Spoilers for Season 2 of Rings of Power are ahead! At this point, the entire season has aired on the 2024 TV schedule, and you can now watch it in full with an Amazon Prime subscription.
Galadriel and Sauron didn’t share a big scene together in Season 2 of Rings of Power until the finale, and said scene couldn’t have had higher stakes. Charlie Vickers’ character was trying to get the nine rings, while Morfydd Clark’s elf worked to protect them and defeat Sauron. It was a scene that involved epic fight choreography and shape-shifting, and CinemaBlend spoke to Vickers and the episode's director Charlotte Brändström about the story behind filming it.
During my interview with Brändström, she explained that this scene involved a lot of planning and it “needed to be epic and very special.” To pull it off they had some logistical challenges they needed to figure out – which included Vickers needing to grow a beard and Morfydd Clark playing the evil being – and we have the scoop on how they did it.
How Growing A Beard Presented A Logistical Challenge For Charlie Vickers And The Rings Of Power Team
In the first part of Season 2, Sauron memorably shifted into Annatar, a clean-shaven elegant blonde elf. It’s notably a totally different look from Halbrand, who was a bit scruffier with his long brown hair and beard. So, you can imagine that having to don both looks in the span of a few days was challenging. Vickers told me it was, especially because he can’t grow facial hair quickly:
The shape-shifting part of it, like, God, changing from Halbrand to Annatar. I think I did the Halbrand stuff on a Monday morning. So they gave me the weekend to try and grow some stubble, and it was pretty pathetic. My beard's really patchy, and I grew just enough, but they still had to color it in.
Brändström mentioned the beard in my interview with her too. They actually had to work time into the schedule for it, so Vickers could look more like Halbrand instead of Annatar, as she described:
Halbrand, for instance, the difficulty there is, like, when Sauron comes back as Halbrand, he had like a beard stubble, and it looks simple, but it's not that simple when he's clean shaven, and you need to add that. So that needed to be done. Those shots were done another day.
In the end, the Halbrand we ended up seeing in the Season 2 finale was slightly different from Season 1 Halbrand. However, that ultimately served an interesting purpose, as Vickers explained:
It was like Halbrand, but it was slightly different. Like, his hair's a bit curlier, and he's not quite as stubbly, but it kind of works, because he looks like a more shiny memory version of Halbrand.
I honestly love this take on it. When Sauron shifts to Halbrand, it’s after Galadriel has knocked him down. So, it feels like he’s actively trying to play defense by manipulating her and shifting into the man she used to trust. Plus, on top of Vickers playing both Annatar and Halbrand in this scene, Sauron also shifted into Galadriel and Celebrimbor, meaning Vickers’ Rings of Power castmates, Clark and Charles Edwards, got to play the evil being too.
Charlie Vickers And Charlotte Brändström Open Up About Morfydd Clark Also Playing Sauron In The Scene
In the epic fight, Sauron shifts from Annatar to Halbrand to Galadriel to Celebrimbor then back to Annatar. Both the actor and director noted how much planning went into the scene and how long it took to shoot, especially since Morfydd Clark was playing both her elf and Vickers’ big bad at various points. Elaborating on how they did that, Charlotte Brändström told me:
For Morfydd to come back as the other Galadriel, also, she obviously needed to put her – performance needed to be very different. She was harder. She was Sauron…And she came back clean. So, she had to go and change and become a different person, and to play to, I mean, to act against. And then what you do, really, is that you shoot above a double and then you just keep changing the actors. So it's just very time-consuming.
While that sounds like a big logistical challenge, it was a great experience, Vickers told me. He said they shot the scene over a couple of weeks, and he “loved being back with Morfydd.” He especially had fun seeing her impersonate his character as he said:
And then it was all equally funny watching Morfydd And [Charles Edwards] do impressions of me on the rocks.
Even though the moments of Galadriel and Celebrimbor (who had recently called Sauron out before getting tortured and killed by him) were deeply intense during this fight, I get why it was funny to film. Vickers got to sit back and watch his co-stars do their best Sauron impressions, as he humorously explained:
Yeah, it was particularly Mofydd's, because I was like, ‘Okay, is that how you interpret my performance?’
As the Sauron actor said, he adores working with Clark, and I bet having her impersonate him added an extra layer of fun to filming this pivotal scene.
Overall, the epic battle was a big turning point that ended in Galadriel jumping off a cliff away from Sauron. Now, the wait for Rings of Power Season 3 begins and I can’t wait to see the implications of this shape-shifting moment that was epic to watch and film.
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