How The Rings Of Power Cast Learned The Lore: From Christopher Tolkien To David Day

thegamer.com:

When it comes to adapting Tolkien, everyone needs to know their stuff. From the writers, to the showrunners, to the designers, to the actors themselves, the entire cast and crew need to get it. This has never been more important than with The Rings of Power, which is based on an incredulously short chapter of Tolkien’s notes – they’re practically bullet points and a timeline being adapted into a series set to span 50 hours.

That doesn’t mean you can fill in the blanks willy nilly, however. While the showrunners have added multiple new characters and introduced the Harfoots, everything must fit into the existing canon. The Harfoots’ nomadic society that was wonderfully realised on screen (read more of that in our interview here), for instance, is based on the references that Tolkien makes in The Fellowship of the Ring. While they aren’t mentioned specifically in the passage of The Silmarillion that The Rings of Power is set in, it makes sense that Hobbits’ forebears were around at this time.

Related: The Rings of Power Review: Morfydd Clark Shines In A Spectacular Tolkien Adaptation

The lack of concrete Tolkien writing to go on arguably makes The Rings of Power a more challenging adaptation than when Jackson, Walsh, and Boyens first sunk their teeth into the author’s most notable work around 25 years ago. The latter brought iconic Tolkien illustrators Alan Lee and John Howe on board to create concept art and design sets for their production – the latter also worked on The Rings of Power – but it goes further than apeing designs that are synonymous with the author because of the artists’ association with his work.

Showrunners JD Payne and Patrick McKay and executive producer Lindsey Weber told me about their experiences