Table of Contents
A toxic relationship can take many forms. Even as one between a Dark Lord and his ringmaker Elf friend (questionable). Amid all the gaslighting and manipulation, Charlie Vickers and Charles Edwards have forged a scene partnership to cherish. They star as Sauron and Celebrimbor in Prime Video’s Lord of The Rings: Rings of Power, the second season of which, releases on August 29.
In an interview with Hindustan Times, Charlie talked about transforming from the ‘human-ish’ Halbrand to the Fair Form of Sauron, Annatar in second season. His approach to portraying pure, unbridled evil on screen and not judging his characters for their deeds.
LOTR mega-fan Charles takes us back in time to talk about a play he wrote about the revered fantasy series and the doomed fate of Celebrimbor this season.
Excerpts from interview:
My first question is to you, Charlie. In India we have an actor called Nawazuddin Siddiqui. He plays a lot of villainous characters, basically gangsters, serial killers, murderers.
Charles: So he gets all the good parts.
Yes. He is one of the most brilliant actors we have. And he has often talked about his approach to these characters and he says that he never judges them as good or evil. They are humans, and he has to approach them as such. If he judges them then it will affect his performance and how he views them.’ Now that Sauron has turned completely evil, and he’s having a lot of fun with it, what is your approach to playing him?
Charlie: I think very similar. I think you have to understand the the role of the character in the story, right? And I know that Sauron is the villain of this story, but it’s not helpful for me to approach it that way. I think I approach it from the perspective of like what’s the core of the character, what does he want? And what’s in his way of achieving what he wants?
And it’s often the obstacles in the in the way of the character that mean that kind of dictates their behaviour. So it’s like you have to act irrationally sometimes to achieve what you want. Some people will. And it’s always tricky thinking about Sauron as a human because he’s not a human. But I think we we see him through the perspective of humanity. But I don’t find it useful thinking about him as good or bad. I just think it’s it’s all about trying to achieve what I want to achieve.
Charles, I was watching some of your interviews from even before season 1 premiered, and you talked about writing a play on JRR Tolkien. What was it about?
Charles: So there was a movie when I was a kid, which was in 1978, animated version of Lord of the Rings.
The Bakshi one.
Charles: Yeah, exactly. And which I was very, very obsessed with. And I bought a little book that was like a comic book of the film. And it had stills from the movie and little speech bubbles. And the dialogue for the movie was in the speech bubbles so it’s like a comic book. I just copied all of that down onto a typewriter, and wrote the play.
Was it ever performed?
Charles: Haha, no.
Charlie: Who was who was the main character? Is it just a movie?
Charles: It’s the movie on stage. It’s Lord of the Rings, the story. Well, I was going to play Sam and that and he became the main character, of course. His part was slightly enlarged.
Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power trailer:
And fans would know that Celebrimbor does not really have a good time going forward. If you could rewrite his fate, what what would you want it to be like?
Charles: If I could rewrite his fate? What a good question. Without, of course, specifying what his fate is. Um… I think I would probably keep keep him on this path, but with some resolution. I think I like the fact that he’s become muddy as a character. I think that’s interesting.
Charlie: Sort of in the dirt.
Charles: (laughs) Yeah. Yeah, in the dirt. I like that. I mean he’s morally muddy. I think that’s interesting to play and to watch, but I would like him to to resolve in perhaps a different reach, a different outcome.
When the trailer launched, a lot of people had a bunch of reactions, but the biggest takeaway was how great Charlie looked as Annatar. I read a comment… it was really funny.. ‘My mom was asking me, “Why did they replace the actor?”’
Charlie: That’s good. A few people have said that to me and I actually love that. I think that’s really cool.
Charles: But you know what? It feels like that acting with Charlie. He feels totally different.
Charlie: Thank you. I think that’s the thing I’ve always liked about acting, is like not being myself at at all. And I think that’s quite fun.
But were you ever nervous that it could maybe have the Clark Kent effect, that just you just put on a blonde wig and you’re supposed to be another person?
Charlie: It’s the way that the showrunners have (planned it), because like yeah I do feel and look quite different, but my face is kind of the same face. But I think the fact that the way the showrunners have written it is that Celebrimbor doesn’t know anything about what I did. Cause Galadriel has this huge shame, and she’s the only one that knows about Sauron and she couldn’t bring herself to tell him.
People were confused that how will they manage to bring a new form of Halbrand and then the elves not realising that it’s him. But I think it’s very well managed in the initial few episodes, the logics of it.
Charles: Yeah. Once you see how they’ve done it, yeah.
