Morfydd Clark plays Galadriel, an Elven warrior who wants to stop evil from returning to the fantasy world of Middle-earth, in the new series “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.”
The series, one of the most expensive ever produced, will debut on Amazon.com Inc’s Prime Video on Friday, with new episodes based on the appendices of J.R.R. Tolkien’s original novels airing weekly.
Clark stated that her role as Galadriel allowed her to experiment with stunts that showcase her character’s power against the backdrop of a historically male-dominated society.
“Gender simply isn’t the same in Middle-earth because I’m playing a character who can physically take down any man around her,” Clark explained in an interview. “It was a lot of fun to try to embody someone with a lot of physical strength.”
Tolkien has “some of the greatest female characters in literature,” according to co-executive producer Patrick McKay, and Galadriel was one of the first characters the creators considered for the new story.
“It was a joy to imagine what her world was like and what she might have been struggling with from clues throughout the text,” McKay said.
Trystan Gravelle, who plays Pharazon, agreed, saying he doesn’t think there’s anyone more “badass on this Earth than a woman.”
“To see Morfydd take names and numbers as she does on screen is incredible,” he said.
The show stars Robert Aramayo, Ismael Cruz Cordova, Sophia Nomvete, and Nazanin Boniadi, among others, and is set during the Second Age of Middle-earth, thousands of years before the films “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings.”
The series follows both new and returning characters as they deal with the re-emergence of evil in Middle-earth and forge legacies that will last a lifetime.