Trivia / Shadow and Bone

• Actor-Shared Background: Alina was made mixed Shu Han (counterpart Asian) and Ravkan (Russian) ancestry. Her actor Jessie Mei Li is half-Chinese and half-white English.
• Amateur Cast: The main cast is comprised of unknowns save for Ben Barnes as Kirigan. Leigh Bardugo says this worked on a meta level because the theme of the story is about unknown youths rising to the occasion.
  Bardugo: This is a story about young people who have been overlooked and who’ve never had the chance to show people what they can do, who have all this talent and all of this power. So it made a lot of sense in terms of the soul of the books for us to have all these incredibly gifted young people that arrived on our doorstep, like a magical gift in the show.
• Ascended Fancast: Ben Barnes was an extremely popular fancasting choice for the Darkling among book fans for years before the show was developed. He even showed the casting director a Tumblr post about it to prove that he was right for the part. Leigh Bardugo herself actually reblogged a post in 2013 with Barnes as the Darkling, which some amused fans speculate is the post that Barnes showed the director.
• Creator Cameo: Leigh Bardugo is the first Grisha to hug Alina in "The Making at the Heart of the World"; she's wearing a purple Durast kefta. Also the book David launches at Jesper in "The Heart is an Arrow" looks suspiciously similar to the original cover of Shadow and Bone.
• Directed by Cast Member: Eduardo Garza, who voices Kaz in the Mexican Spanish dub, is the assigned dubbing director of the series.
• Doing It for the Art:
  • Kit Young got so deep into preparing for his role as Jesper Fahey, through practicing with his prop guns and watching gunslingers in Old West films, that by the time it came to pre-production several trick shots that the script assumed would have to be done digitally were actually things Young could do himself by that point.
  • Freddy Carter also learned several sleight of hand tricks — and since Kaz Brekker never removes his gloves, that made the tricks all the more difficult to perform.
• I Want You to Meet an Old Friend of Mine: Luke Pasqualino (David) and Howard Charles (the Conductor) starred as D'Artagnan and Porthos in The Musketeers.
• Never Work with Children or Animals: Milo the Goat was played by two goat actors, Ugri and Bugri, whom Kit Young has often claimed should have been named 'screaming and pooping' instead. Ugri screamed perpetually when being carried around by Freddy Carter, and Bugri, when filming the train scene, was constantly kicking; a half-second after the shot of Jesper hugging Milo that made it into the show, real life Bugri headbutted Young nearly into the wall.
• Queer Character, Queer Actor: Jack Wolfe is gay like the character he plays, Wylan.
• Release Date Change: The series was originally intended for a late 2020 release but due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, work on post-production and reshoots were delayed; as a result the series was pushed back to April 23rd 2021.
• Self-Adaptation: Leigh Bardugo, author of The Grishaverse, is one of the executive producers.
• Serendipity Writes the Plot: Originally Kirigan's flashback in The Unsea where he unwittingly creates the Shadow Fold was going to be based on the prequel novella that Leigh Bardugo wrote about his childhood, The Demon In The Woods. It was changed because the realities of production kicked in and there simply wasn't time to shoot the sequence which would have needed to include underage children in freezing water with one of them getting their head bashed in, so an alternative flashback was shot.
• Troubled Production: The series probably couldn't be made in the worst moment. First COVID-19 Pandemic complicated things and delayed the premiere, barely getting finished at all. Then it weathered for two seasons, until the 2023 writers strike ultimately killed it completely, forcing cancellation rather than working on the 3rd season.
• What Could Have Been: Ivan and Fedyor were supposed to be in season 2, but Julian Kostov revealed that thanks to scheduling problems and Covid related difficulties, the actors and show creators decided that it was better to have the characters appear in (potential) future seasons.
• Word of Gay: Actors Julian Kostov and Simon Sears have endorsed the "Heartrender Husbands" ship of Fedyor and Ivan, and confirmed they deliberately played their dynamic like a married couple.

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