The Show Interview
THE RINGS OF POWER
Production designer Ramsey Avery had a challenge: Create the glory days of Middle-earth, including places that lay in ruins in the Lord Of The Rings and Hobbit films, along with never-beforeseen places like the island of Númenor (the writer Tolkien’s take on the Atlantis myth) and the coastal elven city of Linden. And the magnificence of it all has to live up to the series’s epic score created by Bear McCreary.
“This world is vibrant and golden, as opposed to what we see in the films, which is the Third Age when everything is on its decline and fading,” says Ramsey. His designs were guided not just by Middle-earth’s different races, but by how they think about their world, which can be seen in the series’s version of Khazad-dûm and how it contrasts to the overpowering architecture we see in the Lord Of The Rings films. “We thought, ‘Let’s go back to the true nature of the dwarves and how they are of stone and of flame.’ Their architecture, and even their clothing, is much more sensible. There’s a sensitivity toward the stone, rather than forcing their will on the stone,” says Ramsey.
“When you see these epic statues and this wonderful masonry, you’re walking through the mind of a person that’s burdened by his own mortality and is very concerned about what legacy he’s going to leave behind.”
• Watch The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power season 1 from Friday 2 September on Prime Video.