Artur Zaborski: The First Season “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” largely about the fate of your heroine. In the second season, the action is to focus more on the character of Sauron, the villain. Will it really be like that?
Morfydd Clark: – I can’t reveal too much, so I’ll just say that season two is incredibly spectacular. The visuals are stunning. Just being on set made a stunning impression on me, and the effects were only created in post-production. The first season focused primarily on outlining the action, introducing us to the world shown on the screen, building it. It’s only in the second series that our heroes will get off their feet and get their hands dirty. We’ll deal with the time of the Second Age (this refers to one of the four main periods in the history of Middle-earth, lasting about 3441 years. During this time, key events took place that had a huge impact on the fate of the world created by Tolkien – editor’s note).
Maybe some rings will finally appear?
– Indeed, viewers sometimes joke that our title has rings mentioned twice in the title, and in the first series none of them appeared. Now it will change. It will be beautiful. Our entire gigantic team, with whom we worked, had a hand in it.
You speak as if this job presents you with no challenges whatsoever…
– You know who would complain about having the best job in the world? I won’t say that my costume was heavy, because I didn’t have to deal with wearing a beard that pulled down the heads of the actors playing the dwarves. I won’t complain about the time I had to spend in the make-up room, because they only put two ears on me with prosthetic make-up, and what are the actors playing the orcs supposed to say? The truth is that in this production you always wanted more.
Which part of Middle-earth would you like to spend a day in if you could?
– I would like to spend a day with Tom Bombadil, who lives on the edge of the Old Forest. He is one of the most enigmatic figures in all of Middle-earth, but also a being of great power, whose nature and origins are shrouded in mystery. I am very curious about him, there is much to learn from him. I would also like to spend time with Charles Edwards, watching him work as a blacksmith. Charlie is hilarious.
Your character rides horses, shoots a bow, and fights with opponents. Did you have to undergo any training before you got on set?
– In the second season I shot a lot more with a bow, which was really cool. I was surprised that I did so well, because I have a different kind of hand-eye coordination and I’m not very good at throwing a ball at a target, for example. Meanwhile, I did quite well as an archer. One of the actors even complimented me by saying that I have the grace of an archer. What I love about fantasy is the connection to the past. When you’re riding a horse, carrying a bow and arrows on your back and dressed in clothes from hundreds of years ago, you feel that connection, which for me is the most beautiful part of Tolkien’s work.
Did you feel more connected to your character on the second season? Did you ever find yourself saying, “She wouldn’t do that, she wouldn’t act like that”?
– I think I’ve had it like that from the beginning. I think that when you go on set, you have to know who you’re playing. You have to answer questions about what this character represents, what annoys them, what they like, how they behave. When I went on set for the second season, I felt more like I was returning to a good old friend. When you create a character, you know who inspires you, who among real-life people you look up to, what your research looks like. You feel responsible for the character, but also that it belongs to you. Fortunately, the creators of “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power”, JD Payne and Patrick McKay, like this approach. They don’t impose an interpretation of the character on us, they just work with us to find it.
In the first season, your character was really determined, but also had some resistance. I wonder if now that he knows Halbrand is actually Sauron, will he lose all resistance to action?
“Well, she’s definitely going to have to decide who she is in this situation. She’s lost her sense of where she belongs because something she did went wrong. And that’s something that hardly ever happens to elves. She’s in a very angry state right now. And she’s a sensitive character. Now she’s having to put herself back together in a time of great turmoil. Galadriel is changing, but she still has that fire that we loved about her.”
What about the relationship with Gil-galad, the elven lord played by Benjamin Walker?
– Galadriel was alone for a long time, which is not natural for elves. They like to be together. Now my heroine is back with her people, but she feels humiliated and ashamed. She will have to deal with it somehow. The character of Galadriel testifies to the writing class of Tolkien, who created a seemingly perfect, supreme race, which becomes fallible. And even among peoples who seem gray, we find colors. Otherwise we would get a cartoon, but this is not a cartoon, this is master Tolkien. Our series is in accordance with his testament.
Do you work with any Tolkien specialists on set to help you improve your pronunciation or behavior?
– Yes, but I like to think that we are all slowly becoming Tolkien specialists. On set, we often argue among ourselves about what should be where, how something should be done and who should say what. That is also a big part of the fun. We have an amazing voice coach, Leith McPherson, who worked on all the Hobbits and can speak Elvish fluently. She is like an encyclopedia, we can always call her and consult something. We do that when we can’t agree on something during our arguments (laughs).
The creators of the series have revealed that the second season will feature a three-episode battle. How was it playing this part of the saga?
– It’s exciting to be on this show whether you’re doing battle scenes or anything else. In the second season, there were a lot of scenes with a huge cast of supporting actors, huge sets, a lot of action. They’re just dream sets for an actor because you’re literally there, in this world. You feel like you’re in Middle-earth. I hope it’s as exciting for viewers to watch those scenes as it was for us to shoot them.