Orlando Bloom showing the taonga he was gifted, during an interview for his new show Carnival Row.
Orlando Bloom showing the taonga he was gifted, during an interview for his new show Carnival Row.
Even though he’s been away from our shores for many years, Orlando Bloom still keeps a piece of Aotearoa New Zealand close to his heart.
“It’s been a minute since I’ve been in New Zealand,” he says unprompted at the start of our interview when he realises where I’m Zooming in from. “I love it and I miss it.”
Then his eyes light up and he says, “actually, do you wanna see something?”
Before I can answer he pulls aside his shirt collar with one hand while the other pulls up the thin black leather strap of his necklace to reveal a stunningly carved taonga. It’s a beautiful piece and clearly of a sort that holds deep meaning. After showing it up close to the camera he tucks it back under his shirt as I ask if it was gifted to him.
“It was gifted to me by a really beautiful young Kiwi lady called Yvonne Tan, who passed tragically,” he says quietly. “We had a really wonderful kind of communication because she was quite a fond fan of Legolas from Lord of the Rings.”
He looks up and a warm smile fills his face as he says, “I love it. It’s so wonderful. It’s a power stone for me. New Zealand was a huge part of my life.”
We’re talking because Bloom’s promoting the second - and final - season of his ambitious, dark fantasy show Carnival Row, which drops on Amazon Prime Video today. This high-budget, exceptionally well crafted and visually stunning series mashes up the wonderous creatures of fairy tale mythology and the deadly political maneuvering of Game of Thrones. Bloom stars as Philo, an investigator working to uncover a dark conspiracy while hiding the fact that he’s actually a half-fae from his fellow officers.
But just because the show prominently features fairies doesn’t mean it’s for kids. Far from it. One particularly gruesome scene in the opening episode of the new season sees five fauns - the half-man/half-goat beings that are oppressed refugees under human rule - being shackled into a mass guillotine in front of a baying crowd before the razor-sharp blade drops and lops off all five heads in gruesome, blood-splurting detail. And that’s before we get to all the multi-species lovemaking.
Orlando Bloom in dark fantasy series Carnival Row, which returns for its final season on Amazon Prime Video on Friday.
Carnival Row does not shy away from shock or adult themes but it’s mystery and love that drive the complex, multi-stranded story that grapples with heavy, topical issues like racism, the refugee crisis and the rise of the far right.
Ideally, Bloom says, he’d like viewers of the show to come away with, “a bit of acceptance, a bit of forgiveness, and a bit of love”.
“I like the complexity of it. I like the messiness of it. It’s messy life, you know?” he muses. “Nothing goes according to plan. Whenever you think you’ve got a plan, nah, it normally comes a cropper. So, there’s a lot of truth within Carnival Row’s world of fantasy. We get to comment on what’s happening in the world, and it’s not often you get to do that through a fantasy lens. Hopefully, we do that justice.”
Season two has been a long time coming for fans of the series. Filming began in Prague in 2019 but then along came Covid, which put the brakes on production. Effects work continued and then last year the actors reassembled to complete filming. However, right before Christmas Amazon dropped the bombshell news that the long-awaited second season would also be its last.
I ask if this is a bittersweet moment for him. On the one hand, it must be exciting that the second season is finally hitting screens, but it must also be disappointing that it’s been forced to wrap up prematurely.
“Naaaah,” he grins. “Leave them wanting more is what I say! We had a great run with this show. And what we did was cleverly went back and really articulated the journey for each and every character to give them an epic season finale. All of the characters get a really good send-off.”
Orlando Bloom and Cara Delevigne in Carnival Row. Photo / Supplied
He’s pleased they were given a heads up and were able to do that, rather than leave a handful of unanswered questions or continue on and risk wringing out the story.
“I got to go really deep into this character and explore the inner workings of his mind. I had a lot of fun coming up with this sort of weird, sociopathic kind of sick human guy. So, you know, I took this character as far as I could, and all the actors got to take their characters, as far they could.”
He describes the show as “exciting and unique” and says that making it was “a labour of love”. So if he’s brokenhearted about it finishing, he’s certainly not showing it.
In fact, he’s positively boisterous when he says, “I’m like, ‘Let’s go.’. Boom! Out with a bang.”
