Netflix The Bard on The Witcher
If you’re watching the new Netflix series The Witcher, then you’ve no doubt enjoyed the bard character Jaskier. He’s portrayed by Joey Batey and he sings a lot. But who is Joey Batey in real life? Is he a professional singer?
Joey Batey Is an Actor & Singer
Joey Batey does such a wonderful job at his song in The Witcher, including the earworm “Toss a Coin,” because he has a lot of experience as a singer in real life too.
According to IMDb, Batey has a lot of credits to his name before getting the role of Jaskier. They include The War of the Worlds (Henderson), Stan Lee’s Lucky Man (Bobby), Knightfall (Pierre), CB Strike (Al), In the Dark (Shelley), Mount Pleasant (Gopher), Whitechapel (Gavin), The White Queen (Edward of Lancaster), and more.
Batey is a British actor who was born in Newcastle. He studied at the University of Cambridge and was in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Olivier. He was also in productions of Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies on West End and Broadway, according to his IMDb profile. He played court musician Mark Smeaton.
Redanian Intelligence, a publication specializing in The Witcher news and inside behind-the-scenes scoops, reported back in July that Batey was recording songs for The Witcher. He posted on Instagram about the work he was doing in post-production, writing: “A lovely week tunelessly warbling in the studio for #thewitcher. A huge thank you to everyone at #northsevenstudios for providing a sick man with a steady supply of lemon and honey. ‘Dandelion… Regis just told you to f*** off. He just said it more politely. Be so good as to shut your trap.'”
That last part was a quote from Baptism of Fire, the third novel in the Witcher series.
Batey is also the frontman for The Amazing Devil group, so he does work in music outside of acting too.
The Amazing Devil’s Facebook page is here. They have a new album called The Horror and the Wild coming out in February 2020.
In the photo above, Batey was pictured with the group about four months ago, so he’s definitely still involved.
Batey shared on his Instagram about his work with his group in August:
He wrote: “Taking a break from @witchernetflix and utterly overjoyed to be back in the studio putting down the second album with my band @theamazingdevil.
Here be the real monsters… Lots of love gang.”
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