At long last, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power cast can talk about their characters. And they did just that during the Rings of Power panel at Hall H during San Diego Comic-Con 2022. After the panel, Morfydd Clark (Galadriel), Benjamin Walker (High King Gil-Galad), Lloyd Owen (Elendil), Nazanin Boniadi (Bronwyn), and Leon Wadham (Kemen) sat with Emily Aslanian in the TV Insider and TV Guide Magazine studio, sponsored by Hollywood unBranded, to give a sneak peek into Prime Video’s sure-to-be epic series, gushing about the show’s “transcendent” nature, “complicated” elf hierarchies, and more.
Like Peter Jackson’s franchise, the series filmed in New Zealand. And as the Rings of Power trailers show, the sets are a wonder. Owen plays Aragorn’s direct ancestor, Elendil, “the 38th great-grandfather of Aragorn,” according to the actor. Wadham plays Kemen, Elendil’s fellow Númenórian, “who’s also involved in the political sphere of the island.” They said there was nothing quite like walking on to the set of Númenór for the first time.
“The set of Númenór, which they’d built on the back lot, is absolutely extraordinary,” Owen said. Wadham, who has worked in the same New Zealand studio on other projects, added, “I thought I knew what I was walking into. I turn up, and there was a city with a wharf with boats in water on the backlot. It was transcendent.”
Clark and Walker then got into the hierarchy of the elves and Galadriel and Gil-Galad’s tenuous resulting relationship.
“It’s complicated,” said Walker. “I think there is a mutual respect and an understanding of experience, but the elves honor hierarchy, because they’re going to live forever. We’ve got to establish some form of order, and with any form of hierarchy, there’s friction.”
Added Clark, “the elves are all very old, very clever, have seen a lot. And so, there’s a bit of arrogance between them as well, I’d say, which kind of seems fair enough.”
Boniadi plays a Southlander human, Bronwyn, who the actor teased is “the mother of a rebellious teenage son and in a forbidden romance with an elf.”
Check out the full video interview with this group of the Rings of Power cast, above, and be sure to tune in for TV Insider’s future interviews with additional cast from SDCC 2022.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Series Premiere, Friday, September 2, Prime Video