BAFTA nominated director Thomas Napper Joins ‘The Wheel of Time’ Season Two
Opens up about unraveling the intricacies of Moiraine and Lan’s evolving bond.
BAFTA-nominated director Thomas Napper (Jawbone, Baptiste) has joined Amazon Original The Wheel of Time in Season Two, helming episodes 201 and 202. In these first two episodes, Napper worked closely with the highly-talented acting duo Rosamund Pike and Daniel Henney as Moiraine and Lan, respectively. With hints of political intrigue, magical complexities, and personal growth, season 2 expands the popular character stories from season one, and has opened to positive response from the fans of the series and the original Robert Jordan novels.
Two years later, the second season continues the tale of Rand al’Thor and his companions from the village of Emond’s Field, who find themselves unwittingly entangled in a global conflict rekindled by the resurging malevolent influence of the Dark One. Napper greatly admires the characters’ complex relationship now that Moiraine has lost her connection to the One Power and Lan. Napper opens up about his experiences working on the fantasy drama.
“I’ve come into the show where [Moiraine and Lan’s] bond is broken and where they’re trying to manage and understand their relationship with each other now that their twin-like telepathy has been broken,” Napper shared. “So we’ve worked quite a lot in rehearsals on how to express that and how to articulate that for each other. And then how that works on screen. And many of the scenes are about a sort of broken relationship or a relationship that has changed from being seamless to being mortal and broken and how that works. Nearly every scene we’ve done together shows a very different relationship and shows a very different connection between those two.”
Showrunner and executive producer Rafe Judkins praised Napper for being able to bring out powerful, nuanced performances from the actors. “The thing that I loved the most from him was the way that he was able to interact with our actors and build really nuanced performances with them,” Judkins said, adding, “He did such an excellent job of finding the time and finding the space and creating a space on set for the actors to be able to give emotionally authentic performances.”
The Wheel of Time stars Rosamund Pike, Josha Stradowski, Daniel Henney, Zoë Robins and Madeleine Madden in pivotal roles. Created by Rafe Judkins, first three episodes of the fantasy series are streaming in English, with dubs in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada. Fresh episodes will drop every Friday till the finale comes on October 6 exclusively on Prime Video.
