The Wheel of Time season 3: Rosamund Pike, Daniel Henney spill on filming ambitious show

The Wheel of Time’s on-screen action was (almost) matched by the drama unfolding behind the scenes, it’s been revealed.

IN LONDON

Actors and members of the production crew were “dropping left and right from heat stroke” in the extreme conditions behind the latest season of Prime Video’s high-fantasy series, The Wheel of Time, it’s been revealed.

Based on the best-selling series by Robert Jordan, the show tells the story of humble farm boy, Rand al’Thor (Josha Stradowski), who discovers he is the Dragon Reborn and is destined to either save the world or destroy it.

The Wheel of Time also stars Rosamund Pike as the wise and mysterious Moiraine, a member of the all-female Aes Sedai, Sophie Okonedo as the organisation’s leader, Siuan Sanche, as well as Daniel Henney as elite warrior al’Lan Mandragoran.

Rosamund Pike as Moiraine and Daniel Henney as Lan in The Wheel of Time. Picture: Prime Video

The multimillion-dollar show is an ambitious production, and speaking to news.com.au ahead of the March 13 premiere of season three, Henney revealed some of the most gruelling aspects of bringing the next chapter to life.

“We shot for two weeks in the Northern Cape of South Africa on the border of Namibia, and we were warned how hot it was going to be,” he explained.

“[But] I still cannot describe to you how hot it was to this day. Under our costumes, we had ice vests, we had people dropping left and right from heat stroke.

“It was 45 degrees Celsius consistently, and we were shooting in the desert … And you’ll see when you watch the show, I mean, there’s no lying. I mean, we were out there.”

Conditions were gruelling during a portion of the new season’s filming. Picture: Prime Video

Henney added that there were “doctors and nurses” on standby, and it got to the point where they could only “shoot for an hour or two” at a time, and then regroup.

“The hardest part of that is that a lot of us wear wigs in the show … You can’t take those off, and your scalp starts to bake in the sun, you start to go a little bit crazy.”

As fans head into season three of the gripping fantasy franchise, the stakes have never been higher. Moiraine is dedicated to protecting Rand at all costs as they journey to the Aiel Waste, but there are enemies lurking around every corner and a growing danger of corruption as his powers grow stronger.

To complicate matters further, the White Tower is openly divided as the rogue branch of the Aes Sedai, the Black Ajah, now operate freely.

As well as South Africa, filming has taken the cast and crew to Slovenia, Croatia and Spain, but its main base is the Czech Republic, where an enormous purpose-built set – called Jordan Studios, named after the author – has been constructed just outside of Prague.

(News.com.au was given an Australian-exclusive behind-the-scenes tour of the studio back in 2023 – check out all the secrets from the set here).

The fact the company took the somewhat unusual step of creating a permanent base for the then-new series indicated a huge leap of faith – almost equally matched (on scale) by Pike’s decision to uproot her family and move to Prague after landing the role of Moiraine in 2019.

Pike moved her family to Prague once she landed the role of Moiraine. Picture: Prime Video

Years into her relocation, she clearly has no regrets.

“The immersiveness of Jordan Studios and the way that we had a sort of nonstop factory of weapon-making, leather work, costume, textile-dying, textile-printing, wig-making, monster creation, it was just a hive of creativity and activity,” the British actress explained to news.com.au, adding that she’d even used one of the Czech locations as a playground for her two children.

“The Two Rivers, which comes back this season, is a village in a quarry outside Prague … I used to go there at the weekends with my children. We’d play hide and seek in the Two Rivers!

“I mean, it’s just the most beautiful playground you could imagine, we’d go and have picnics.”

Even after two jam-packed seasons, Pike admitted she still experienced some shocks as she picked up the script for the next instalment.

“Just the opener, almost the cold open of episode one is an epic bloodthirsty, vicious battle where powerful women are kind of slaying each other,” she revealed.

“I mean, it’s kind of like a season finale, and we haven’t even got 15 minutes into the show. “That was a surprise … and we’ve got layers upon layers of political intrigue and villains who … they have enemies.

“So I think we’re starting to know the lay of the land. We can really get into all the adversarial nitty-gritty of this world.”

The Wheel of Time season three premieres on Prime Video on March 13.

Originally published as The Wheel of Time season 3: Rosamund Pike, Daniel Henney spill on filming ambitious show