Amazon Studios’ The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power was released in September 2022 after getting the green light from the estate of author JRR Tolkien. It received mostly positive reviews from critics, but also drew criticism for being too “woke.” Inspired by the appendices from The Lord of the Rings, showrunners JD Payne and Patrick McKay have condensed Tolkien’s lengthy ‘second age’ and added characters, some new, others old, as they tell the story of the forging of the rings of power—and the one ring to rule them all.
Season 2 culminates with the reveal of a character fans have long awaited: the good wizard, Gandalf, until now known as the Stranger. The talented Daniel Weyman, who plays Gandalf, took the time to sit down with theologian and Tolkien superfan Dr Mario Baghos for The Catholic Weekly ahead of the season two finale.
This article features spoilers for The Rings of Power episode 8. Watch the whole 30-minute discussion between Dr Mario Baghos and Daniel Weyman on YouTube.
Mario: Did you ever envisage yourself starring in such a huge enterprise as The Rings of Power?
Daniel: I’ve worked for over 20 years and largely done jobbing actor roles, had the occasional nice big, meaty part in a theatre show, and a couple of British TV things. When the audition process started for The Rings of Power there was more than a hint of, ‘There’s no way they are going to cast me in this.’
But because the casting process was so long, I began to feel like actually, I would be really good at portraying this role. There were aspects of this role that matched me already, and the aspects where I differed from the character I was really anxious how I might find that particular characteristic.
So, I got to a place where I felt empowered to play him, and probably I felt even before I was fully cast, ‘Do you know what? This is actually my guy, this is my character!’
Mario: Can I evoke the well-worn adage of Celeborn, Galadriel’s husband: ‘Tell me, where is Gandalf? For I much desire to speak with him?’
Daniel: I’ve been with him for four years and loving him, feeling for him very deeply. To get to a stage where others start to respond to him, and want to call him by a name, and they begin to come up with something that begins to resonate with him—and he suddenly finds out, ‘That’s what they are going to call me, they are going to call me Gandalf.’
Obviously that’s the start of a journey that a lot of us will know. There are all sorts of things that we might feel about the idea of Gandalf, but obviously our version of Gandalf is very primitive—in terms of the many thousands of years that this Maia [an angelic being] exists in Middle Earth. He has to experience a huge amount before he gets anywhere near that place in the stories later on in the third age [the setting of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings].
And so if we’ve seen enough of a germ in him, enough of these seeds of understanding about kindness and truth, and all of these really important core, foundational aspects of his being, for others to want to call him Gandalf—you know “Grand-elf” is where they come through, isn’t it— that’s a really humbling thing. I love the way it came about, that it wasn’t him standing there with a staff saying, ‘I know what I’m going to be called, it’s Gandalf!’
The way the showrunners introduced it is really beautiful, and for me it perfectly aligns with the character that hopefully this version of Gandalf will grow into.
Mario: In relation to Gandalf ‘receiving’ his name, how did that strike you in contrast to the characterisation of Sauron? First of all, Gandalf being led and guided by the Harfoots—the precursors of Halflings/Hobbits—and Sauron imposing himself insidiously, seductively persuading, tempting… Did you think about this contrast at all when you were fleshing out Gandalf’s character?
Daniel: The key thing had always been, from the Stranger’s point of view, to be going forward, to try and be learning from things, to try and be achieving this purpose or getting closer to achieving a purpose, finding out what his reason for being here was, and understanding some of that weight of history that he hasn’t yet got.
And he’s largely developed those characteristics from his interactions with the Harfoots. They as teachers to him have been very sensitive. If you think of parents and children, their version of parenting this being [the Stranger] that is very young and immature, not wise, has been wonderful.
I think that the Stranger is only really just beginning to learn about control, which is that there is a relationship between how much we are capable of withstanding seduction—and how much we are capable of being truthful to our beliefs and values and continuing to live on that path whilst other very seductive or inviting opportunities present themselves. But Sauron is going the other way.
Certainly in the books where Gandalf appears much later in his journey, for all those thousands of years of experience, he has enough humility to acknowledge that if the one ring is placed too close to his possession he may not be immune to its seductive power.
Mario: There are many ‘Christs’ throughout The Lord of the Rings, including in the Stranger or Gandalf’s journey: he comes from heaven, he lands on earth, eventually he’ll begin his ministry at the beginning of the third age later on, and he ends up fighting the Balrog and in the underworld and resurrecting as Gandalf the White. Did you draw on Sir Ian McKellen’s performance, when he doesn’t recall Gandalf the Grey after he returns as Gandalf the White, or was it something you consciously steered away from?
Daniel: No … I was so enamoured with playing the early parts of playing the character in season one where I didn’t know—they hadn’t even made it clear that he was an Istar. They wanted me to authentically walk that line of good and evil, light and dark, and they wanted me as the actor playing the character to find these moments, where it was incredibly seductive to be able to conjure with fireflies and take their life at the same time, or to create massive winds—which were all done practically…
So both I as the actor and the Stranger as the character were having these effects, and I think they wanted me to—or they were very happy that I was going through this journey, looking at people going, ‘Well this is incredibly amazing and I’ve got to be a bit careful! … Are you alright? Do you need goggles for the wind?’ But also going, “Look at what I’m being entrusted with … I can have all these wind turbines turning on at the same time!’
And that kind of intoxication with the power so mirrors the Stranger’s tightrope of definitely the first and largely the second season as well, that I never worried too much about where it was going. I just was so enjoying playing these scenes and I trusted that the showrunners had a destination that they wanted to get to.
My job was that if I committed to the present, if I committed with all my energy, all my heart, all my integrity to immerse myself in that world that I was given and I played it as honestly as I could that the future would be taking care of itself. So any allusion to things that we know happen in the books later on, they are wonderfully coincidental for me—I love the fact that people might see things in them—but I definitely didn’t try to do that. And that’s probably the good writing than necessarily my performance.
But it’s lovely to hear people draw resonances and see analogies in things like that, because the ‘name’ thing came very late on, certainly through the second season I didn’t know that they were going to allow him to become Gandalf in this second season so most of the time I was trying to just be present with that storyline and commit to it as much as possible.
Mario: Aside from your character, who is your absolute favourite Lord of the Rings character, from across the legendarium?
Daniel: It’s such a big question, because the world is so imaginatively involving and you can keep researching and finding yourself deeper and deeper into the Tolkien mythology and legendarium. I think that often gets me into a place where the characters I am most excited by are not necessarily always the nicest.
In the case of The Lord of the Rings: the ill-fated Gollum. It’s probably because I find it upsetting what’s happened to him, but also because I find it mesmerising to watch his portrayal in the LOTR films. But also, when you read the books, the ability to switch, or rather the loss of a rooted sense of self within the real landscape, all those things are unsettling and unnerving and worrying. And yet he’s powerful and yet he’s grotesque and yet he’s pathetic, and we feel sorry for him as well.
And working on our show The Rings of Power, both through season one and season two, I find the way that Morfydd Clark portrays Galadriel is extraordinary. I always feel, after watching her episodes, like I would go into battle for her. Other people don’t see that yes she’s flawed—of course we’re all flawed—but surely her heart is in the right place.
Mario: After watching the last two episodes, I recommend season two very much to anyone who loves Tolkien or not. It’s thrilling to see how things transpire. Thank you so much Daniel!
Daniel: It’s been lovely finally to be able to get to talk about it, because I haven’t talked about the Gandalf storyline or any of these real storylines in season two up until press—so you are all the first people I am allowed to talk to about it!
And it is a lovely soaring moment for my heart to get back in touch with the Stranger and know that people are receiving it, or that it is landing in whatever way they choose to take it. So thanks for your words as well.