Finding one’s elven look and presence

Jamie Campbell Bower talks The Rings of Power

THE Rings of Power, an epic fantasy drama set thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings books, is now on its third season. It brings to screens the legends of the Second Age of Middle-earth’s history, an era in which great powers were forged and kingdoms rose to glory and fell to ruin.

All 16 episodes of the first two seasons are available to stream exclusively on Prime Video. The Rings of Power Season 3 is set to release on Nov. 11.

Playing the elf Celeborn, long-lost husband of Galadriel, Lady of the Golden Wood, has been a cool experience for Jamie Campbell Bower, who just finished playing the Stranger Things villain Vecna earlier this year. But even as an actor with quite a few fantasy franchises under his belt — Harry Potter and The Mortal Instruments, to name a few — The Rings of Power may be his biggest challenge yet, he said in a Zoom call back in August.

“It’s always scary; I can’t lie. You’re being asked to step into a world that so many people know, so many people love. At times you are asked to play characters that have existed in people’s minds for years,” he told BusinessWorld. “You want to treat it with respect and you want to treat it with awareness, but you also have to, at times, turn that voice off, and focus on making it your own.”

Mr. Bower is taking on a mysterious role, since Celeborn shows up only in the third season after being missing for hundreds of years during the war. The character was mentioned in season one by his wife Galadriel, played by Morfydd Clark.

“My first experience of this universe was those first movies. They came out in 2000, and I would have been 12 or 13, and they meant a lot to me. They became my comfort films that I go back to all the time, underneath a blanket on a Sunday,” he said. “So, it’s amazing. There’s been so much I’ve been able to discover.”

He revealed that his mood board for Celeborn contains Tolkien’s paintings as visual references, depicting Middle Earth as light and dark, and fanart of Celeborn surrounded by trees and living things.

With season three set in wartime, as Sauron toils day and night to harness a power that will dominate all life and the rest of Middle-earth must band together to stop him, Mr. Bower noted that fantasy epics like this “focus on the truth of what it means to live life in this world.”

“Tolkien’s characters change when they are given chances, when they are given hope, when they are given or shown another path that they could take. How beautiful is that?” he explained. “That’s what we look for in art, told through these deeply rich and complex characters. I think that there is a real honesty to the work.”

He added that he and Ms. Clark worked a lot on the vulnerability of being husband and wife, since their characters are basically an Elven power couple — but it also included a bit of movement work with stunt coordinator Roy Taylor.

“We would do these exercises where it was about being light on our feet. Roy was like, I don’t want to see when you run. I want to see you glide,” Mr. Bower said, without giving away too much of what their stunt scenes entailed. “I don’t want to see your head jump up at all. I want to see you do this. Just simple things like that really help you to shape your character.”

He also described Celeborn’s fighting style as “fluid, magical, and gorgeous… mixed with a bit of gnarly, close-combat stuff,” indicating both his Elven character and what he goes through over time.

“It’s really about trying things out and then kind of sometimes taking things too far to be able to adjust again and make them right,” he said. “We spent a long time rehearsing and figuring out how we move.”

The third season of The Rings of Power is produced by showrunners and executive producers J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay. Other cast members include Robert Aramayo as Elrond, Owain Arthur as Durin IV, Maxim Baldry as Isildur, and Charlie Vickers as Sauron.

Mr. Bower pointed out that seeing Sauron come to life in a scene was one of the coolest experiences while filming.

“I get to come in and watch Charlie be Sauron in the middle of a scene. That’s pretty sick!” he said. — Brontë H. Lacsamana