THE WHEEL OF TIME

An epic fantasy adventure warrants an equally arduous global pursuit for its heroes — a challenge that casting director Kelly Valentine Hendry finds a thrill. “I get very excited about the idea that there are five young adults sitting somewhere in the world who do not know yet that they are going to be the stars of Amazon’s The Wheel of Time,” she says. “When you discover someone who hasn’t yet had a massive show, I like the idea that you changed that person’s life.” For Hendry, the real pressure of the project was finding a cast that fulfilled the criteria — or at least the essence — set by Robert Jordan’s book series. “I know how important it is to so many people,” she says. “That was a specific challenge that I was faced with, because I have to take a lot of care in many people’s favorite book of all time.” With Rosamund Pike already in talks to star as powerful sorceress Moiraine, a Blue Ajah of the Aes Sedai, Hendry’s job was finding Pike the perfect companions for the impending quest. In searching for Moiraine’s right-hand man, Lan Mandragoran, Hendry discovered that Criminal Minds actor Daniel Henney had the perfect energy to complement Pike’s character. “The Warder and Aes Sedai have got an unexplainable bond. They move similarly. There’s something about the way they think that’s similar, and Daniel presented from day one as a very similar type to Ros,” says Hendry. “There is a very similar stoicism within both of them.” To fill the roles of the young adults, the casting department saw thousands of actors worldwide, eventually landing on New Zealander Zoë Robins, Australian Madeleine Madden, Brits Marcus Rutherford and Barney Harris, and Dutch actor Josha Stradowski as the series’ leads. “One by one, we realized that these actors actually were these characters. It’s like you poured them into a mold,” says the casting director. “Josha’s tape came in quite late, and I was sitting in a black cab when it arrived in my inbox. The email I sent to everybody was ‘It’s him. We found him.’ That’s the thing about casting, it’s alchemy. Sometimes somebody just hits you and you cannot specify what that is. It’s just magic.”

Hendry