Young Galadriel actress details “mind-blowing” scale of new Lord of the Rings show

Morfydd Clark is stepping into Cate Blanchett’s shoes as Galadriel the elf in Amazon’s Lord of the Rings show, which is reaching for the stars.

Amazon’s Lord of the Rings series remains shrouded in mystery. We know it’s set during the Second Age of Middle-earth, back when Sauron was still forging the Rings of Power and long before folks like Frodo and Sam were born. We know it stars a talented cast that includes Game of Thrones veterans Robert Aramayo and Joseph Mawle. But by and large, we have no idea who they’re playing.

One of the exceptions is Morfydd Clark, a Welsh actor who will be playing the elf Galadriel, the same character Cate Blanchett played in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies. As an elf, she’s extremely long-lived, and was a big mover and shaker in Middle-earth even back then. You could say Clark is playing “Young Galadriel” but that isn’t really accurate; more like, “Slightly Less Ancient Galadriel.”

Clark is currently down in New Zealand, where she’s spent a lot of time quarantining with her Lord of the Rings castmates while they waited to get the all-clear for filming on the series to resume. “It’s definitely strange going into lockdown with people that you have just started working with,” she told NME. “But I think we all treat each other like family. Sure, you’ll occasionally get annoyed by people, but you still like them… because you don’t have a choice. I think this time I’ve spent with the cast will be useful on set. But I obviously worry that the audience will be able to see in our eyes that certain sections were filmed pre-lockdown and some afterwards.”

Something tells me that won’t be a problem, at least for Clark, because she is a very good actor who was always going to blow up sooner or later. She’s already made splashes in stuff like Netflix’s new take on Dracula and The Personal History of David Copperfield. She also played a severed nurse in an episode of His Dark Materials on HBO, which I mention because I remember being impressed with how good she was even though she had next to no lines. Like, she managed to steal the spotlight from the main characters just by staring creepily into space. If she brings that sort of intensity to Galadriel, we’ve got ourselves a winner.

Photo: Morfydd Clark in His Dark Materials.. Courtesy of Alex Bailey/HBO

“My friends love [The Lord Of The Rings],” Clark continued. “Whenever they came back home to Cardiff from university and I came back from drama school, we’d hibernate in one house and watch all three films back-to-back,. But, when I told them I’d been hired for the series, they were like: ‘Oh, really? We’d been so looking forward to that but now it is just going to be you in it we won’t be able to enjoy it as much.’ That was very sobering to hear!”

"Those films are so iconic for me. I’ve actually been suppressing what I know about the Tolkien universe since I came out here. I honestly just love the idea that Elijah Wood has said [that he would do a cameo] because I am such a fan. I’d love everyone to do a cameo in it. It’s so nice to hear support for the series from someone like that."

For the record, I doubt anyone from Jackson’s movies will do a cameo, not least of all because most of their characters weren’t born at the time the show is set, but Wood, who played Frodo Baggins, did indeed say he’d be up for it.

Amazon’s show will be an opportunity for a new cast to play around in this world, although the scale will certainly recall Jackson’s trilogy. Amazon paid the Tolkien estate $250 million for the TV rights to the story alone, and is spending another $250 million on the first two seasons. This is gonna be a big production.

Clark, who seems like a pretty down-to-earth person, is all in on it, although she’s also looking forward to doing some smaller things for variety. “I feel like I’ve got my fix of the massive stuff by doing Lord of the Rings,” she said. “The amount of [people working] on this show is continually mind-blowing. One guy’s job consists just of seeing how dust reacts to footsteps and breath! That would never have even crossed my mind before. Other than something like Marvel, I don’t think things could get much bigger than this.”

Look for The Lord of the Rings (or whatever exactly Amazon ends up calling it) sometime in 2021.

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