A lot more is at stake in Season 2 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. With Sauron emerging as the chief antagonist — the big reveal that Halbrand was, in fact, Sauron, at the end of the first season, was its high point — the elven world is rocked by epic situations which see all its players, both big and small, forced to make tough decisions.
The Prime Video show, based on JRR Tolkien’s history of Middle-earth series and set thousands of years before the novel, depicts the major events of Middle-earth’s Second Age. Its first season released in 2022.
Ahead of Season 2, which is scheduled to hit the streaming platform today with its first three episodes, t2 sat down with Charlie Vickers (who plays the central character of Sauron) and Charles Edwards (cast as Celebrimbor, the elf-smith described as the protagonist this season and who is manipulated into forging the Rings of Power by Sauron) at hotel Shangri-La in Singapore last week for a chat. The pair’s relationship, a key storyline, informs a large part of Season 2, with co-showrunner Patrick McKay describing their dynamic as the “spine of the season”. The Asia-Pacific premiere of The Rings of Power S2 was also held in the ‘Lion City’, with t2 in the house.
What feedback from Season 1 of the series do you still treasure?
Charles Edwards: Celebrimbor is a character known very well by (JRR) Tolkien fans. He is prominent in the lore, but not so much in the story of The Lord of the Rings. I think he is mentioned once in the book and several times in the appendices.
In Season 1, members of the audience, who know what Celebrimbor stands for, were pleased with where we were going with the character. In Season 2, they will possibly pick up on things that we have put in there and will satisfy them in terms of his journey going forward. That will be very gratifying.
Charlie Vickers: It is always nice when people appreciate nuance, right? Even within the framework given to me by the showrunners as to how I could work with Halbrand in Season 1, we tried to put in little moments. If you rewatch the first season, you will perhaps come across moments which will make more sense now because you know that Halbrand is Sauron. In the final episode (of the first season), people really responded to the reveal (of Halbrand being Sauron) and how that was executed.
Charlie, pulling off the Dark Lord Sauron in Season 2 must have been a huge challenge. But did you feel more at ease as a performer because you at least knew who you were playing now, given that you had no idea who your character was in the early stages of the first season?
Charlie: A hundred per cent! I was more comfortable as a performer with knowing who the character was and his full back story. That meant that I could plot and craft my journey, which, if you work in theatre, is a given. Having said that, there is something about not knowing, which adds a little bit of excitement.
Charlie as Sauron and Charles as Celebrimbor in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power S2, premiering on Prime Video today
We have talked about this a lot as a cast. Which is that if you return to the known rather than the unknown, in the sense that we all now know what this production is about, in terms of the scale and the people we were working with and having actors who have lived in these characters for five years, then there is a deeper level of knowledge and the characters have time to spread their wings this season. That can only come from time.
Charles: I think we are feeling much more grounded in the world (of The Rings of Power) now. Season 1, by dint of being a collection of a lot of stories, had to be set up. One had to introduce the worlds, introduce the characters. And now in Season 2, we are there in that world. The big wheels can now start to grind and tell the big Tolkien tales. I think we are in a really good position to do that.
Charlie, what was it like inhabiting the unequivocal darkness that Sauron comes with? What kind of physical and mental preparation did you have to undertake?
Charlie: For me, a lot of the mental comes from the physical. It informs everything. A lot of the process of this character was finding out the way that he moved... it is very restricted by the costumes because Sauron wears a massive cloak, which Halbrand didn’t. So you can really only move a certain way.
Charles: Welcome to my world! (Laughs)
Charlie: Yes, exactly... the elven world. But also, we are living within a context. There are certain rules that we have all established as performers in this world. It was about spending time working out the character’s physicality. That then informed the way that he spoke and the way that his thoughts are kind of positioned. It came down to literally as fine a detail as the thoughts come slower and they become more precise than perhaps a human would.
The darkness is something that I worked from a place of: ‘What does he want to do?’ The fact that he will stop at nothing to achieve what he wants is where the darkness comes from.
You shot Season 1 during the pandemic in New Zealand, away from friends and family. For Season 2, most of you were going home after shoot every day. Was that an advantage or a disadvantage?
Charlie: It is really about asking yourself whether you see it as a positive. I like being able to go home. I like to return to a familiar place where you can switch off for the weekend and not think about work. But if you are in an environment of work, particularly in the middle of a filming block, you will always be turning it over at the back of your mind.
Charles: I like to be in a situation where you can go home, but then also look forward to going back to work the next day, which is what I always do. It was pure circumstance in New Zealand. Those were troubled times and there were filming hiatuses during Covid. We actually believed and thought we were going to be there for some years, filming the rest of the season and when that happens, your mindset adjusts accordingly.