Morfydd Clark, who plays Galadriel in Amazon’s upcoming Lord of the Rings show, talks about the “extraordinary experience” of stepping into Middle-earth.
Amazon is making a show based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, but even though it’s one of the highest-profile series in production for the company — with Amazon committing $500 million to make the first two seasons alone, it’d better be — we still don’t know much about it. We know it’s set during the Second Age of Middle-earth, back when the elves were still pretty numerous and Sauron was busy forging the One Ring, but we don’t know what stories it will tell. We even know who’s in the cast, but so far they’ve been keeping their lips pretty sealed.
But now, at least one of them is stepping forward. Welsh actress Morfydd Clark is playing a younger version of Galadriel, the elven leader played by Cate Blanchett in Peter Jackson’s movies. She’s currently stuck in New Zealand, where the show is being filmed, while she waits out the coronavirus. “I was expected to be back in Britain,” Clark told The Daily Mail. “But not now. I’ve been calibrating in my head that I won’t be home . . . for a while.” Maybe in the fall?
All things considered, there are probably worse places to be quarantined than New Zealand, which is famous for its natural beauty. Jackson used that to great effect in his Lord of the Rings movies. J.A. Bayona, who’s directing the first two episodes of Amazon’s show, is following his lead. Clark says that filming the series has been “an extraordinary experience.”
"Every day your jaw drops on the floor again. [J.A. Bayona’s] imagination is just wild!"
At this point, we’ll have to take her word for it. The only look we’ve gotten behind the scenes in this image Bayona took of a tree during a night shoot:
I’ll take it.
It’s also not clear if filming on the first two episodes were finished filming when the cast committed to quarantining in New Zealand or if production is going to start back up again. If the latter, things could clear up soon, because New Zealand has opened itself up for film production again. James Cameron and his team for Avatar 2 recently arrived in the country to continue shooting on that movie.
That said, there are those who don’t think much of Cameron and crew getting what they see as special treatment from New Zealand’s government, since they were allowed to come into the country and film when the coronavirus has put many other people out of work, including horticulturalists, fishermen and education professionals who would love to receive similar exemptions. MP David Seymour said the move was “an insult to working New Zealanders.”
"What are the rules at the border? At the moment, it seems that if you’re a friend of the government, you’re in business. If not, you’re on your own.There should be one rule for everyone… It’s unacceptable for politicians to be picking and choosing who can enter the country."
So if filming does start back up, the people working on The Lord of the Rings show might wanna keep their heads down.
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h/t Digital Spy