It’s Lord of the Rings, so you know it’s going to be epic and sprawling—and so is its cast. Today, Amazon announced the names of twenty more actors joining the still-rather-mysterious series.
- Cynthia Addai-Robinson (Arrow‘s Amanda Waller)
- Maxim Baldry (who appeared in Doctor Who‘s “The Haunting of Villa Diodati”)
- Ian Blackburn
- Kip Chapman (Top of the Lake)
- Anthony Crum
- Maxine Cunliffe (Power Rangers Megaforce)
- Trystan Gravelle (A Discovery of Witches)
- Sir Lenny Henry (Doctor Who, Broadchurch)
- Thusitha Jayasundera (Humans)
- Fabian McCallum (You, Me & The Apocalypse)
- Simon Merrells (Good Omens)
- Geoff Morrell (Top of the Lake)
- Peter Mullan (Westworld, Cursed)
- Lloyd Owen (You, Me & The Apocalypse)
- Augustus Prew (Prison Break)
- Peter Tait (who played an orc in The Return of the King)
- Alex Tarrant (Mean Mums)
- Leon Wadham (The Bad Seed)
- Benjamin Walker (Jessica Jones)
- Sara Zwangobani (Home and Away)
That’s a wide range of actors, credits, and roles, and it’s almost impossible not to click through IMDb looking at their photos and speculating where they’ll fit in in Middle-earth. These twenty actors join the main cast that was announced in January, and includes Morfydd Clark, Robert Aramayo, Joseph Mawle, and others. At the time, the producers said they still had a few “key roles” to cast—so any one of these new names could be central to the story, which is set long before the events of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
No release date is set, though we’re hoping to see something from this show next year!
Though I am still apprehensive about the story content and the treatment of the text, I absolutely like the look of this cast
This is Ian McKellen’s nightmare. He said he didn’t want it turned into a never ending series…
I’m always amazed at how little I know about anybody on TV, ha. I don’t recognize any of these names (which is a totally fine thing). But I did get a laugh at “played an orc” in the middle of all the other credentials.
Not recognizing new faces is excellent. I’m rather tired of seeing some of the same old faces. The only thing that makes me cringe is when I hear some member of the new team (actor or otherwise) having anything to do with Game of Thrones. Then I’m a little worried.
@2: Ian McKellen was talking about being up for an appearance, before it became clear that the timeline would prevent this, so not so much.
@3: Possibly the biggest name out of the new batch is Sir Lenny Henry, the British actor and comedian who co-created the Neverwhere TV show with Neil Gaiman (later turned into a novel).