Amazon Casts Emilio Sakraya as Fourth Wing's Xaden Riorson — SkimNews
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- Amazon Prime Video revealed Thursday that Emilio Sakraya will play Xaden Riorson alongside Esther McGregor as Violet Sorrengail in its adaptation of Rebecca Yarros' "Fourth Wing" dragon-rider trilogy, which has two more books in the pipeline.
- Sakraya, a 30-year-old German actor, brings credits including "Rhinegold," Netflix's "Tribes of Europa," "Warrior Nun," "Those About to Die," and an upcoming role in Season 3 of "One Piece" — roles that have him playing rebel leaders and performing his own combat sequences.
- Sakraya is also an electronic pop musician with over 300,000 monthly Spotify listeners and sold-out European tours, a career the article notes BookTok fans may not yet know.
- McGregor (24) broke out in Amazon Prime's 2025 hit "We Were Liars" and previously appeared opposite Nicole Kidman in "Babygirl," in Disney+'s "Obi-Wan Kenobi" (starring her father Ewan McGregor), and in Freevee's "High School."
- In Yarros' novels, Xaden is written as a large, dominating wing leader at Basgiath War College with dark, intimidating features whose initial hostility toward Violet — rooted in familial drama — spirals into a steamy romance.
- No release date has been set, and major remaining roles like Dain Aetos, Liam Mairi, and Rhiannon Matthias remain uncast as production ramps up.
Why it matters: The casting lands a non-Hollywood, Berlin-based lead — a German actor already known to European film and Netflix genre audiences — as the face of one of BookTok's most-anticipated fantasy adaptations, giving Amazon Prime Video a lead who can also bring an existing 300,000-strong Spotify audience to the show's promotional push.
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