The second season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is right around the corner, and we have a lot of characters to catch up on. Sauron is back with a new evil plan, the Stranger is heading into the east, and Queen Regent Míriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) is going to have a hell of a time ruling the island nation of Númenor now that she's been blinded during a military campaign in Middle-earth.
We got to talk to Cynthia Addai-Robinson at San Diego Comic-Con, who told us about the challenges ahead for Míriel. "t the end of season one, once she's blinded, she's blindfolded for a period. And, and there, there was actually a brief moment where I had to really portray the blindness toward the end," she said. "In season 2, it's now fully the situation. And so it was making sure that it still felt like something that she was navigating, but it didn't sort of weaken her or make her look as if she was sort of fumbling about; this is a world that she knows very well. She has to project strength...So that was a big challenge and very important to me. But I myself am curious to see where the blindness element goes beyond kind of what we've presented in season 2."
"When you don't have one of your senses, the other senses automatically are heightened. So I felt a lot of times it was really about listening to my fellow actors, and feeling, you know, the, the energy shift in the room, we had some scenes in the court room and you could just feel the sort of the energy of the people. And so you would imagine in a real-world scenario that's probably how you suss out and use your other senses to understand what's going on around you."
Apparently Addai-Robinson made blindness look easy on the set, at least according to costars like Trystan Gravelle, who plays Míriel's ambitious advisor Pharazôn. "I was very impressed how she dealt with that and stuff, because you do when you first get on set, the first couple of scenes that you ever do back, you are looking, you're like, ‘is she following me? I got it.’ There was none of that. It was very good. So we kind of like fell into it. She is a consummate professional. She's got this down. We can crack on with it."
There's a sea monster on Númenor and it's a problem
As we can see in the trailer, Míriel will also deal with a much more external threat: a giant sea monster. It's not clear how she gets into this situation, but Addai-Robinson did say that "the water work" was one of two big challenges for her this season, along with Míriel's blindness. "I think it's sort of about kind of facing a challenge and seeing who you are on the other side of that challenge," she said of this mysterious scene.
"I was under the water and it was scary and I'm still here, so I obviously survived it. But whenever I watch any movie or series and I see an actor underwater, now I really understand how hard that actually is to to achieve. And I'm very proud and have to give a nod to all of the water stunt team at Pinewood in London that basically creates that illusion and make sure we do it safely and all of that good stuff."
Fans familiar with the works of J.R.R. Tolkien know that the island of Númenor has a very dramatic future ahead of it. I don't know how the sea monster gets involved, but Gravelle teases that there are splits forming in Númenorean society. "What you're going to see is I think because of the schism that's in Númenor, you're going to see two separate ways of grieving to be honest and perspectives of grief and how that affects the rest of the island," he hinted.
The Rings of Power star on playing a queen of color
Finally, Addai-Robinson talked a bit about being a person of color playing a prominent role in a fantasy world that's traditionally been seen as populated mainly by white people. There are several people of color in The Rings of Power cast, which led to some disappointing but predictable racist backlash from parts of the fanbase. Now that the show has stuck it out and is returning for season 2, hopefully that will die down.
"I think what I love about literature…is like, in your mind, it's whatever you want it to be," Addai-Robinson mused. "So you plug yourself into that world. I never viewed anything and felt like it didn't represent or look like my world. And so I think to get to this place where now we're presenting this global series to a global audience, it would almost feel strange for it to not represent the world. If Middle-earth is a representation of Earth, it stands to reason that here we are in the 2020s and we need to be representing the world as it is. So I just always think about myself as a kid and reading books and just assuming that people look like me, or at least look like the people around me and the diversity around me...So that was just always assumed for me and I guess sometimes it still takes me by surprise that it would be any different. So it's never been something that I was particularly tormented about. And I'm glad we're just kind of moving forward now...We're not going to be going backward to anything, or at least I don't intend to."
We'll get to watch what Addai-Robinson calls a "supercharged" Númenor storyline when The Rings of Power returns for its second season next week on Prime Video, on Thursday, August 28.
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