Marcus Rutherford on The Wheel of Time: "The next Game of Thrones? Let’s see how it goes…" (2024)

Marcus Rutherford realised The Wheel Of Timewas going to be a big deal when he heard about the baby names. It was his birthday, not long after he’d been cast as the young blacksmith Perrin Aybara in Amazon’s new big-budget adaptation of Robert Jordan’s epic fantasy book series, and he decided – breaking his usual rule not to read about himself on social media – to check out some of the birthday wishes on Twitter from a handful of die-hard Wheel Of Timefan accounts. “I changed my settings so I could see who was replying,” says Rutherford. “A lot of it came in, then there was a picture of a newborn baby. And this guy was like, ‘This is Perrin, who's just been born. I've named him after your character. He says happy birthday.’”

Charming, certainly – but also slightly intense. The implicit message: don’t mess this up, Marcus. The Wheel of Timestans are watching, and some of them have had to wait 30 years to see their favourite series done justice. First published in 1990, at more than four and a half million words, the 14-book series is monumentally long. By comparison, the Lord of the Rings trilogy totals just under 600,000 words, while George R. R. Martin’s A Song Of Ice And Fire comes to nearly 1.8 million (so far); Rutherford only realised this during a press junket interview, when someone showed him a bar graph with the three series’ respective lengths plotted onto it and The Wheel of Timedwarfed its fantasy competitors. The books chart continent-spanning wars, intrigue and magic, involving messianic prophecies, a cult of impenetrable but possibly benevolent witches called the Aes Sedai, werewolves, armies of roving orc-like beasts called trollocs as well as, Rutherford jokes, “whole chapters describing taverns and inns”. Jordan himself didn’t even see the series’ completion. He died from a heart condition in 2007, and his last three novels were completed posthumously by fellow fantasy author Brandon Sanderson, with Jordan’s blessing.

It’s perhaps not surprising, then, that past screen adaptations have foundered. In the early 2000s, NBC made an abortive attempt at a miniseries based on the books, and in 2008, there were rumours of a Universal film, but neither emerged. Instead, it gradually became clear with the success of Game of Thrones that some fantasy worldbuilding could only be done satisfactorily within the timescale of a TV show, over multiple seasons. Following the resolution of various tangled legal knots over who owned the rights to Jordan’s work, Sony Pictures Television and Amazon stepped in and announced, in 2018, that The Wheel of Time was finally making it into production. Shooting began in September 2019.

Rutherford, when he talks to GQ, has been in Prague for four months shooting the second season of the seriesbefore the first has even aired, and expects to be there “until February or March”, barring a couple of possible filming excursions to Morocco. Commissioning a second season before the first has aired is, of course, the ultimate sign of studio confidence, but watching the first few episodes, it’s not hard to see why Amazon might feel like they’re backing a winner.

One major coup, for example, came in the form of casting Rosamund Pike to play Aes Sedai sorceress Moiraine (her fellow Oscar nominee Sophie Okonedo plays another Aes Sedai called Siuan Sanche). It is Moiraine who really kicks The Wheel Of Time off when she arrives at the remote region called Two Rivers where Perrin lives on the eve of an attack by trollocs – hairy, muscled humanoids not unlike minotaurs who stand eight feet tall – led by a faceless, undead commander called a “Myrddraal”. Luckily, Moiraine saves Perrin, along with his companions Rand Al’Thor, Nynaeve al’Meara, Mat Cauthon and Egwene al’Vere (Robert Jordan was something of a nominative maximalist) and leads them to safety, beginning a journey that will result in – Moiraine believes ­– one of them being revealed as “the Dragon Reborn”, a prophesied warrior who will defeat a shadowy but as-yet-unnamed enemy. Naturally, this journey is a very, very long one. Or, as Rutherford puts it: “I think we must have been in every forest in the Czech Republic by now.”

Broadly, “the shape of the first season” is taken from The Eye of the World, explains Rutherford, but some elements from the second book have been transplanted into it, while other characters present in the first novel only turn up in the second season – Rutherford is quick to emphasise that fans shouldn’t panic if they think their favourite character has been excised from the show entirely. “Those who have read the books know that there’s a lot of characters, a lot of new worlds, a lot of magic systems to establish.”

Rutherford, who was born in 1995 and grew up in Nottingham, has been cast after a relatively short acting career. Though he knew by the age of eight that he wanted to be a film director – a true cinéaste, he name drops Gaspar Noé and Hirokazu Koreeda’s Shoplifters during our interview – acting came a little later, after he attended a Nottingham acting club called The Television Workshop whose other erstwhile attendees include Jack O’Connell, Vicky McClure and Joe Dempsey (director Shane Meadows, who cast all three in This Is England in 2006, is loosely associated with the club). “It was so lucky that something like that was nearby,” says Rutherford. “It was a small, unkempt, untidy basem*nt in Nottingham but the people who had gone there were ridiculous.”

After university in London, Rutherford found work in “music videos, short films, independent films,” as well as one called Obey, a kitchen-sink drama set against the background of social unrest in East London, before his agent suggested he try out for the Amazon series. “Pretty soon after meeting her, she was like, ‘There’s a fantasy series I think you should go for. A very tall, big, shy lad.’”

At around six foot five, according to his own estimate, Rutherford was clearly ideal for the role of Perrin, the introverted village blacksmith who is described in the books as “a man and a half wide” (though – and I say this because if I don’t, people will shout at me about it on Twitter – he is canonically shorter than Rand). On set, Rutherford’s height caused problems for the costume and prop departments when it came time for him to fight the eight-foot trollocs. “In the books, these creatures tower over the kids from Two Rivers. They had to get these Czech stunt guys [playing the trollocs] stilts to walk on. I’m getting evil looks, and I’m like ‘Oh, they’ve had to build that to make them way taller than me. Okay.’”

Nonetheless, Rutherford is grateful for the practical effects and prosthetics, and the fact he didn’t have to rely too heavily on CGI in his action scenes. “Looking back, I don't know how I would have been able to do it, if it was just like, ‘There’s a green dot that you’ve got to pretend to fight.’” Likewise, he spent time filming alongside trained “Czech wolf-dogs” (book readers will know why…), and was delighted they were real animals rather than “a guy with a tennis ball”. Relatively small decisions like those, along with that perennial ritual of fantasy-series prep, horse-riding lessons, make the series feel more real and grounded, giving it a physicality that helps counterbalance the flights of magical fancy and the vast lore of The Wheel of Time.

When asked what lies in store for fans in season two, Rutherford suggests Perrin’s story becomes a little heavier, a little darker. “The characters are a bit more mature, they know the world and are not as naive as they were in season one.” As for the third season of Wheel Of Time, that will depend as much on the reactions of those capricious, deeply loyal fans as the whims of Sony and Amazon executives. Naturally, the hype around the series is already drawing comparisons to Game of Thrones. But Rutherford plays the similarities down. “Those comparisons are going to be made, and the success of the books puts The Wheel Of Time in that conversation already. Which is quite exciting, but when people keep saying ‘the next Game Of Thrones’, whenever I hear like that, I’m like: Let’s just see how the show goes.’”

Photography: Lee Malone
Styling: Grace Gilfeather
Grooming: Alexis Day using Pat McGrath Labs and Shea Moisture

The Wheel Of Time is on Amazon Prime on 19 November.

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