EXCLUSIVE: Charlie Vickers & Charles Edwards Talk Season 2 of ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’

Season 2 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is set to premiere on Prime Video this coming Thursday, August 29. To celebrate the release, we got the chance to hear from two of the stars of the show, Charlie Vickers and Charles Edwards.

Charlie, you’re playing the same character, but a different character this season. His motives are out there now. What’s that like?

Charlie Vickers: “I think the motives are really key because he has the same motives where we leave him in season one and we join him in season two looking like Halbrand and when he transforms into Annatar, it’s all from… He has this purpose, the sense of purpose that he needs to heal Middle-Earth. And he thinks the best way of doing that is using this guy [Edwards] to get what he wants. Everything that he creates, the way he looks, is all for him. It’s like what kind of being would command the respect of the greatest elven smith in the history of Middle-Earth? I’ve used so many random examples when I talk about this, but he’s like the Barack Obama. He’s just so cool and so iconic. It’s like we were all living in Middle-earth. Everyone really respects him.”

How did you guys build up that chemistry for season two?

Charles Edwards: “I think we were both really excited to tell this particular story. We knew it was coming. Because first season there was a lot more secrecy about where our stories were going, but we knew this was coming and we knew it was going to be season two. We were both just really looking forward to it. We loved going to work every day and the story was shot amazingly in consecutive order. There was no jumping around like there often is in filming. So, we went to work every day in this amazing set, in this forge, and told the story and it essentially was the two of us with a few other elven workers and the odd visit from a dwarf or two. But we knew where the story was going and we both just loved doing it.”

Charlie Vickers: “Certainly, in this instance, we didn’t need to work on having chemistry. I think it just comes from the passion that we both have for what we were doing and how excited and happy we were, as you said, to go to work and to be telling this story that is the first real… If you look at a list of dot points of what this show has to cover in the books, this is the first one that we’re ticking off.”

Charles Edwards: “The title of the show.”

Charles, how does it feel to have your character becoming like the devil collaborator this season?

Charles Edwards: “I think that’s very accurate. Well, hopefully in season one we saw him be a little bit vain, a little bit ambitious. We didn’t see much of it in season one, but I tried to plant those things because I knew they would be important later. And Tolkien tells us he wants to rival the fame and skill of his very famous grandfather. He’s always been looking for a project that’s going to rocket his name right to the very top. And this presents itself. He intends to do good and to help, but he also wants his name on a brass plaque somewhere as well. He wants to be famous.”

Charlie Vickers: “It’s something that Sauron sees straight away and taps into it. It’s quite intuitive.”

Charlie you’re playing one of the biggest villains of all time. How does that feel?

Charlie Vickers: “It’s funny because I almost felt more… When I found out that I was doing this show, I didn’t know I was going to be playing [Sauron]… So I moved to New Zealand. I just thought I was playing Halbrand, a guy from the Southlands, but then I started hearing rumors and we were all being like, oh, maybe Halbrand could be Sauron. And I was trying to piece things together. So, when I found out that I was going to be Sauron I think a weight just kind of lifted from me because it was kind of confirming what I’d suspected the whole time and it was quite a good feeling. I feel really privileged. I don’t actually feel the pressure of it. I just feel super excited and lucky to be able to tell the story and have a crack at doing this.”

Was it hard for you to keep this secret?

Charlie Vickers: “Oh, yeah. So hard. Also, throughout the whole press tour of the first season, I was just sitting there and then people started to be a bit sus about me and then they started asking me, are you Sauron? And I had to make a whole bunch of shit up.”

Did your family know?

Charlie Vickers: “My family did.”

When did you actually find out that you were going to be Sauron?

Charlie Vickers: “I found out at the start of the third episode. JD and Patrick, the showrunners, called me in. We were on a hiatus because of COVID, but a lot of us were still living in New Zealand. We’d just come out of lockdown and they called me into the office and said, ‘Okay, we’re going to tell you now.’ And then they took me down into… The first scene of the first episode is more of Galadriel in the northern waste and there’s all the elves. They took me into that set and said, ‘This is your house.’ It’s not very nice here. But yeah, that was pretty special when they told me.”

Can you talk how Halbrand is going to pull off being Sauron without notifying everyone else he is now Sauron? You look exactly the same just with shorter hair. 

Charlie Vickers: “I think the way it works is that you definitely know because I come back into Eregion as Halbrand. But I think I can get away with that because Galadriel never admitted to anyone that Halbrand is Sauron.”

Charles Edwards: “Entirely. I was never told.”

Charlie Vickers: “She does it, and it’s the same, not just him. It’s like everyone in Eregion, they’re just like, ‘Oh, there’s that guy that was here a couple months ago. Where has he been?’ Galadriel because of the shame that she’s had this whole time wasn’t able to admit to anyone what she’d done. She brought help of Sauron into the midst of everyone. I changed the way I look, but that’s more just to get him to do what I want. I could have stayed as Halbrand and got away with it until- “

Charles Edwards: “When you see the scene where he emerges-”

Charlie Vickers: “It’ll make sense.”

Charles Edwards: “It’ll make sense.”

Charlie Vickers: “It’s cool. It’s a really cool scene. That whole sequence with… I won’t spoil it for anyone that hasn’t seen it.”

Make sure to check out the first three episodes when they premiere on Thursday!

*This interview has been edited for length and clarity

Photo credit: Jerod Harris/Getty Images for Amazon MGM Studio