The quest to create the One Ring continues in Season 3 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
Ahead of the new season’s release, I had the pleasure of chatting with Jamie Campbell Bower and Charlie Vickers, who portray Celeborn and Sauron, respectively. Although, of course, we know that Sauron has gone by many names.
While Vickers is on his third season of the series, Bower is a new addition to the cast for its third season. The duo told me about their training this season and their characters’ differing connections to Galadriel.
Watch the full interview with Jamie Campbell Bower and Charlie Vickers below:
When I spoke to Vickers last year, he revealed that while archery wasn’t his strength, co-star Morfydd Clark, who portrays Galadriel, is very good at archery. When I reminded him of this and of Clark’s skills with the bow and arrow, he jokingly said, “How annoying.” When I asked whether his archery skills had improved, he laughed and told me he was banned from the archery range.
Vickers shared, “I think perhaps I was banned from the archery range ’cause I was so bad. And luckily, like, if you look at the scene when I kill Celebrimbor – I can now talk about this – and it links to my terrible archery. Sauron famously fills Celebrimbor’s body with arrows. But when I pull the bow back and let it go, I practice so much ’cause I was like, ‘This is gonna be amazing.’ You see me pull the bow back and then you don’t see me fire the arrow. It cuts to a shot of Celebrimbor. So clearly, I’m just bad at archery.”
Bower, who couldn’t contain his laughter, asked Vickers if the arrow just fell out of the bow. To which Vickers gave a hilarious answer.
Vickers revealed, “No. [laughs] No, actually, there was no arrow. There was a VFX arrow. They VFX’d the arrow in. So I was just pulling back an empty bow.”
Bower then told me what it was like working with stunt coordinator Roy Taylor, including choreographing the meeting between Celeborn and Galadriel.
Bower shared, “Roy, our stunt coordinator this season, is – he’s amazing. He’s such a legend. And I got to spend a long time with him and Morfydd because there’s that first moment in episode one where we have the sort of…I’ve been calling it a tête-à-tête, which is, which is lovely. And so to kind of choreograph that with Roy was really beautiful.”
Bower continued, “And then, you know, that was interesting ’cause that also kind of extended into the way elves move, you know? And we did a lot of kind of training, funnily enough, in running, but making sure that we weren’t jumping up and down with our bodies. You kind of have to glide, which is a very bizarre thing to have to learn how to do. Um, and then obviously there was some great dance training that I got to do as well with Morfydd and, you know, joining this world and being thrown in at the deep end of that, you know, is humbling, but also wonderfully relationship-building too.”
Each of their characters has a very different dynamic with Galadriel, so I wondered who they believed knew her best at this point in the series.
“I think that millennia of, um, of like love, it will outweigh any kind of, you know, time that Sauron has spent with Galadriel. Perhaps he knows, well, I don’t know. Maybe he has seen the potential, like, darkness in her,” Vickers shared.
While Sauron sees the darkness within Galadriel, he’s also seen how she’s resisted it. Vickers pointed out that this is an aspect of her that makes Sauron feel he knows her well.
Vickers continued, “But he’s also seen the light and how that has resisted the darkness. So, I think that’s why he feels like he may know her to a great extent. But I think I’d be kidding myself if I said it was anywhere near the level that Celeborn and Galadriel know each other.”
Bower told us how Celeborn and Sauron exist in different spaces, which shifts their connections to and understanding of Galadriel.
Bower said, “They exist in completely different spaces. Do you know what I mean? Like, our knowledge existing in totally different spaces. You know, we get to see that impact that Sauron has on Galadriel, obviously later in the stories and, you know, from what we’ve seen thus far as well in the movies that came out. You know, she’s so impacted by the temptation of the One Ring, of that darkness. And Sauron’s no idiot. Like, he’s gonna use that which you potentially either fear or reject in order to, like, get in. Do you know what I mean? But on my end, I feel like they exist in a different – and Charlie’s used this word already- cosmic spaces.”
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