Sauron Wants to "Heal" Middle-earth? Rings of Power Cast Explain | The Hook

So I've quite enjoyed like being able to be in like a positive style rock, like trying to do the right thing. It really frightens me when you talk like that. We're in the third season. I absolutely love the show. Well done guys. Congratulations. It must feel amazing to be here. You're all playing characters that are really well known by fans and that people really love. And having spent so much time with these characters, I wanted to know if there's something you've come to understand about these characters that you don't think many other people would know. Well, I think that... Something like Sauron, I think in popular culture, he's known as the all-seeing kind of eye that is quite scary. And he is that as well. You know, he's quite scary. But he just, I think Tolkien was quite specific about how he wanted to reorder and heal and rehabilitate Middle-earth. And I think heal is quite a positive word. So I've quite enjoyed being able to be a positive Sauron, like trying to do the right thing. It really frightens me when you talk like that. I genuinely believe it. That's the thing I say to you. So, yeah, and I think people probably don't know that. It surprised me when I really started researching Sauron. I think I thought the gift of foresight would be nice to have, whereas the more I think about it, the more awful I think it is. And it kind of almost feels like extreme future anxiety because they get all these different types of things, things that could be and think... So I think I'd go insane if I had that. I always used to think I'd like to have it. Now I know. Especially with the impending doom. Yeah, you don't want to think about the impending doom too much. Oh, I'm new here. Yeah. It's true, it's true, it's true. What I did take and use for this season, and I know that in the sort of broader world, the relationship between Tolkien and Edith was used to create other characters, but I did lean heavily on that for the relationship between The two of them because I like to understand authors no matter you know like particularly in a world like this you know it helps you really land into it so that was something I was like yeah I like that. It's beautiful, the depth of feeling. Yeah also what Tolkien said about prison is very interesting, worth looking at. Didn't like them. What did? Just didn't like the idea of like People being encaged and yeah I thought that was really interesting looked into a bit about this season. The whole series I feel like there's been a real effort to humanize the orcs and the uruk-hai and I wondered what how that helps you guys? I would gently push back and say that I think we're not especially interested in humanizing our villains or or uh the orcs we're interested in dimensionalizing them um and it's not quite the same thing right we're not trying to say that like Oh, orcs are misunderstood good guys. No. They're the villains of the story. They are ruthless and bloodthirsty in this show. But no one is just pure cannon fodder. Everybody has a reason why they think what they're doing is the right thing or it's the only thing they can do. And we felt that that merited exploration. We also wanted to tell the story of how do orcs change the way the whole world changes when Sauron gets the one. Tolkien talks about them being enslaved to his will and his power. So that makes you go, well, what happened before that? Maybe they hoped to be something more than that or something different from that. And we felt that that was a good time to tell that story this season. Yeah, I mean, you've got to look at the entire series arc. You know, we start off talking about saying Adar was once an elf. Then he became somewhere between an elf and an orc. Then he had his children. He became more orc-y, but there are still orcs that are before the One Ring, and Marnuk is cut from the cloth of an orc. He has dreams and aspirations for what he thinks orcs can become. He wants freedom. Freedom. And so it's a long arc towards becoming what we know them as in the Third Age. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I love seeing that whole development of them. Cool. Cate Blanchett's Galadriel is thousands of years in the future, and I wondered how important it was for you to build your own interpretation of that. Well it was my own interpretation like it is but also it's wonderful to think you're gonna be Cate Blanchett when you grow up and like she's so iconic that it would like you can't I couldn't erase that in my mind because I think I kind of use it that she's going forward to that and I feel I'm like a big fan of fantasies and stuff and I think one of the thing about it is I love being in the world and I was just excited there was going to be more world of it so no I love I mean that my name is ever said in the same sentence as Cate Blanchett it's just wild to me and I yeah take the inspiration. Ah yeah I love being in the world as well yeah so it's a thing for me we get any more Lord of the Rings, any more Star Wars, anything like that I'm like get me there! When writing a story that takes place thousands of years before The Lord of the Rings, I wanted to know how do you make sure audience feel the stakes even though you know they feel they know what's going to happen? Really the story becomes about how it happens. For us, I think as viewers, when you know where you're heading, it can actually create this incredible riptide of tension and energy. The metaphor we always go to is Titanic. You could tell a story about very good looking people from different walks of life who meet on a boat and fall in love and their families aren't happy that they're getting together and maybe it would be engaging, but what makes it a great movie is that they're on the boat that's about to hit the iceberg and you know that the whole time. And I think when I watch that movie, part of what's magic about it is at a certain point you kind of forget. What boat they're on. And then all of a sudden, you realize, oh, that's right. Oh, my God, it's going to sink. And I think, you know, just using that as an example, we try to do that across the show. Knowing that he'll make the ring does not, for us, make the journey any less compelling to see how he gets there. And I think this is true of tragedy in general. The inevitability of it is part of what makes it so engaging. You know, Oedipus Rex or Romeo and Juliet. I mean, you know, knowing that Romeo and Juliet are both going to die, You know, you're looking for off-ramps. Part of you is the audience. Yeah, spoiler, exactly. Part of the audience wants to, like, maybe this time they won't drink the poison. You know, even though you know they will. And if there's things you can do as a storyteller to give the audience a sense that those off-ramps are right there and could be taken we find that very satisfying where if there's a moment where you know what if this one character had you know just swallowed their pride for this one moment and gone left instead of right maybe this entire kingdom wouldn't have fallen or maybe this person wouldn't have died um you know it's feeling those moments where you have the inevitability of the result um it makes the the pain of the choice all the more personal and obviously Sauron is good at figuring out what people want and using it against them. And I wondered who you think the hardest person in Middle-earth would be for him to manipulate. I think there's two. I mean, I have said Tom Bombadil is one that I think would be very hard, but it's almost like cheating because he's not a person. I think as Sauron discovers that Durin, It's quite difficult to manipulate and like Tolkien said that the dwarves are more resistant to the powers of the ring than their counterparts. So I would say I would say those two. If you had to pick one? I mean Tom Bombadil, you're not convincing him to do anything, no way. One thing I really wanted to know for you guys, if you could sit Tolkien down, show him one scene from the entire show, which scene would it be? This won't be helpful, but I'm going to say it anyways. I actually think the last 15 minutes of the last episode, which nobody has seen yet. Yeah, I don't want to say too much about it, but I'd be curious to know what he thinks. I'd be curious to know what he thought of the forging sequence. That would be a huge one. We'd be terrified as well. Yeah, for sure. And then there are other ones, there are small character scenes sort of throughout the series. And none of them sort of rise to the level where I'd say, that would be the one. But, you know, there's a half dozen or a dozen that I would love to see what he thought about this character moment or that choice over there. And I fully expect one day on the other side of the judgment bar to come face to face with a man and make an accounting for our labor. So every day we try to keep it in mind and do justice to the master. You'll be watching that film. I wanted to know what the biggest difference between the story you originally imagined and the story you're telling now is. I think the biggest difference is the people we work with. You know, we originally started this with just two people talking in a room, just us. We brought in some writers, right, then we're bringing in our producers, department heads, cast. Now we're nine years into that journey, and it's really a family making this show. We're really close collaborators, and we know the people we work with, and we know what they can do. And we know our actors, and we know what kind of fastballs they can all hit. And now we're all sort of... Going back and forth with each other and I think the work is getting better and better for us at least because of how well we know each other and how they bring this to life in a way we never could have imagined or it's so much better than we could have imagined. And it's still the same journey that I think we envisioned from you know we always like to use the analogy of a road trip if you're going from Los Angeles to New York you plan out you know a half dozen stops along the way of cities you want to see or national parks you want to visit. And certainly we've had that plan from the beginning and it really hasn't changed. But when you have actors, you're like, oh my gosh, these actors have chemistry. Maybe there's a romance that could just sort of burgeon out of that. Some of those things are things that come out of the work itself. And so if on your road trip, you say like, oh, instead of two nights here, let's stay three nights in this place. Or, oh, you know what? We feel like we sort of experienced the city. Let's stay only here one night and move on. So there are certain parts of the story that have expanded a little bit or contracted a little bit, but the road trip is still the same. Amazing, well I think what you've done with the sort of 2000-ish words of the second age and what you've created from that is absolutely amazing so thank you so much for your time, I appreciate it. Thank you, have a great day, take care.