Rosamund Pike dives deeper into 'The Wheel of Time' with audiobook narration

Rosamund Pike, known for her role as Moiraine Damodred in the TV adaptation of "The Wheel of Time," is deeply involved with the fantasy series both on screen and off. 

Pike, who relocated her family to Prague for the show's production, is not only passionate about her character but also narrating a new edition of Robert Jordan's audiobooks for the series. 

Pike's director for the audiobooks is her mother, Caroline Friend, a former opera singer. Their shared love for audiobooks dates back to Pike's childhood. 

"When I was a child, we would often travel quite long distances in cars, and we'd listen to books on tape," Pike told EW. "We would always discuss the readers and whether they were successful, because some we really didn't respond to, but others were absolutely wonderful."

Pike sees narrating audiobooks as a natural extension of her acting career and has previously narrated books like "Restless" and a version of "Pride & Prejudice."

However, she highlights the challenges of becoming the voice of every character in the story and transitioning between different moods. 

"You can be on the point of breaking with emotion as you play some very difficult scene, but then the narration in between the dialogue has to be sharp and clear," Pike says. "That's one of the difficulties: Characters can break, but the narration must stay, and you've got to be all those people.

Working on the audiobooks deepened Pike and Friend's appreciation for the grand scale and complexity of Jordan's "Wheel of Time" series, which expands far beyond initial comparisons to "The Lord of the Rings."