Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement

Who is Anya Chalotra from Netflix’s The Witcher? She went from the London stage to global stardom, and will return for seasons 4 and 5 of the show with Liam Hemsworth

Anya Chalotra plays Yennefer of Vengerberg in Netflix’s The Witcher. Photo: Netflix
Anya Chalotra plays Yennefer of Vengerberg in Netflix’s The Witcher. Photo: Netflix

When the actress first landed the part of Yennefer in Netflix’s The Witcher adaptation, some of the book’s diehard fans made a fuss – so she shut down her social media to focus on the role

The final two seasons of Netflix’s blockbuster series The Witcher are currently in production. And while most of the attention has been on Liam Hemsworth replacing Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivia, there’s also been focus on the future arc of another central character – Yennefer of Vengerberg.

Played by Anya Chalotra, the tritagonist is a fan-favourite set to make “some big choices” in the new episodes, per creator and showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich.

Life has been very different for Anya Chalotra since she landed the role of Yennefer of Vengerberg in Netflix’s The Witcher. Photo: Netflix
Life has been very different for Anya Chalotra since she landed the role of Yennefer of Vengerberg in Netflix’s The Witcher. Photo: Netflix
Advertisement

Meanwhile, fans are also curious about the actress behind the beloved character. Her co-stars have nothing but praise for her, with Cavill calling her performance “top-notch” and Joey Batey calling her “unbreakable” and “indomitable”. Chalotra has admitted that since landing The Witcher, her life has been “very, very different … The Witcher has opened so many doors for me”.

But what else do we know about Anya Chalotra, who was named on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Europe list this year and whose career trajectory has been predicted to mirror that of Game of Thrones’ Emilia Clarke?

What is Anya Chalotra’s background?

Anya Chalotra was born in July 1995 in Wolverhampton, UK, according to IMDb. She is of British-Indian descent, with an English mother and Indian father, and was raised alongside two siblings. She attended St. Dominic’s Grammar School for Girls in Brewood and later went to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, per Vogue.

Chalotra realised her penchant for performance when she was eight years old. “We were having a family get together and [my father] told me to sing an Indian song. And I knew, at that very moment, that I loved the attention,” she told Vogue India of her first brush with showmanship.

She got her start in theatre

Anya Chalotra and Luke Thallon in Cold War at London’s Almeida Theatre. Photo: Almeida Theatre
Anya Chalotra and Luke Thallon in Cold War at London’s Almeida Theatre. Photo: Almeida Theatre

Chalotra found her place on the stage rather quickly. As a child, she played the Scarecrow in a stage production of The Wizard of Oz, and, in her own words, “I think I really nailed that”. She was in youth theatre groups and performed extensively at school before being accepted at LAMDA.

Chalotra told The Stage, “There wasn’t a lot of theatre for me to see growing up in Wolverhampton … I fell in love with theatre through being on stage. It was when I moved to London that I really started seeing stuff”.