Many newcomers to The Witcher world will only identify Henry Cavill as the face and voice of Geralt of Rivia, but before the Man of Steel star came along to portray the White Wolf in Netflix’s live-action outing, that recognition belonged to Doug Cockle, who voiced Geralt for more than a decade in CD Projekt’s highly popular and acclaimed video game trilogy.
Earlier this year, Doug gave his legions of admirers a piece of terrible news, revealing that he has been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Now, with the gaming community having spent the last couple of months praying and worrying over one of their most iconic voice actors, Cockle has come forward to give you a heartwarming update.
Chatting with IGN, the American actor said that while his cancer was “advanced,” he still managed to catch a whiff of it in time.
“My cancer was pretty well advanced so a few more years untested might have meant that my choices were fewer and/or the treatments might not have been as effective. Talking about these things means that others might hear and act for themselves or those they care about.”
Apparently, Cockle’s family had a history of prostate cancer affliction, but his own illness being asymptomatic meant that he never thought twice about it — until he viewed a documentary about prostate cancer. That’s also why he came forward to share this with the world; to raise awareness about something that a lot of men might be negligent towards.
“When the Prostate Cancer UK tweet showed up in my Twitter feed it just felt right,” Cockle continued. “If I retweeted this, I wouldn’t so much be talking about myself as talking to and about all of us men. My own diagnosis wasn’t really the point; it was the context to spread the word.”
Since then, innumerable members of the community, and even folks from CD Projekt have reached forward to send their love and support, for which Cockle is grateful.
There have been versions of Geralt in the past, and there’ll certainly be versions of him in the future, but to many of us, Doug Cockle will always remain the Geralt of Rivia, so we’re sending him all of our best wishes and prayers.