One thing I really don't want to do is I didn't want our actors
making this show against green screen, I didn't want them standing on a
green mat, talking to a green blob, and we're like “You’re in Tar Valon,
and this is an Ogier!” but you're just looking at green.
And so we've done everything we can to build this world in reality
and to everything that we can in camera.
We spent a lot of time choosing where the production
was going to center out of, and we found this amazing facility
in Prague that was almost 350,000 square feet of an old truck factory
that we were able to build from the ground up into our entire operation.
And we had multiple soundstages all under one roof,
and that became the lifeblood of the show.
We had such an incredible construction and design team on the ground there
that we ended up being able to build things that were much more
beautiful, cinematic and creatively appropriate than we were able to find.
We built a backlot for Shadar Logoth.
We had this incredible local, drawing in from Poland as well, these craftsmen,
we built these city streets in the parking lot, so that became our back lot.
I'm sitting in part of the walls of Tar Valon,
we've had Shadar Logoth created in sort of eerie,
monstrous detail, and we've really traveled for this show.
We've been to mountains and valleys and quarries and rivers, and it's felt
enormous, to be honest, and it's felt right and fitting.
So on Wheel of Time, what we're doing
is we're building a complete world, so everything we do is considered
it's not just rolling up outside a modern building and filming,
it's about thinking about the way
that building is, where it comes from and then you realize you have to build it.
The building of the
Two Rivers was the most amazing part of the whole process, and it looks,
you know, as good as anything we could have hoped to find.
In the books, there's a very clear description of thatched houses
but once we started to look at images of that,
it was something that you've seen a lot before, and our production designer
really dug in and found these amazing inspiration images
from the mountains of Japan and the Alps and sort of like combined all of this
mountain architecture into something that could be uniquely the Two Rivers.
I remember standing around little models of village
houses with Rafe and putting them in position
and giving each and [every] single one of them purpose.
So it makes sense in terms of how a village is built.
We would go, “This is the butcher and this is the baker...”
And once you have that little model in front of you, your wonderful
production designer takes over and it's being built.
And on a regular basis, you visit that location
and you see all these amazing craftsmen from the Czech Republic
building this village and day by day it becomes more real
and it becomes alive in front of your eyes.
Up to the day where you fill it with 150 extras and costumes,
and they'd celebrate the Bel Tine Festival and you feel like you are in this time
and this is all a reality.
We built the entire village in a quarry outside of Prague.
And every time you walk into it, it just gave you that
moviemaking magic kind of feeling.
So when the actors walked onto that set for the first time and just looked around
this 360 degree village, I think they really appreciated
the magnitude of what we were trying to do here.
And it kind of set the tone.
Oh yes!
That’s mad.
I think walking into Two Rivers and I just realized that they’d
they built a village pretty much, and I was like "Oh, okay..."
as chickens are running around. The scale of it I think, really, really hit me
Oh look, there's the Winespring Inn, oh my god!
it's like exactly how I imagined.
Yeah.
Wow. Just casually build a town in five months. Yeah, why not?
I have been waiting
since I was 15 to walk in this room.
This is Rand and Tam's house. And being able to see
it actually be built, being able to walk in the house...
I know how it looked in my head and this is actually kind of close.
I actually came in, I said, "Where is the stairs?" and I'm like "Oh, over there!"
I could imagine Robert Jordan walking in and saying, finally,
after all these years and trying to get it made, you're doing it.
Welcome to the Two Rivers,
I promise, it doesn't always look like this.
Being in this village we built,
you felt like, oh, this is home, and when we burned it down and left,
it was like an emotional experience watching that happen on set too.
And then as the characters ride out into the wider world,
I think we all kind of
went on that journey with them because we were leaving behind
this set that we'd spent the first couple of months of the show on.