The world in The Lord of the Rings feels quite credible and organic due to many aspects. Part of that are also the different languages. For the new season of the series, an actor learned a language from scratch. For this, he received help from an expert.
Which actor is it about? The second season of The Rings of Power is in full swing, and Celebrimbor, played by Charles Edwards, has his appearances. The elf is an important smith in the Lord of the Rings universe.
Many fans accuse the series of being too loose with the source material. However, Edwards wanted to prepare well.
In the second episode of the new season, the elf gives a speech in a foreign language from the Tolkien works, the Black Speech. He did not just read it flatly from the script; he learned the language and the dialect from scratch. For this, he even had the help of an expert.
Preparation and Help
How did Charles Edwards prepare? In an interview with Games Radar, he spoke about the speech he had to deliver in the Black Speech and how he prepared extensively for it. He had help from an expert in the field, Leith McPherson. She also worked on the series off Edwards.
She is an expert on the various languages that Tolkien created in his works. In the Hobbit films, she worked as a coach for actors to help them with the dialect and pronunciation of the fictional languages. Edwards received an audio file from McPherson that he used for learning.
I said the text, and she modeled how it should sound for me, and you just learn it in a parrot-like manner in the kitchen by pacing back and forth until you understand it.
Not only did he prepare with the language. According to Games Radar, he also participated in ring-making courses to understand the profession and the difficulties behind it.
In the interview, the actor also explains that while he was a big fan of the Lord of the Rings movies as a child, he did not know Celebrimbor. He talks about fan designs that depicted him as a muscular man with a hammer
.
Through his courses on ring-making, he also recognized the intricate work on jewelry. I saw him much more literally, much more cerebral and surgical in applying his craft.
The series is controversially discussed among fans, especially because many events are not represented as intended by the source material: “The Rings of Power” shows an epic battle from Tolkien only superficially and omits an important turning point
