The ambitious fantasy series “The Pendragon Cycle” doesn’t just reimagine ancient Britain. It also reimagines its heroes. At the center of that transformation is Rose Reid, who plays Charis and also serves as a credited writer on the series.
It’s a rare pairing in the genre, and Reid says stepping into the role required an entirely different kind of heroine than audiences are used to seeing.
“I think the thing that initially drew me to her was because she has such an interesting arc,” Reid said. “We meet Charis at a time that we don’t typically meet a lot of heroines in fantasy.”
Instead of introducing Charis before she completes an epic mission, like saving a kingdom or embarking on a journey, the series begins after the defining moment of her life.
“We meet her after she’s already saved her people, and she’s essentially reconciling what happened and who she was then with who she was now,” she said. Charis is a character living with the consequences of past choices, and the show doesn’t shy away from letting viewers wonder about those decisions. Reid adds, “There are definitely several moments where you want the audience to ask the question, was that the right call?”
“I’ve always been a huge fantasy fan, so this was a dream project for so many reasons,” she said of scoring the role.
Reid’s position as both writer and actress gave her a unique perspective on the character, though she emphasized that she wasn’t cast in the role until later on.
“I actually didn’t know that I was going to play her until very, very late into the writer’s room,” she explained. “I’m really grateful that that wasn’t even a conversation… I wasn’t writing her thinking I was going to play her.”
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That separation ultimately spurred more creativity. “We could have a little bit more freedom to write her the way she needed to be written and that she deserved to be written rather than writing her with a specific person or a specific actress in mind.”
Once filming began, Charis evolved even further. “Characters change as you work through things,” Reid said. She credits showrunner Jeremy Boreing for having “such a specific vision” for who Charis was in every scene. Acting opposite co-stars like Daniel Fathers also reshaped the character.
“How they respond to your character does kind of change … the same thing that I prepped in my head might not work anymore, because Daniel Fathers took a different approach.” One scene during an episode with Fathers, who plays Charis’ father, King Avallach, quickly became her favorite. “It ended up being my favorite scene on screen that I was in anyway. So I’m really, really excited for fans to see that.”
Reid also shared one of the production’s most surprising challenges: the now-infamous bull sequence, which was “terrifying” yet “exciting” because it used living, breathing bulls.
“That sequence took us two weeks to film,” she said. “We spent the entire time we were writing, the entire time we were shooting the rest of the season preparing for that scene, because it was going to be such a big ordeal.”
She admits it left her “kind of an adrenaline junkie.”
Filming in Cinecittà Studios added another layer to the experience. “That set is incredible. It’s huge. You really felt like you were there … it was impossible to step onto that set without thinking that you really had stepped into Atlantis and stepped into another world.”
But more than any single moment, what stayed with her was the cast bond. “This cast is so close,” she said. “We all kind of locked arms and we’ve all been really good friends since then.” Her on-screen sister, Morgan, played by Emree Franklin, became one of her closest real-life friends. “We just became more family than friends, which I think is really special considering that that doesn’t happen very often.”
Reid closed with appreciation for the entire crew that brought “The Pendragon Cycle” to life.
“Audiences don’t fully appreciate how much this is a team effort from everyone from [costume designers Tóth András Dániel Godena-Juhász Attila] to our incredible special effects team to the grips and everybody,” she said. “If audiences like the show, it’s probably not because of something any one group of people did, it’s because of the collective. And that’s part of the reason film is the only career I could ever see myself in.”
“The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin,” premieres January 22, 2026, with early episodes releasing on Christmas Day for DailyWire+ All Access members.
