One (Welsh) elf to lead them all
THE Elvish are coming! The hotly anticipated, billion-dollar prequel series The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power is just a few weeks away and Amazon Studios has chosen a cast jam-packed with Brits.
Prime among them is Welsh actress Morfydd Clark, 33, who has put on a pair of ‘subtle’ pointy ear prosthetics to play the lead role of Elven warrior Galadriel (the character played by Cate Blanchett in the films). A trailer and images show Clark in silver armour scaling mountains, clinging to a raft in stormy seas, and having visions of the hell which evil threatens to visit on Middle-earth.
The show is set in J.R.R Tolkien’s ‘Second Age’ — thousands of years before Bilbo Baggins set off on his adventures — and will cover the forging of the rings of power, the rise of Sauron, and the fall of the island kingdom of Numenor.
Clark, who was born in Sweden but raised in Penarth, has dyslexia and ADHD and left school at 16.
A Welsh speaker, she was nominated for a Rising Star Bafta for her performance in the film Saint Maud in 2019; and in 2020 played Mina Harker in the Dracula TV adaptation. Later this summer she will play Ophelia in a modern day film of Hamlet, with Riz Ahmed as the Danish Prince.
The LOTR Brit brigade also includes Hull’s Robert Aramayo as the halfelf Elrond (Australian actor Hugo Weaving played him in the films); and Surrey-born Hollyoaks star Maxim Baldry as the young Isildur: a sailor who will become a king.
Sir Lenny Henry is Sadoc Burrows: one of the Harfoots — big-footed ancestors of the Hobbits who roam without a home. Another Brit, Charlie Vickers, plays Halbrand, a man on the run who ends up on that raft with Galadriel. And Welsh actor Owain Arthur plays Durin, king of the dwarfs.
Creating Tolkien’s world in the series has cost an unprecedented $1 billion and represents arguably the biggest gamble of Amazon chief Jeff Bezos’ career.