A little bit of secrecy is to be expected when dealing with a massive tentpole production like Amazon Prime’s Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power series, but the extreme lengths that the production went to were not quite as effective as they might have hoped.
Ismael Cruz Córdova, who plays the newly-introduced elf, Arondir, told Time magazine that most of the actors hadn’t seen the script when they were asked to audition. He didn’t even know what character he was supposed to play, stating that the description they gave him was for an “Aragorn-type man.” But then when they flew Córdova out to New Zealand for a final read, they said “Actually, you’re playing an elf. It started to make sense because I was like, ‘Why does this man love trees so much?’”
Keeping scripts, auditions, and even characters a secret is pretty par for the course at this point, but when you’re introducing completely new characters to a franchise it feels a little bit like overkill. It’s not as if Lord of the Rings is hurting for obscure characters, but to pretend like you’re not even filming the show borders on silly. Córdova even mentioned that he got the email offering him the part in “secret code.”
According to Time, while the studio swore the actors to secrecy after they had signed their contracts, “Lots of people guessed,” said Morfydd Clark (the young Galadriel). “Because when you’re moving to New Zealand, and your phone dial is suddenly different …”
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