" In Emond’s Field, for example, there are people who come from all these different countries. So that’s the way we portrayed our world."

No, there are not people who come from all these different countries. It is a canonical fact that Emond's Field and the other two main Two Rivers villages are a homogenous, isolated breeding pool, with noticeable differences from even the peripheral village, Taren Ferry. The population of the Two Rivers has traits that have all but been bred out of the rest of the continent's and they retain characteristics from two thousand years ago. Later in the story, they have people from other countries come in, so having Emond's Field be a polyglot melting pot really undermines the impact of that migration.

And he makes this assertion seemingly to justify something that does not need to be justified, namely the race of the actors!

Also, the SERIES is not gender essentialist. It is a story about a society that INCORRECTLY subscribes to gender essentialism to a great degree, because the binary aspect of the One Power influences their thinking. Robert Jordan directly attributed the lack of religion in WoT to the presence of the One Power, which is pretty dumb and not remotely reflective of actual religious mentalities, but it does show that in his mind, the One Power has significant effects on people perceive their world. If WoT was gender essentialist, the narrative would justify the "men are this, women are that" assertions or beliefs of the characters. But it does not. We see violent women, nurturing men, women who are good at abstract reasoning and rational thought, who lead armies and run businesses and men who ride their emotions. The series constantly has people running into things that challenge their worldview or occurrences believed impossible to a degree that any reader who believes a fact is true in the story solely on the basis of a character's statement of it is too stupid to be taken seriously.

Also, if you can have gender issues in a world every normal person has a binary option for chromosomes, you can do it with saidar & saidin. With so much material that they have to mention how impossible it is to put everything on the screen, there is also no need to divert from the story for "BTW here is a totally original character who is biologically female but channels saidin and here is a woman with an adam's apple who ALSO channels saidin" and all the rest of that nonsense no one knew they cared about ten years ago.

"One of the core themes of this book series is balance, and that’s very unusual for a big fantasy book series. "

I would appreciate you running the numbers on that please. Show me how all the other big fantasy series out there are not about balance. What does that even mean?

"It’s a fantasy series much more underpinned by Eastern religion and Eastern philosophy than by a Judeo-Christian model."

Yes, with the stigmata-bearing sacrificial savior believed to be born of a virgin, ethnically a descendant of 12 tribes condemned to wander in a desert for their sins, whom they believe is going to be born to lead them to glory but he's actually here for the whole human race. Nothing Judeo-Christian to see here, keep moving. What I am fairly certain of is that Robert Jordan knew a lot more about Eastern religion and Eastern philosophy than a lot of the people who claim an interest in that aspect of the series.

Honestly, the best I think we can hope for is a good adaptation of the more superficial thrills that makes the series so appealing to my 15/16 year old self, or the Jason-Denzelish sort of people who think Brandon Sanderson nailed it.