“It’s cool to be a witch,” Anouka says over Zoom.
All hail the queens
What remains the same are the clans.
Witches run in communities known as clans with a queen at the head of each.
Credit: HBO
Tranter confirmed Anouka’s casting helped the writers flesh out the characterization further.
The clans have a problem when we first see them at the start of season 2.
Serafina preached caution, while Ruta urged an offensive approach.
Simon Ridgeway/HBO
“That scene changed quite a lot from filming,” Anouka recalls.
There were different things added in postproduction that helped tell the story as it developed.
It shows in a few seconds what’s going on.
HBO
These are two very powerful witches who are definitely on par.
All their attempts lacked “the propulsion” the season 1 story required.
The witches, then, became the “spectacle” for season 2.
Simon Ridgway/HBO
Cloud-pine
Cloud-pine is the essential ingredient to a witch’s power.
In Pullman’s novels, they physically hold a branch of cloud-pine to ascend into the air.
For the show, it became another puzzle for Tranter to unravel.
HBO
“Philip never describes [the witches] as sitting on [cloud-pine],” Tranter explains.
“So, it’s almost like you imagine them to start off like that.
[Tranter holds her hands up above her head in a superhero flying pose].
It just felt so wrong and not very ‘other.'”
That’s when she landed upon a tweak to the mythology that would create something new.
Serafina and Ruta are two of those witches, with the cloud-pine snaking through their arms like veins.
As Tranter puts it, “They’re not sirens.
They’re badasses.”
“They mean business and they’re always ready for what’s coming,” Anouka says.
“We may have beautiful dresses on, but don’t get it twisted.
We will fight for what we believe in.”
But Anouka, like Ruta herself, remains unfazed by the harsh elements.
This provides a unique challenge when Anouka is trying to hold herself up in the wire harness.
If you relax you’ll just go ass over tit," she says with a laugh.
“We put them on location and it was absolutely pissed with rain,” she says.
Anouka remembers the sensation of filming in that autumn weather in Wales as “standing in ice-cold slush.”
“It felt like daggers were going up the bottom of my feet.
That was a quite hard one,” she says.
You know when the hairs on your neck stand up?
It’s not always by sight, but it’s by feel."
They are both part of the same being.
Witches are another matter.
They are the rare being with the ability to separate from their daemon over great distances.
Anouka’s approach to Ruta was then different than Wilson’s in that same regard.
It helped further flesh out that connection.
She sees this as a further reflection of that unique dynamic between a witch and her daemon.
Ruta always senses Sergi, even though he may not be physically present.
Witches are always born with birds for daemons.
“There’s a real sense of freedom, flight, and soaring to them,” Tranter says.
“And Mrs. Coulter has a monkey.
“Understanding how important daemon and human separations is a theme in Philip’s work.
We lean into that in episode 6 for sure.”
His Dark Materialsairs on HBO in the U.S. Monday nights at 9 p.m.
