You have to set the tone right and there was so much exposition. You had to know where you are and know what the stakes were and know who these characters were. Now I think we’re sitting with the characters more. Tonally, there’s a maturity in the show itself and the characters as well.
What’s great about a lot of the main characters is they are relatable. Everyone’s been through loss and grief and change and so there is something that you can grasp, even among all the magic and the Trollocs.
Given the two seasons you’ve made of this and the seasons of Power Rangers Ninja Steel you did at home, you could probably now teach a class in fantasy screen acting. What would your first lesson be?
I think whatever it is, it’s important to strive for the truth. Even if you’re opposite aliens or opposite someone in a monkey suit or you’re imagining that you’re channelling the source from all around you, I think you have to always try to ground yourself in what is real and true for the character. Because it is very easy to get lost. I think that what connects audience members is to see bits of truth and grounded-ness in real life and reflected back even when you’re in a fantasy world.
On a lighter note, the season begins with your character Nynaeve, despite her powers, busted back to a novice at that convent. I have to say the uniform reminded me of Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music.
Oh, yeah, it does, doesn’t it? Maybe it is something to do with innocence. She’s at the beginning of the Aes Sedai journey. They are scrubbing floors and learning the very basics of channelling, which Nynaeve absolutely despises. She’s not one for authority or listening to anybody at all.
So where’s she going this season?
What can I give away? I think Nynaeve has had a bit of a wake-up call and she has to become more at ease with things that she cannot control. So it is a bit of a journey of allowing things and acceptance and perhaps getting in touch with who she is and the power she harnesses.
It’s a big show production-wise but given its origins, the genre, and the platform it’s on it’s also very much a cult show. What’s that like?
I think it’ll be interesting to see how season two goes and what the audience looks like then. When I got the audition, I had not heard of Wheel of Time at all and obviously it blew my mind that it was a bestseller and had sold more than 90 million copies and that there are 14 novels. What’s great about that is we have a built-in fan base who are going to seek out the show. So we’re very lucky in that regard. I’m not a fantasy viewer myself. It’s been nice to bump into people who have watched the show. It is very high fantasy, but there are also ways you can connect and it’s quite different from what’s out there.
Did you think it was ironic that here you are from the Hutt Valley, where they shot some of the Lord of the Rings, and from New Zealand, where we’ve been making these fantasy shows since they were invented, but you had to go to Europe to do it?
I feel like I couldn’t be further from home. Maybe I can sweet-talk Amazon if we get season four to move it to the Hutt Valley. That’d be nice.
So is Prague pretty and full of beer?
Yeah, definitely full of beer. We started this journey back in 2019. So it’s now a second home for me in a way. I’ve made some really solid friendships and formed some great memories there. And it’s so beautiful. It’s always a joy to have family and friends come over and they are like, “Oh my god”. It’s like a gothic Disneyland.
The Wheel of Time season two is on Amazon Prime Video from September 1.
