The Wheel of Time Boss Reveals the Most Difficult Aspects of Adapting the Beloved Fantasy Series

Countless fantasy literature fans have become enthralled in The Wheel of Time book series over the years. The 14-volume epic by author Robert Jordan and, after his passing, Brandon Sanderson, launched with the debut installment The Eye of the World in 1984. With their intricately detailed world and vast assortment of richly drawn characters, the bestselling, Hugo Award-winning, books eventually evolved into a full-fledged franchise as the story expanded into graphic novels, comic books, video games, roleplaying games, and more.

One of those avid early readers was Rafe Judkins, who's enjoyed a rather epic journey of his own: Judkins first entered the public eye in 2005 as a contestant on "Survivor's" eleventh season in Guatemala. Judkins subsequently found success as a television writer and producer, particularly working on genre-minded series including Chuck, Hemlock Grove, and Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. When the opportunity came to adapt The Wheel of Time for television, passionate, longtime fan Judkins was ideally suited to take on the role of executive producer.

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Emmy-winning actress Rosmund Pike leads the sprawling cast as Moiraine Damodred, a member of the all-female mystical society Aes Sedai who has the ability to use the One Power, which rotates the titular Wheel of Time. The first season begins with Moiraine arriving in the town of Two Rivers and then embarking on a "world-spanning journey" with five men and women, one of whome has been prophesized to be the Dragon Reborn, who could potentially save or destroy humanity. 

With the appropriately grand-scale eight-episode first season set to bow on Amazon's Prime Video on Nov. 19, Judkins — already in deep the thick of the greenlighted second season — joined TV Guide to reveal the pleasures, and challenges. of bringing one of his personal fan-favorite properties to lavishly budgeted life.

You clearly had a deep well of material to draw from and a pretty energetic and devoted fan base already in place. So as you thought about how to take this material and adapt it to TV in a satisfying way, what are the things that you knew you absolutely had to maintain?
Rafe Judkins: I think the thing that really makes this series so timeless and [gets] so many people so emotionally invested in it is the characters at the center of it — which is silly to say, because of course, the characters are what drives everything. But there are a lot of fantasy series where the characters come and go and people live and die. And this one, you really are with these people through the run of the series. And I think, to me, that's what I always fall back on.

When it's hard to make a decision about what needs to be cut, what needs to happen for production reasons, being able to tell these characters' emotional journeys so that you understand why they're doing the things they're doing the whole way through the season, that's the thing that I always fall back on. And I feel if we can deliver on that, then we're really delivering the spine of the books.

Where did you feel like you could color outside the lines a little bit and get creative in your interpretation?
Judkins: There aren't many places where I colored outside the lines. I think there were some choices that I made to correctly adapt the series to television. I would say where I think the story needs to change in order to be effective in telling this story on television. And then I think the way that we put our own artistic selves into it is the way that we tell the stories sometimes is different than you would in a book, because we're telling it [on] TV. So for instance, we have one episode in the first season that's told only with scenes that are in Moiraine's point of view so that you really suddenly get this deep dive into this character.

You're still telling all the stories that we have to tell in a normal episode, but we're choosing to tell the story this way or using a flashback scene that exists in the world of the books, but you never actually saw. And putting that into the show in order to tell the story we'll want to tell. So I think that's where we're taking liberties, more so than messing around with too many core elements of the series, because it works: 90 million books have been sold [Laughs].

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Anecdotally, was there something that turned out to be particularly challenging in the translation, something that in the books hits the reader very easily, but for you in showing rather than telling what was tricky?
Judkins: The way that characters are in introduced in the book is very tricky for television-making. [Robert Jordan] had a wonderful vision for how everything was going to tie together at the end, but a lot of characters are introduced for one scene or one small sequence and then are essential to the story of the books three books later. And to tell story like that in television is almost impossible because real human beings are playing these characters and you have to track their availabilities. And I think that's one of the hardest things, and a place in which you see a lot of changes from book to screen is in how we approach these characters and how they arrive to the show because we just can't tell the story the same way that he did in the books.

Tell me a little bit about casting. There's been a lot of time since the books first started and things have evolved socially in terms of inclusion. Tell me where your eye was when you were looking for actors to play these parts even though sometimes these roles have been visually defined by book covers, graphic novels, comic books, and trading cards?
Judkins: I just stayed true to the idea that when these books came out, they were one of the most diverse book series that had ever been released in the fantasy genre. And so I feel if we're going to stand out today and be true to the books, that we also need to feel that way in the fantasy landscape today. So we always had the thought of having an incredibly diverse cast was at the core of the casting process for us too, because I do think it is true to what the books were in their time.

With your four young leads feel like you really found, like, four Luke Skywalkers, in that each have this feeling of being relatable in their average-ness and yet very special at the same time.
Judkins: Our casting director, who's incredible, Kelly Valentine Hendry, cast the net all across the world. I mean, we looked at six different continents, massive casting calls everywhere, hundreds and hundreds of tapes. And as we whittled them down through the process we finally flew people in from all over the world — five Rands, five Egwenes, five Perrins, five Mats — and put them in a room together in London.

And it was amazing when those four were in a scene we'd written the scene for them to do, like the different chemistries that they could have — Rand and Egwene together but then also just with the four of them. And when those four were in the room, something magic happened... There was some moment in the process with each of them that I just knew, at a fundamental level, that was the character. This person was this character from the books, and you could feel it.

What did your cast bring, in terms of their own creativity? Everybody comes to a project and wants to add their distinct brushstroke. What was fun about seeing their original ideas that you were able to use that fit the material, but gave it a little bit of freshness?
Judkins: It's the thing that is the [scariest] about television before you go into it, and then the most fulfilling when it's happening, is when all of these people come in and lift it and they're each are adding their own thing that makes it better and better. For instance, Rosamund [Pike] came in and had an idea of what it would mean to her to use the One Power and how she would move to do that. And we really leaned into it and let her drive the creation of how this would look and how it would function in our world.

And I think it's so successful because when you look in Rosamund's eyes in the show, you believe that she believes that she's moving these forces of nature. And I think you have to allow that to happen sometimes, even if it deviates from what's in the books, it creates something that feels authentic and real. And even if it's different than the books that think it feels true to what they were trying to achieve.

In your writing career, you certainly have plenty of TV and genre experience behind you. But you also have gone on an actual challenging mental and physical journey and had that experience. How did your Survivor experience inform your approach, your connection to this material?
Judkins: I think especially in this first season, we have a lot of scenes where the characters are on a journey and sometimes props will just put a bunch of stuff together and put it on a horse and then the actors just riding. And I was always saying, "If you were on your own in the wilderness, everything that you have has meaning to you. If you are carrying it with you, it means something to you. So spend time with your horse, spend time with your saddle, spend time with your bedroll, and your coat and everything, every single prop that you have, spend time with it and feel what it feels to have that as the only thing that you can use."

And I think it helps in creating this authentic sense that these people are really on this journey, and when they lose some of the things that they have, you could see it in the actor's eyes: "But that's my blanket! That's where I sleep! What do I do without it now?" So it's a small piece that it plays, but hopefully it plays into the show.

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What you wanted to remember about how the source material hit you when you first were exposed to it as you made this.
Judkins: I think that one of the things you see very consistently with Wheel of Time book fans is that they have an emotional reaction to the book series, that it was something that they read at an important time in their lives, that the connection is always very deep and emotional. And I think for me when I first read them with my mom there was something about this world where these women wielded such incredible power, but that the men never had to be smaller to make the women show their power.

That was something that hit me and hit my mom really fully when we read the books and it was something I wanted to convey into the show: that you never need to lesson, these male characters to show how incredible these female characters are.

In the making of this first season, in particular, was there a sequence that gave you chills, because it had lived in your head for so long from the page, and then you got to bring it to life. Like, "This is my fan dream coming true before my eyes."
Judkins: Yeah. The first time, truly, that I saw Rosamund throw a fireball at a Trolloc with finished VFX sound and music. It just made you go, "Oh my God, I can't believe we did this. We really pulled it off, and that we're really going to put this on screen." And I think she's shown that same video clip to her sons 500 times now because they want to see mommy nuke a Trolloc with the fireball.

Are you ready to see the fans start to show up in the character costumes inspired directly from what they've seen on television, seeing that whole side of the world coming to life thanks to the show?
Judkins: Yeah, I'm excited for it. The whole reason you're in television is to make things that people love, so to be working on a project that people love the source material. I just hope that they can love the show a small portion of how much they love books. And if we can achieve that, we're doing something cool, and I think everyone will be excited to see one of the fans in their costume for the first time.

The Wheel of Time Season 1 premieres Friday, Nov. 19 on Amazon Prime Video. 

Watch The Wheel of Time on Amazon Prime Video Season 1 Premieres Nov. 19