‘I started to resent it’: The Witcher’s Liz Carr reveals truth behind Silent Witness exit

Liz Carr was starting to ‘resent’ Silent Witness before she quit (Picture: BBC)

Liz Carr has revealed that she almost grew to ‘resent’ playing forensic examiner Clarissa Mullery in Silent Witness before she quit the role in 2020 after seven years.

The BBC thriller left the door wide open for Clarissa to return, after she wanted a new start to ‘focus more on living than the dead’. 

Clarissa’s reasoning to leave pathology behind is similar to Liz’s decision to leave Silent Witness too, admitting the intense filming schedule took its toll.

‘The job was a joy,’ she told Radio Times. ‘Clarissa was very loved, and I don’t take the experience or the support that I got in that role for granted at all.

‘But I wanted to see who else I could play. Silent Witness took nine months a year, so it did cut out an awful lot of projects that I would have loved to do.

‘I was starting to almost resent that, because I wanted to do other things.’

Liz felt restricted by the long stints of shooting Silent Witness (Picture: BBC/Joel Anderson)

The 49-year-old has since gone on to star in trippy sci-fi thriller Devs and will next appear in The Witcher season two as mysterious lawyer Fenn, alongside Superman star Henry Cavill who arrived at last night’s premiere of the Netflix smash with his mother and dog.

Liz – who lives with arthrogryposis multiplex congenita, which causes limitation of joint movement – continued: ‘Personally for me, as an electric-wheelchair-using disabled woman, it’s really interesting to be cast in things that are historical, or part of a different world.

‘I really relished the costumes, the set and the opportunity to go: “Do you know what? There’s no reason, really, that I can’t play roles in almost anything.”’

Metro.co.uk caught up with stars from The Witcher at last night’s star-studded premiere, with Freya Allen – who stars as Princess Cirilla of Cintra – recalling the moment Henry injured himself on set.

The Witcher returns to Netflix on December 17. Read Liz Carr’s full interview in this week’s Radio Times.

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