Photo: Ross Ferguson / Prime Video
Spoilers ahead for season two of The Rings of Power through the finale, “Shadow and Flame.”
Among the many plotlines in season two of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, none burned hotter than the drama taking place around Celebrimbor’s forge. (Apologies to our fiery runner-up, Khazad-dûm’s Balrog.) Inside his city of Eregion, Celebrimbor toiled away on seven rings for dwarves and nine rings for men, egged on and aided by Sauron — though the elven smith didn’t know that at first. When Sauron first knocked on his gates, Celebrimbor knew him as Halbrand, a king of men who had assisted his earlier forge efforts. Then Halbrand “revealed” himself to be Annatar, a divine being known as the Lord of Gifts who would help Celebrimbor save the world with his works. From this noble, if admittedly egotistical goal, come gaslighting, madness, war, self-mutilation, and murder. All this takes place in, essentially, one room.
“He goes out on the balcony,” Charles Edwards, who plays Celebrimbor, notes with a laugh.
For Edwards, this nearly season-long two-hander between him and Sauron actor Charlie Vickers was a chance to tell the story that people were looking forward to seeing: the forging of the Rings of Power.
“Not only because it’s the title and we need the rings to get the story going, but it’s also straight from Tolkien. Annatar and the seduction of Celebrimbor and the torture, they’re all in there,” Edwards says, noting that he shot all of his scenes in chronological order, ending with Celebrimbor’s death at his onetime partner’s hands. That’s an almost unheard of rarity in film or TV production, one that allowed for Celebrimbor’s terrible fall to play out as the noble elf’s world “disintegrated very naturally,” going from high fantasy to psychological horror.
Where is Celebrimbor’s point of no return? Is it the first time he agrees to speak to “Halbrand”? Is it when he lies to the high king about closing the forge?
I think his point of no return is when he first meets Halbrand in season one. There is a scene between the two of them, it’s just a short scene, but there is some sort of spell cast then.
A literal, magical spell, or a spell of personality?
A bit of everything. I like to think that Sauron’s plan is to capture this guy, to ensnare him in his web. I believe that’s when it happens. Then Celebrimbor is told not to see him again, but when Halbrand turns up at the gate, there’s something there, a little itch that he’s got to scratch.
Did you play his arc as an inevitably or was there a chance, somehow, that he could have avoided all this?
We know where it’s going, so that’s difficult. I didn’t want to play it as inevitable at all. I wanted him to have strength and to have fight in him, but his own kind of hubris and vanity and pride were what were going to contribute to his downfall.
Why did Celebrimbor fall for Sauron’s lies when “Halbrand” first shows up at Eregion’s gates? Driven by ego? Pride? A desire to truly do good with these rings as he was told they would?
All of the above, particularly the element of belief in creating something, whilst also getting him a statue somewhere where he could be adored and worshiped eternally, would be of real benefit. And this is what Sauron sells him in his pitch to help and heal Middle-earth. It’s like penicillin. Then it starts to unravel slightly as they go on. He’s trying to do good, but he’s also meddling with powers that he doesn’t quite understand or hasn’t discovered.
Celebrimbor’s a tricky character, because his arc is predicated on him getting fooled, and the audience knows he’s being duped. Was it a struggle to find a balance in the performance to preserve Celebrimbor’s nobility and reason versus having him come across as something of a dope?
He is visited by, essentially, a god, in that scene where Annatar descends from the forge. From then on I thought, He believes that this is happening. It’s like Jesus in my living room. He’s going to show me the way. He’s the path to my creative fulfillment. Had it just been Halbrand … I think Celebrimbor might have gone with him anyway, but because Sauron presents himself as a deity, I never had any issue after that with looking like a chump.
What was interesting to play, subsequent to that, was a working relationship between two people without always deferring to him. We let that go quite quickly, because otherwise you’ve got a very unequal working relationship, whereas it’s much more interesting if the power dynamics change. They can bicker, they can be pissed off at each other, they can snap at each other like in a true working relationship.
Was that working relationship where you’re two people bickering, rather than this supreme god of the forge, part of why Celebrimbor realizes what’s going on?
Yes it was, and the more intimate and domestic the relationship becomes, the more intense its disintegrating. Because of all these things, they’re very niggling — little annoying stuff that you might have with your partner or in any kind of relationship. They just piss you off. Then there’s the gaslighting. But then slowly Annatar changes. Charlie does it so brilliantly, the way his voice changes when he becomes more Sauron-like. That happens gradually, and there’s a shift from the god to this adversary.
One of the more subtly chilling moments comes when Celembrimbor forgets Mirdania’s name. Am I correct in assuming that before Sauron’s influence, Celebrimbor was a good, if demanding, boss? It makes this slip up — not to mention Mirdania’s death — all the more horrible.
Very much so. I’ve had some experience with dementia in my life, with loved ones. It’s the kind of sudden blank stare when they don’t have a clue who they’re talking to. I wanted to try to do that in that little moment. And they try to cover up afterward, embarrassed.
The violence of Celebrimbor severing his own thumb to escape from Sauron is not something we typically think of elves doing in Tolkien’s world. They’re this ethereal race that’s above many mortal concerns, so this self-mutilation was a bit of a shock. Did you find a deeper thematic significance to that?
There’s a significance in the fact that he’s damaging his hands. His name means “Hand of Silver.” The fact that it’s his hands that he has to maim is heartbreaking in a way. But it shows his determination. As for the accepted understanding of elves — I love it when elves don’t do what people expect or want them to do. We’ve broken those rules here and there on this show, and I applaud that. By that stage, he’s just got to get out of there and get the nine rings out of the building. Totally unexpected and shocking moment, and it was great to shoot.
This is also when we get a chance — for really the first time in the season — to see a less passive version of Celebrimbor. It reminds us that he’s not just Sauron’s jeweler: He’s the renowned leader of a legendary city. Ultimately it doesn’t end well for him, but was it nice to play a different side of him after a season of toiling and deception?
Very nice. I loved the different facets of him. There’s very little written about him. That was another great appeal of playing the character. There’s not a set version of who he should be. I’ve enjoyed presenting my own version of that, perhaps against what other people thought the character should be like or should look like. I’ve really relished this. Because there are only crumbs left by Tolkien in terms of his character. There is a beginning, middle, and end all in two or three sentences. In season one, Celebrimbor was the lord and the craftsman, but gradually, because I knew what was coming, I started to introduce little bits here and there that suggested his vanity, arrogance, and pride. Didn’t want to overdo it, just pepper it in to lay some tracks for what came in season two. Then playing that contrast was very exciting.
Is what we’re seeing at the end there the “true” Celebrimbor? Or is it the craftsman who pursues things he should know better than to pursue because of his ego?
He’s so tainted by that point. He’s been put through the ringer and turned inside out. The truest we see him is when he’s working and getting excited. Any artist, when they’re doing their work, that’s them. What happens outside of that, we’ll see. But when you see him working, sketching, writing, doing anything with his hands, that’s Celebrimbor.
Just before he dies, Celebrimbor tells Sauron that he has foreseen that the Rings of Power will destroy him, and that one alone will be his ruin. Is he having a magical vision of the One Ring, or is it more that Celebrimbor now has firsthand experience with hubris and the destructive power of the Rings?
I was thinking it was similar to the vision Galadriel has of Celebrimbor at the beginning of season two. It’s a flash. There could be an idea of enslavement with the rings as well. Now that he’s gotten far enough with the process, he understands that Sauron’s going to need control to make these rings work. Maybe he’s pieced that together as well. But I saw it as a kind of flash, a vision in my head, and he just says it.
Speaking of that vision Galadriel has: You got to film two deaths this season, first the dream sequence in episode two, then Celebrimbor’s actual demise in the finale. Did you have a preference?
The first one was on my first day shooting the season. Both involved harnesses. I think I like the second one. You’ve got all the blood and arrows hanging out and all that stuff. It’s cool. And also the moment that we did, of him on the end of a pike, it’s nearly the one from Tolkien.
The Rings of Power is full of echoes and allusions to the original trilogy. Was the death of Boromir — who also dies pierced by a half-dozen arrows after being brought low by the rings and doing a selfless thing — a reference point at all?
The only connection we were conscious of was trying to do Tolkien’s description of Celebrimbor’s death, which was that he was shot through with arrows, then hoisted onto a pole and paraded around as a banner in the ensuing war. That’s all we had on our minds then. But these things do ring bells because it’s Tolkien. I’m sure he’s intending to have echoes running through his stories about how we die. Echoes are good to help us learn and teach us things.
Celebrimbor’s final words, and your last lines on the show, are “the Lord of the Rings.” I’m always tickled when there’s a big “title-drop” in a movie or show, so I’m curious how it was for you to deliver that line. What do you do when the name of the show is on you?
Sauron used it to me earlier in the season, when he said “I’m going to make you the Lord of the Rings.” That’s when he kind of coins it. Then in the death scene, I’m trying to throw it back at him in a very different vein. As a curse.
But yeah, you see it written down and you’re like “Okay, okay. I’m gonna say The Thing.” I was up there for a while and we were toying with what to say. Sometimes a bit more, sometimes a bit less. Ultimately, I think we ended up with exactly what we needed, which was the curse he was casting on Sauron. It just so happens to contain the title of the show.
Ultimately, how do you view Celebrimbor? As a tragic hero? A pawn? An unwitting villain?
I think the tragic hero is probably closest to it, but with many subclauses to that. He’s a hero because he wants to do good. However, his pride muddies the issue. He’s got this familial devil sitting on his shoulder. His grandfather is taunting him, in his ear. He’s constantly trying to make something better; he’s chasing his tail as many artists do. Nothing is quite good enough or quite right. When you’re a perfectionist, even though people think you’re wonderful, you still don’t think you’re good enough.
There are all these stories of actors from the movies going “I got to keep my Hobbit feet. I got to keep my ears.” Did you get to keep any pointy ears or anything?
I didn’t get to keep anything. Those ears are not fun to take home. They are worn once, and at the end of the day they just look like flaps of skin. They look like something leftover on the operating table. They’re not something I particularly wanted to take. There was a little anvil that I wanted, which I used as a paperweight in one of the scenes. I said “I’d love to keep this,” and they said “Yes, yes, we’ll keep that for you.” But I never got it.
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