THE DWARVES
Owain Arthur as Durin IV and Sophia Nomvete as Disa
What can you tell us about Durin and Disa?
Owain Arthur: Durin IV is a prince, a son and a father, and we come across him during the golden age of Khazaddûm in Middle-earth. Life is good. He’s a very happy, proud, loving, passionate – and stubborn – Dwarf.
Sophia Nomvete: Disa is the first female Dwarf that we will ever see – what an honour it is to play wonderful, beautiful Disa. She’s a powerhouse and a force of nature who cares so much about her home and her people, and also possesses some incredible magical powers as well. She stands alongside lovely Durin to work for the best possible outcomes for Khazad-dûm.
How does Durin feel about being heir to the throne?
Arthur: There are the pressures you might expect – the expectation of what my father wants me to be, what I feel is my duty, what I should do, what I shouldn’t do… Do I follow with tradition or do I think out of the box? The prospect of becoming king is a pressure on Durin, but he is actually looking forward to it.
Nomvete: I think Disa sees this as an opportunity to change the direction of politics and the people of Khazaddûm. She wants a sense of freedom, and she absolutely wants the best for her people and for her husband. She is just rooting to take this moment by the horns, and to use all the power that they will inevitably have for good.
What we’ve seen of Khazad-dûm so far looks incredible. What was it like to turn up for work there?
Nomvete: It was unbelievable, because we know, having watched the films and done the research, how Khazad-dûm has been seen before, which was, of course, like a tomb [as the Mines of Moria in The Lord Of The Rings]. But when we walked onto the set for the first time, it was alive, in colour, with gold and meticulous angles. You could see the veins in the stone!
Arthur: You had to touch it to work out if it was real stone or not. What’s great is that part of the design was also about thinking, “How do you build this stuff without electricity? How do you light this place?” So there were open flames, which had its challenges as well – very hot! – and then they were thinking about how you can bounce daylight into a mine that’s half a mile deep. It was very impressive indeed.
Harfoots bear quite a resemblance to Hobbits. What’s the difference?
Markella Kavenagh: Physically they look quite similar
– as in they have the same feet, they have the ears – but I think the main difference lies in their circumstances. When we meet the Hobbits they have the Shire, they have a home, but the Harfoots are still very much in the process of finding that for themselves.
Megan Richards: They’re definitely searching for a home. They have these carts, which are where they keep all their belongings and are what they sleep in. The Harfoots travel and move through the seasons, through nature, carrying their homes on their backs. But they do have that strong sense of community that the Hobbits do, so there are definitely elements that trickle through.
What can you tell us about Nori and Poppy?
Kavenagh: Nori’s a very resolute, inquisitive, curious Harfoot. She’s attempting to balance her dedication to family and the responsibilities she carries with an interest in adventure – and sometimes that gets her into a bit of trouble. She just feels like sometimes the Harfoot community needs to stop and subvert tradition a bit to see what they could be if they just took a risk every now and then.
Richards: Poppy is funny and loving, and sort of like a bouncing ball of fun. But she’s also very cautious and observant, especially in comparison to Nori. She’s so loyal, and she has so much love for her friend – she really is there by her side, and you really see that throughout the whole series.
The Lord Of The Rings famously features species of different sizes. How did you find it when shooting at different scales?
Richards: All of the cast went through something called “Scale Academy”. It was a couple of hours, and it was a Powerpoint presentation led by the VFX team. They were great and they were trying to talk to us about the technology and how advanced it is now – I still don’t understand it, it’s just insane!
There was a lot of standing on apple boxes or digging holes in the ground, and they would build trees that would make us look smaller or give us props that were larger than us. We also had scale doubles – sometimes they’d be used if it was a wide shot using natural New Zealand landscapes.
Bronwyn and Arondir don’t appear in Tolkien’s books. Tell us about them…
Nazanin Boniadi: Bronwyn is a Southlander, so her ancestors chose the wrong side of history. They chose the side of evil, and they were banished to barren lands where they had to restart and rebuild. They’re still trying to earn the trust of the good guys, and the Elves are watching over them, so they feel like the underdogs. She’s a healer, and a single mother of a rebellious teenage son, and in the meantime, she’s in a forbidden love [affair] with a Silvan Elf called Arondir.
Ismael Cruz Córdova: Arondir is a soldier stationed in the Southlands watching over those bad, bad Humans [laughs], keeping them on track. He’s a quiet warrior, a ferocious but stoic being, but he’s different to the other Elves there. He’s quite curious towards the Humans, and questioning why the Elves are there. That curiosity leads him to meet and fall in love with a Human, Bronwyn.
We know their relationship is frowned upon. What draws them together?
Córdova: They’re both disruptive in their own way – dissonant voices within their own communities – and they’re both leaders, people who have had to make their own way. I think they both share this curiosity for the Other, and I think that brings them closer and closer.
Boniadi: I love the fact that you look at them, and they’re so different in movement and race, in background and everything. You have an Elf and a Human who are a very unlikely couple, but that’s all overcome by their similarities. You think an Elf and a Human are never going to fall in love, but they’re bonded by these similar traits they have, a love for something better that drives them to improve things.
Everybody has preconceptions about famous characters like Galadriel and Elrond. Is it liberating that we know nothing about Bronwyn and Arondir?
Córdova: It’s exciting and it’s freeing, because there’s just possibility. You need that to offset things that are already set in the writing, and the characters where we know how they’re going to end up.
Boniadi: I think the beauty of the show is it draws from what’s familiar, but it also introduces this newness that only enhances the story.
Galadriel and Elrond are Middle-earth celebrities but Gil-galad only appears for a few seconds in flashback in Peter Jackson’s The Lord Of The Rings. What do we need to know about him?
Ben Walker: He’s king of the Elves! Gil-galad is the longest reigning king of the Noldor [a race of High Elves], and that pretty much sums it up. He’s lived through peace, he’s lived through war, and because he’s an Elf he has this breadth of understanding of time, the inevitable rise of evil and how to prepare for it.
Will the show reveal a different side to the Elves? From what we’ve seen, this Galadriel is much more of an action hero than the Cate Blanchett incarnation.
Morfydd Clark: Delving into The Silmarillion and The Unfinished Tales, I learned so much about her that I didn’t know. Obviously she’s been alive for a long, long time, and this was a version of her I wasn’t aware of. I find it such a gift to be able to learn all these physical skills, which I found really helpful in making me feel like a warrior Elf.
Does knowing that you’re playing an immortal being affect how you tackle the role?
Walker: Very much so. I mean, you have to stretch your imagination to the point where everyone you’ve known and loved has died over and over and over again – and then they have to muster the strength to have hope, especially this particular group of Elves who have chosen to stay behind to protect Middle-earth. It’s one of the reasons I love the Elves so much.
Robert Aramayo: Elrond had a really important choice to make
– he chose to be immortal, while his brother chose to be mortal. That’s something that is so unique, because he’s seen his own blood decay and die. I thought that was a really interesting thing, because it must be quite confusing for someone who’s immortal to see the ways in which a mortal body ages.
Clark: I think the thing that sets Galadriel a bit apart from the other Elves at the moment –which is a source of lots of her inner turmoil – is that she does have a sense of time, more so than everyone else. That means she is rushing, in a way that I don’t think the Elves generally do. That’s taxing for her.
How much did you explore the works of JRR Tolkien before making the show?
Clark: We all delved into it. Some of us were better at it than others, and Rob [Aramayo] was the best. Whenever I was confused about something, I’d be like, “Rob, I’ve read this, but it still doesn’t make sense to me!” That was really fun, actually, because I felt like I was going back to school in a way – but really wanting to learn.
Aramayo: There’s certain things in Tolkien where you first read it, and you’re like, “Why does Morgoth have five names?” There are different names for the same thing, and the names seem to change in the writing of it. But there are lots of things that happen like that in the real world, and Tolkien extrapolated them into these really great ideas. They just add some texture to his story. It goes so deep, and you can journey into it as far as you want – and keep going!
The Rings Of Power will give us our first glimpse of Númenor, home to the greatest Human civilisation in Middle-earth. What can we expect to see?
Charlie Vickers: Númenor is almost like Tolkien’s version of Atlantis, and it’s a massive part of his work that’s never been explored on screen before. You get to see amazing mariners and sailors.
Lloyd Owen: The Númenor set is like Santorini, Marrakesh or ancient Greece, and it goes on forever – even in the bits we didn’t shoot in.
Ema Horvath: I spent a lot of time with Daniel Reeve – he created Bilbo Baggins’s handwriting, and he created the Númenórean alphabet, which has never been seen before. I was the only cast member who knew how to write it, and when I went onto the Númenor set, there was this tiny little alleyway where they’d carved Elvish into the wall. Then, over it, they’d graffitied Númenórean, and no one else had noticed it. Who knows if it’s in shot in the show at all – but they did it!
Can you give us a quick bio for your characters, please?
Vickers: Halbrand is a man who has reached a sort of crossroads in his life. He’s from the Southlands, so he is in a part of Middle-earth which is quite poor. He has a complicated relationship with Elves, and basically I think he gets to a point where he’s like, “I don’t want to live my old life any more, I want to start afresh.” We end up meeting him in the middle of the Sundering Seas, then he meets someone who pushes him in one direction and he wants to go in the other…
Owen: Elendil is the father to Eärien, Isildur and Anárion, who’s also written about in Tolkien’s legendarium, but he’s [currently] elsewhere, a force outside of our current family. Elendil is a very capable mariner and a widower, so he’s dealing with the loss of his wife, trying to be a single father to these grieving adult children. He then gets drawn into some of the politics of Númenor. There’s a schism in society that’s also being reflected in the family itself, because there are differing views among us as to which way Númenor should go.
Horvath: Eärien is the baby of the family and she’s a bit overlooked. She’s dealt with so much loss in her life, and she’s trying to be a mother figure in the absence of their mum. She’s an aspiring architect, and also has political ambitions bubbling underneath the surface. She believes strongly in Númenor and in authority, which is the polar opposite to the philosophy of her brother and her father.
Maxim Baldry: Isildur is a young sailor who’s wanting to pursue the footsteps of his father – or at least his father wants him to pursue his footsteps. He’s struggling to decide what he wants to do and he makes mistakes along the way, leaving a bit of a path of destruction with some of his decisions.
We know that Isildur has quite the destiny, tied up in the fate of the One Ring… How did that affect you?
Baldry: It’s hard to get up in the mornings from the weight of the expectation, so hopefully I do it justice! [laughs]
But one of the beautiful things about the show is that we’ve been given the chance to explore these characters in long-form TV. We have a chance to breathe with them and live with them, and watch them eat – I always love when a character just eats on screen!
The Rings Of Power is on Prime Video now.