Sometimes when you’re shooting a scene, you might have to do an action over-and-over again - often times this is fine, unless you’re John Cena having to eat 40 empanadas in a row for The Suicide Squad, or in the case of The Witcher: Blood Origin’s own Sophia Brown, chowing down on fish eyes.

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Speaking exclusively to RadioTimes.com, Brown confirmed that the feast her and Laurence O'Fuarain’s Fjall eat in episode 1 was far from fanciful: “It started out by having to eat this cold, wet fish – I can’t even remember what type of fish it was – but it was horrendous.”

During the scene, Brown’s bard warrior Éile plucks the eye out and bursts it in her mouth ever-so-casually. But was the eye as real as the fish? “It wasn’t, thank god. They made several sort-of marzipan eyes and put sugar coating over them as a sort of effect.

"But when you’re eating cold fish and then marzipan together… it’s a combination that shouldn’t ever be. So, then they changed it after I ate three-or-four marzipan eyes to grapes which was much better.”

Laurence O'Fuarain, Sophia Brown and Michelle Yeoh in The Witcher: Blood Origin
Laurence O'Fuarain, Sophia Brown and Michelle Yeoh in The Witcher: Blood Origin Netflix

Cold fish, marzipan and grapes don’t sound like the most appetising combination, and evidently the strange combination was a little too much for Brown.

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“Afterwards, I threw up for like half an hour," she recalled. "But, it’s one of those things where you could kind of indulge and be like, ‘Oh I’ve got to do this.’ So it was still fun!”

It’s not the only difficult challenge Brown faced during her time on The Witcher: Blood Origin - aside from eating cold fish eyes, she became acquainted with the instrument of the Nyckelharpa, Éile’s melodic weapon of choice.

“I’ve got a video of me playing the first eight bars of the song I sing or so - it was cool I could do that! But to be able to properly let go, you have to be a skilled musician with that. The fight scenes were easier to get my head around!”

It seems that no matter who you are, when you join the world of The Witcher, you’ll find yourself doing, and perhaps eating, things you never imagined.

The Witcher: Blood Origin arrives on Netflix on Christmas Day 2022. Sign up for Netflix from £6.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.

Check out more of our Sci-Fi coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what's on tonight.

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