Charles Edwards might have been playing the guy who actually makes the magical, mystical, mind-bending, history-changing jewellery in Middle-earth, but as elven-smith Celebrimbor, he didn’t get a lot to do in the first series of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
He did turn up to help explain stuff, because quite a lot of stuff needed explaining. This was, after all, the Second Age of Middle-earth, centuries before The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the show took its inspiration from JRR Tolkien’s peripheral works and appendices. But, as a prequel, it came complete with a few ageless characters from the better-known works – and Peter Jackson’s movies – in their younger days.
In season two – judging by three episodes seen by the Listener – it appears Edwards’ Celebrimbor has rather more to do, in a series that certainly picks up the pace and sense of jeopardy from season one. Edwards knew that would happen, he says via Zoom from his home in England. When he was first cast, the American showrunners, JD Payne and Patrick McKay, had told him his character would just be dipping his toe into the events of season one before the floodgates opened in season two.
“I looked up this guy and saw he was a very notable Tolkien character. So, I knew from the start where he was going, and it has come to fruition.”
That was before he headed to New Zealand where the mega-budget show’s first season was shot in the pandemic-troubled days of 2020 and 2021, before its release in 2022. And where Edwards, an actor who has had supporting roles in Downton Abbey and The Crown and an illustrious UK stage career, has had another regular gig – playing fish-out-of-water London lawyer Louis opposite Rebecca Gibney in the Otago wine-country dramedy Under the Vines.
In Downton, he was Michael Gregson, Lady Edith’s newspaperman chap who died in mysterious circumstances, and in The Crown, he was Martin Charteris, private secretary to QEII in series three and four. Edwards’ screen career thus far has been one of supporting roles, but his British theatre one is that of leading men. His stage credits include playing George VI in the play of The King’s Speech and rather a lot of Shakespeare at the National Theatre and the Globe.
Made for Amazon’s streaming platform Prime Video, which paid a reported NZ$400 million for the television rights and another $650-plus on the first season, The Rings of Power has shifted the production for its second and subsequent seasons to the UK, where much of its cast came from.
Even if Edwards’ elven set is pretty much the same one as he had here, and it meant he could sleep in his own bed after a hard day at the forge, he says he misses the feeling of the earlier NZ production. “It created an immense sense of very fond camaraderie with the cast. Most of us were away from home under such extraordinary circumstances in the most magical place.”
But he’s been putting more hours in on season two as Celebrimbor, who has unknowingly found himself in a partnership with Sauron, Middle-earth’s Dark Lord, like fellow elf Galadriel did in season one.
Played by Aussie actor Charlie Vickers, the villain posed as Halbrand, a humble human refugee who befriended Galadriel before revealing his true self. Now, he has shape-shifted again to become Annatar, “the Lord of Gifts”, whose long blond locks and elfin features convince Celebrimbor that he’s making those 16 rings of power at the behest of someone sent from on high.
So that makes Celebrimbor, well, another villain? “He has that in him. He is vulnerable to predatory influence, and he can have the blinkers on while furthering his own ambition. In terms of Sauron-level villainy, no. In terms of carelessness, in the thrall of his own vanity, then yes. He can mess up.”
Edwards says the head-to-head scenes between Annatar-Sauron and Celebrimbor reminded him of the intensity of theatre he’s done over the years. Plus, they depict a pivotal moment in Middle-earth history that has never been on screen before.
“The relationship is the thing that gets the boulder tumbling down the hill in the first place. Patrick said, this is the story that fans were hoping for in season one. Well, this is what season two is about.
“What appealed to me about our storyline is just two guys messing with each other’s heads – one more than the other, but Celebrimbor also has power from the relationship. He has status and he also has an ability that Sauron makes use of.”
Celebrimbor is a Tolkien canon character from the writer’s Middle-earth “legendarium”, some of which became the collection, The Silmarillion, but he’s literally a marginal figure in the writings.
“He had one or two versions and notes and scribbles in margins about what he might be and what he might not be. So, to play this role is really exciting – there is licence there to create a character who is based on Tolkien’s writings, but he gives you a sort of diving board and it’s up to us to take the plunge and go with it.”
Becoming a pivotal character in the series has meant encounters with the ardent Tolkien following in forums and conventions, where the homework he’s done on his character has paid off.
“Our engagement with fans has been very energising – just the passion and the encyclopaedic knowledge they have. You’ve really got to be on your toes for the questions.”
Edwards, 54, was a Tolkien nerd as a kid. When the 1978 animated version of The Lord of the Rings came out, he became obsessed with it, got the spin-off comic and dutifully created a play that was never performed – “typed with one finger on my little Olivetti typewriter”. The script is possibly still somewhere in his dad’s garage.
“It was sort of integral to my kind of realising I wanted to be an actor, all that stuff and discovering these characters.”
Decades later, he’s playing a character whose handiwork and deal with the devil of Middle-earth has him in scenes in a smithy that seemingly aren’t relying on CGI to depict the forging of the rings. So much for elf and safety.
“It took a few days for everyone to start commenting on it – ‘when you blow your nose, is it black?’ and I’m going, ‘yeah, it is, is yours? When you have a bath at night, is it just a black rim around your bath?’ There was a lot of dust because there’s a lot of fire and stuff in there.”
Edwards was quite handy, he says, at metalwork when he was at school. He had some jewellery-making lessons in preparation for the role.
But no, he says, The Repair Shop won’t be requiring his skills just yet. Maybe after a few more centuries of practice.
The Rings of Power season two is available to stream on Prime Video from August 29.
