Little did the Sauron actor from The Rings of Power know he was auditioning as the iconic villain, and only found out after filming started.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power delivered some surprising surprises in the season one finale, including revealing Sauron’s identity in the series… twice. However, it seems the on-screen switch wasn’t the only veiled and dagger aspect of Sauron’s true identity, as actor Charlie Vickers has revealed he was unaware he was playing the Dark Lord when filming on the series began.
The rings of power takes place many years before the events of the hobbit and Under the spell of the Ring, and the first season eventually became an origin story for several iconic characters from Tolkien’s lore, and since the series as a whole will chart Sauron’s rise to power and the forging of the one ring, it’s not surprising that his presence in the series is early to be felt. For Charlie Vickers, however, his first audition and the first part of the film were spent unaware that he would be playing the iconic Middle Earth villain. He told Weekly entertainment:
“No! I had maybe six or seven auditions, and when I got to the end of the audition process, they gave me two monologues. They gave me a monologue from Richard III at the end, when he’s standing over a body and in fact is that was really bad. Then the other one came out of Paradise Lost, Milton’s poem, and it was literally Satan. So I had the idea when I gave those speeches that the character had some kind of dark arc. [Laughs] But it was only after our break. We filmed the first two episodes and then we went on hiatus due to COVID. The whole time I thought I was playing Halbrand, a Southlands man, which I think I was.
But then the guys dropped me just before we started filming the third episode, and they said to me, “There’s more to it. You’re playing Sauron.” At that point I had a hunch, because of my audition material and a few other things. But it was nice to get it confirmed.”
The second season of The Rings of Power is already being filmed
although The rings of powerThe Season One finale is still being unpacked, production on the second season is already underway, and now that the franchise’s key players have been established, it’s going to be a very different season from the first. A number of storylines have already been teased for the future, not least the rise of the Balrog, but the fallout from Halbrand’s deception and how Galadriel deals with it will become a central theme of the new season as the journey into the events of the hobbit continues.
But even with the filming for the new season, that doesn’t mean the second season is coming to Prime Video anytime soon. According to the team, it could be another two to three years before the new episodes arrive, thanks to the sheer amount of visual effects to be completed. Whether this will be good for the series, which has received a lot of criticism, remains to be seen when The rings of power will finally pick up his story again in the coming years.