Rings of Power Stranger Actors on Istar Magic and Season 2

Daniel Weyman either has the easiest job or the toughest job The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Ever since Weyman’s The Stranger fell like a meteor from the sky, he’s spent most of season one learning the state of the land and turning the lives of Nori (Markella Kavenagh) and her isolated Harfoot community upside down, giving him just a few lines of dialogue and the occasional mystical magic moment.

But Weyman’s time is ticking on The Rings of Power The press tour was almost as strict — as in, all he could say would be a spoiler. Is his character Gandalf? Sauron? Saruman? Radagast? Tom Bombadil? Miscellaneous? The snooping around was endless, but when your character is a walking mystery box, that’s part of what you sign up for. The Rings of Power The season one finale answered a few questions — we know the stranger is not Sauron, but is an Istar (or wizard) like Gandalf.

How did Weyman, whose previous work ranges from HBO mr jack to the Sandmann radio play, are you approaching the ambiguity? And what can we expect in Season 2? Polygon spoke to the actor, who was in London for the next season The Rings of Power is currently being filmed to ask him anything we can think of to answer him about the greatest unknown of Middle-earth.

[Ed. note: This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity, and contains spoilers for all of The Rings of Power season 1.]

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Polygon: The Stranger isn’t just a mysterious character; He’s pretty much a walking mystery box. How much did the creative team want you to know about him and how much did they want she wants to know?

Daniel Weyman: Pretty early on, the showrunners made it clear that we’re genuinely interested in following his story in the present. So they weren’t massively interested in going too far with where this character is going to go or anything that we needed to put in there. I think they created wonderful resonances in many different scenes and episodes, not just for my character but for others as well, so fans can go back and look at the source material and make up their own minds. Many of them are very different. By the time this one comes out, I think there was a healthy crowd who thought the stranger could be very obscure.

So it feels like it’s moving on, and it’s actually been quite joyful to film because every time I get to a scene, starting in the crater, I didn’t have to think about anything other than what was in front of me in the script stands. He doesn’t know anything when he wakes up. All I had to focus on was what that feeling could be like in his body, getting around in a crater with smoke, fire, rocks, looking like a horrible war zone, and then this very strange being in front of him that I’m thinking of Beginning, he cannot even separate himself from nature itself. Is the thing he looks at like fire or like air or like water? It’s very basic. The great joy is building on that next season. But I don’t have to project into the future.

Image: Prime Video

Are you an actor looking to real life to build a character? Was there anything to draw from while playing an amnesiac bearded Middle-earth wizard?

I felt that we were welcomed into New Zealand with incredibly open arms and were able to learn about ancient Maori culture, about the country and the way they use land or respect land, the fact that my character was barefoot , the fact that I was growing my beard so it was longer than ever, plus the fact that I was wearing clothes that weren’t really clothes, just things to keep him warm, it all grounded me to the best way that was in nature. I felt part of the world.

The showrunners had also given me some movie references when we were doing the audition. One I held onto the most was Frankensteinthe 1931 film, especially where we see [the monster with the little girl]. Especially in this scene we can’t tell if the monster is evil or good. We can certainly say that some of the ramifications of his behavior are horrifying. But once this behavior stops, the rest of society treats him very differently, turning him into some kind of evil creature. You sort of write his future for him, don’t you? But I loved the joy he gets when he smells that flower. I was very excited when I saw the flower floating on the water and when he sees the child for the first time and they have that moment, you think it’s going to be awful. then you think wait a minute, is that a laugh? And then he picks her up and you say: Oh, that’ll be fine, and then, no, he throws her into the lake and she drowns. That was a little touchstone for me, for the stranger that I found really, really helpful.

Understandably, most of what you could say about the stranger would constitute spoilers for future seasons, so here are some burning questions about Season 1: How annoying was the beard?

I started growing it in October 2019. I started auditioning in August ’19 but by October it was clear that a beard could come in handy for the role. And so I started growing it and it’s only been itchy for a few days. But my beard is very grey, it’s almost a white beard. But of course we colored that.

Your beard could be neither gray nor white.

So we dyed that and they obviously trimmed it down to the length we wanted. But when I wasn’t filming, I was letting it grow. And then we had COVID and over the time we weren’t filming I let it grow and it was crazy. It was the most ridiculous beard. Friends wouldn’t recognize me. I liked going there with him. It changed my physicality and who I thought I was.

Image: Ben Rothstein/Prime Video

You have a fight against Sauron’s apprentice in the season finale – what’s the key to waving your hands around like you have magical powers and look cool?

The first thing for me was that we weren’t trying to make anything look cool. But there was a brilliant movement coach […] but she had great insight into how to do physical movements properly rooted in something other than “But I really want it to look really cool and really magical!”

The rule of thumb for us has always been that the magic – and we didn’t really call it magic, we called it the energy flowing through him – was always external. He was always channeling energy from nature, over himself or under himself, and he was the channel. He was the dowsing rod for that energy. It often flowed through him without him really understanding why or how to control it. But it did mean that his physicality wasn’t really his during that time either. That’s how he reacted to that stupid amount of energy flowing through him. And so it was different in different moments. I hope we can explore that over the course of Season 2.

What was it like throwing a warg? It looked difficult.

I’m glad you say that because it was tough. And they made it difficult. Most of it was blue screen because I was obviously on a different scale than Markella Kavenagh and the rest of the Harfoots. So when we finally got down to filming they knew the shot they wanted had them in the background so it had to be me in the foreground against the blue screen and the animal was being held by a little blue person walking into a blue was dressed in a body suit. And they held up this animal. It had a bit of fur on its back, but it was basically a big blue sack and very heavy, and they kept putting more and more weight in it because they said I wasn’t making it look heavy enough. I can’t remember how hard it got, but I remember after several takes I was like, “Guys, that’s pretty hard!” and they’re like, “Yeah, but it reads!”

Do you think you’ll get a hat in season 2? Seems like you can get a hat.

What else, huh? That’s really a good question. I haven’t thought about it at all. People have asked me about shoes in various places. “Wouldn’t he already have a pair of shoes?” And I used to say, “No, he’s just with the Harfoots.” The only creatures he knows are the Harfoots, and they don’t have shoes! Why should he? how would he? where would he

Yes, we were wondering if the stranger ever put on underpants.

Yes, it was a pair of nice underpants he was wearing.