Morfydd Clark is holding her ears. No, she’s not fed up with NME’s line of questioning (how rude of you). We mean she’s literally holding her ears. Two flesh-coloured, pointy, prosthetic lugs. You might’ve seen her wearing them on The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power – playing fierce elf commander Galadriel in the most expensive TV show ever that’s a prequel to the most award-winning movie franchise ever that’s adapted from the biggest selling book series ever. Yeah, these ears are kind of a big deal.
“They’re amazing,” coos Clark, turning the congealing mementoes over in her hand. We’re in a pub in north London. It’s suitably hobbit-y – all wood-panelled walls and velvet furnishings – so the ears fit with the aesthetic. “The work that goes into them is incredible,” Clark continues. “First they’re painted and sculpted, then they take about 45 minutes each to put on. During filming, I saw the makeup team more than my own family.”
We’ll all be seeing more of Clark when Rings returns next week. Nearly two years have passed since the controversial season one finale aired, which saw ultimate baddie Sauron edge closer to his long-suspected comeback – and fans are desperate to find out what happens next. Awkwardly for Galadriel, it transpired that she’d accidentally been helping the disguised dark lord all along. Now she has to make amends.
“Galadriel’s got to figure out who she is in this new, darker world”
“Galadriel’s got to figure out who she is in this new, darker world,” says Clark. She doesn’t particularly resemble Galadriel now – the flowing blonde tresses are gone, her hair dark and cut shorter – but seems excited to tell us about the new episodes. “Galadriel always saw herself as the light – the darkness is something so disconnected from her – but now she’s come face to face with the darkness and she can’t be sure which path she’ll take.”
We’ve seen a large chunk of season two and – without spoiling anything – you’re in for a treat. The first season caught some flak occasionally for its leisurely pace, but that’s definitely not a problem this time. Characters trek hundreds of miles in the blink of an eye, evil armies spring up from nowhere needing to be dispatched, and an array of familiarly fantastical creatures (giant spiders, talking trees) burst out of the undergrowth. There’s also a huge, multi-episode battle that makes Helm’s Deep look like one of Bilbo Baggins’ tea parties. We’re talking sudden explosions, brutal swordfights and Galadriel spinning through the air, unleashing volleys of arrows that strike down orc after orc after orc.
To film one epic sequence, Clark and several hundred mounted extras in full armour were transported to Windsor Great Park woods for a massive extended shoot. “There was fire everywhere,” remembers Clark. “It was an incredibly exciting day already, but then the Prince and Princess of Wales turned up because we were filming in their woods. So I was doing very bad riding in front of a polo player. That was really surreal.’”
When Clark was little she never dreamed she’d end up acting in front of the future king of England. She was born in Sweden in 1989, though no one in her family is Swedish – and moved to the Welsh seaside town of Penarth, near Cardiff, when she was just two. Her mum hails from nearby, but dad is “Northern Irish-Glaswegian” and she has an uncle from Bolivia, so there’s a distinctly international flavour to the family which seems to have influenced an eclectic early taste in the arts. “There was this amazing Bolivian band that used to busk in Cardiff, so we had lots of their CDs in the car,” she says, “and my dad played us loads of folk. Stuff like [late Scottish singer] Jean Redpath.”
As she got older, Clark retained a taste for the alternative. She lists Asian Dub Foundation’s politically-charged rave banger ‘Fortress Europe’ as a key influence. And at night when she couldn’t sleep, she’d listen to ‘Duck Diving’ by Pulp – a string-laden oddity over which Jarvis Cocker talks for almost seven minutes about retrieving a brick from the bottom of a pond. When she was offered free music lessons because she attended a Welsh language school, Clark picked the less-popular trumpet – and relates a wholesome anecdote about dropping her instrument moments before an exam. “It imploded – and so I cried throughout… but afterwards, this very old, sweet examiner told me a story about his first love (who was also called Mordydd) and gave me a merit anyway.”
Apart from music and drama, Clark did not enjoy school. She has “raging” ADHD – which explains her tendency during our interview to veer off on tangents – and “was told off a lot”. Unlike a lot of her ambitious contemporaries, she did not have a plan to conquer the acting world. In fact, the idea only occurred when her mum suggested trying out for the Welsh National Youth Theatre after she finished her GCSEs. “I like the idea of doing really old professions… and acting is one of the oldest,” she says today. “There is something special about being in a theatre… and being on stage with a group of players.” Eventually, she attended the tremendously selective Drama Centre London, which set her up to work steadily on screen and stage throughout her twenties. But it wasn’t until much later that the “stars aligned” fully.
“It was kind of weird because two things happened at the same time that felt super different,” she remembers. The first of those things was getting cast as Galadriel in 2019. But around the same time, Clark also started to stir up buzz for a much smaller project: the low-budget British horror Saint Maud. “I was obsessed with it… but I didn’t expect it to be a big deal. Then it did really well and people watched it and people loved it.”
Of all the roles she’s played, Maud displays Clark’s strengths best. Uptight, often harassed and extraordinarily pious, the eponymous nurse cares for a famous dancer who is dying from cancer. She becomes dangerously obsessed with saving the patient’s soul and goes to extreme lengths (encouraged by religious visions) to do so. Clark has played similarly anxious, troubled characters throughout her career – in fantasy series His Dark Materials, Victorian thriller The Alienist, a BBC adaptation of Dracula – and even admits to having resting “Maudface”. This comes in handy when late for an appointment because, as she puts it, no one wants to stop their hero for a selfie when they “look that stressed”. Unfortunately, casting agents have caught on too. “I get loads of scripts where it’s like: ‘Awkward, makes everyone uncomfortable around her, very strange,’ and my agent will say, ‘Oh, this is perfect for you!’” says Clark, chuckling. “It was a vibe I didn’t know I was giving out.”
The Rings Of Power’s Galadriel, more conflicted and temperamental than Cate Blanchett’s much-loved and much older queen, is a similarly perfect fit for Clark. And though most fans took to her like an elven boat to water, some purists didn’t agree with this all-fighting, back-flipping version of J. R. R. Tolkien’s demure goddess. If you go on YouTube, you’ll find scores of videos from red-faced keyboard warriors spluttering about “a woke disaster”. One particularly unhinged thinkpiece even labels her: “The Psychopathic Genocidal Demon Beast”. Has she been able to tune out the online vitriol?
“I don’t think you can tune it out”
“I don’t think you really can tune it out,” Clark says, resignedly. “Our cast’s really close and we’re as happy as our least happy castmate… some people need to be protected and picked up and that’s something that is just going to be ongoing.” She is referring here, not just to her own experience of internet abuse, but to the disgusting racism hurled at some of her collaborators. There are numerous references to diverse characters in Tolkien’s writings, but that hasn’t stopped a small minority from openly attacking the show for casting black and brown-skinned dwarves, harfoots and elves. Clark and her colleagues’ response was unanimous. They posted a lengthy statement on Instagram in which they denounced the “relentless harassment” and declared that “BIPOC people belong in Middle-earth and are here to stay.”
“I’m really glad that we did that. I think it was really important for our castmates but also I couldn’t really appreciate how much it would mean to so many people…” Clark says today. “We all wrote the message together in different countries – being like, ‘I don’t think the comma’s in the right place.’ It was like, ‘Oh my god we’re never going to post this thing!’ And then eventually Ben Walker [who plays High King Gil-galad] was just like, ‘I’ve posted it, go!’ And so we all went live… It was showing the best parts of the community.”
We get a sense of this community several weeks later at the show’s glitzy London premiere. On the red carpet, everyone seems genuinely ecstatic to see each other. Clark breaks off an interview to bear-hug Charlie Vickers, who plays Sauron, and the screening is delayed by 30 minutes because the actors are too busy talking to take their seats. Every time a character appears on screen they cheer and slap each other on the back. It feels like the camaraderie – the fellowship, even – of those original movies lives on.
The Rings Of Power will get five planned seasons, barring a precipitous ratings decline – and you’d expect Galadriel to figure in all of them. Clark keeps schtum when we ask about the future though. “At some point, season three will be happening,” is all she can say. Usually, after breaking out in a huge show like Rings, the new star will head for America and do some blockbusters, maybe sign an endorsement or two, but Clark has chosen to do a creepy, British folk horror called Starve Acre next – and two plays at London’s Almeida Theatre. It’s proof of her craft-first, fame-second approach. “Every time I go to LA I have an asthma attack,” she says, “I don’t think I’m made for Hollywood. I just want to maintain a level of happiness and joy with it all… There’s a feeling that you have to keep pushing yourself, but sometimes you need to just appreciate that you’ve got a nice moment to settle into.” As we’ve learned from her favourite keepsake, Morfydd Clark likes to play it by ear.
‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ season two is on Prime Video from August 29
‘Starve Acre’ is in UK and Irish cinemas from September 6
Roots and Look Back in Anger run at the Almeida Theatre from September 10 to November 23