Maxance Vincent
Morfydd Clark has been a rising star for quite some time. But after starring in Rose Glass‘ Saint Maud, she has been one to watch. It shouldn’t surprise anyone who has seen her in that film that she is one of the best parts of Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, playing Galadriel. In the first season, Galadriel shares a lot of screen time with Halbrand (Charlie Vickers), who is revealed to be Sauron at the end of the series.
The twist shocked viewers, as the show consistently misled audiences into making them believe that Adar (Joseph Mawle) and The Stranger (Daniel Weyman) were Sauron when he was in the audience’s faces all along. It honestly shouldn’t have surprised anyone: his first line was literally, “Looks can be deceiving”!
In building this on-screen relationship with Vickers and discovering the truth about Halbrand’s character, Morfydd Clark explained to Awards Radar during a virtual press day for the show that they “had suspicions, because he was asked to audition with a Lucifer monologue. Working with Charlie has been one of the joys of my career. He’s wonderful and collaborative, and people really loved our chemistry. I don’t think that could’ve happened if that came from feeling completely safe with someone. He’s so professional and kind, and I’m very happy with what we got in the end. It was very exciting for me in the last episode when I saw him transform. I could rave and wax lyrical about Charlie forever. [laughs]“
In terms of exploring a new side to Galadriel that audiences had not seen on screen before, Clark expressed that since she knew where her character ends up, the experience of playing her was a bit daunting. “I know where my character ends up and know that, in the end, she is happy to a degree. She finds a degree of peace. I wanted to explore how far we could take her away from that so that she could really go on a journey. During this time, we have been grappling with history a lot, what our responsibilities are, and what has happened in the past. I was really fascinated by the idea that the elves can’t escape our living history. Because she comes from a family that has power and has made mistakes in the past, there has been a cost to that. I always wondered what it was like to carry that weight, and if you can free yourself from a degree of self-loathing and guilt.”
During our video conversation, we also discussed Clark’s knowledge of J.R.R. Tolkien and love of the fantasy genre, the training process that went into preparing her for the show’s biggest action setpieces, and how she interpreted the pivotal moment in which Galadriel does not tell Elrond (Robert Aramayo) and Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards) that Halbrand is Sauron, after bringing him to Eregion.
You can watch our full conversation below and see all episodes of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power on Prime Video:
[Some of the quotes in this article have been edited for length and clarity]
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