Maxance Vincent
One of the most pivotal narrative turns in the second season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is how The Stranger finally learns his true identity, and it is none other than Gandalf, whom he discovers while spending time with Tom Bombadil. For Daniel Weyman, the actor who portrays the stranger, he was never fully certain if the character he was portraying was indeed Mitrhandir, and only found out during production, as they needed to shoot a bit of the season finale before the Tom Bombadil set broke down, as he told Awards Radar during a Zoom press day:
“I was brimming with excitement, first of all, to get to hold this piece of wood that is so specific for Gandalf, but. I can also see it being such a friend to him, knowing that he’s heading off, Nori and Poppy are heading off another way. He has an object that connects to the energy around him and the universe. That felt wonderful. Obviously, coming into Tom Bombadil’s house and realizing that heard the beginnings of his name, clicking forward through time, and beginning to realize how that’s going to end up, and how it’s going to sit finally when it arrives. He is also humble about the fact that it’s not what he’s choosing to call himself, but it’s what others are going to call him. I thought that was a beautiful bit of writing, that it wasn’t him saying, “I’m going to be Gandalf.” He said, “Well, the word that they’ve chosen, almost with a reverence for it, is going to be the mantle it’s put on me. And I think I’m ready for it. They’re going to call me Gandalf.” Being sensitive to that felt like a beautiful moment.”
For Weyman, playing a character who was, at first, a total blank page, felt like “a real joy, because I’ve got some friends who had young kids at that time and we’d been talking with a movement coach about how literal we were about having to learn everything. He had to learn the language, but did he have to learn movement? Did he understand eating or drinking? He certainly had to understand his power. When he had an internal struggle, it began to manifest in the trees around him. All these different things felt like the audience was going on that journey with him.
I didn’t need to be ahead of the audience, and that was a real privilege, because I played it scene by scene by scene. All I had to do was be present and experience what was being experienced. I didn’t have to try and bring other things to ensure the audience understood this. There was a real freedom in that, and certainly at the very beginning, watching friends with young kids. One of the key things with me was when I realized how kids’ scope of focus can change very quickly. I’d be playing with a kid who was watching or looking at this stone that he’d found on a beach, and we’d both be on our haunches looking at this amazing stone and the way it had been colored and smoothed by centuries. I’d be getting really involved in this, and then suddenly he’d look at me, and I’d think he was really involved in me.
He’d walk straight past me, and I turned around, and he’d see an ant walking across a wall. Suddenly, all his attention had gone from the pebble, and it was all on this ant, this amazing thing that was now crawling. I thought that was a really good key for The Stranger about the way that focus and the joy that young kids have about all these new things. It’s like smelling, tasting, or even hearing Nori speak, or watching her go back to her family, and seeing more of the Harfoot, the sounds and the smells of the trees, there’s just so much sensory overload that it became like a playground, allowing myself to see these things for the first time. What would that be like? It was a really freeing experience.”
Of course, there was much to dissect regarding The Stranger/Gandalf’s arc in the second season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, and you can watch our entire conversation below:
[Some of the quotes in this article have been edited for length and clarity]
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