Today, Prime Video revealed that Laurence
Olivier Award-winning actor Rory Kinnear (James Bond films, The Imitation Game), who, as previously
announced, joined the Season Two cast of The
Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, will portray the fan-favorite J.R.R.
Tolkien character Tom Bombadil. The second season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power will premiere exclusively
on Prime Video on August 29, 2024.
This announcement comes after much online
speculation, as the timeless, mysterious, and jovial Tom Bombadil has been beloved
by Tolkien fans for decades. Given his hand in so many key moments of the
larger story, the character’s absence from other on-screen depictions of
Middle-earth has often been the topic of robust conversation. The news was
revealed through brand-new images from the series, and an interview in Vanity Fair that was released online
earlier today.
The series’ showrunners J. D. Payne and
Patrick McKay are excited to bring this new element to the story, and are thrilled that the gifted
Kinnear is bringing this iconic character to life. “He’s whimsical and magical,
and almost verging on silly. But also has the wisdom of the ages and the music
of the spheres and deep emotional wells of ancient history and myth, and his
conception and function are tied to Norse myths and have deep roots in European
fairy tale,” McKay says. “So weirdly, he’s kind of the most Lord of the Rings
thing in Lord of the Rings.” Payne
adds, “Tom is sort of a curiosity within that structure because while it is
darker, Tom Bombadil is singing and saying lines that could be nursery rhymes
from children’s poems. So, he sort of defies the tonal shift of the rest of the
season and is a real point of light amidst an otherwise sea of darkness.”
Kinnear embraced the opportunity to jump into
the famed yellow boots, elaborating that while the description of Tom Bombadil
was well-known to readers, he relished the opportunity to portray the voice and
mannerisms of the enigmatic being for the first time in a filmed iteration of
Tolkien’s work. “There’s this sense of huge experience, huge openness, huge
empathy, and having gone through so much that he [Bombadil] knows it’s the
small things that are important. That felt actually quite domestic, felt quite
reachable in terms of my understanding of who he was.”
Character
Description:
Rory Kinnear plays “Tom Bombadil” a figure of unknown origin
in Tolkien’s works who projects a timeless wisdom, often propelling characters
in a direction to see things more clearly and helping them better understand
the wide world around them. In the lore, he claims to be
as old as Middle-earth
itself, possessing wisdom far beyond the reaches of others. Essential to the
spirit of discovery and of the search for meaning, Bombadil is famously clad in
yellow boots, blue jacket, and a feathered hat, and prone to enigmatic
expressions in singsong verse.
Additionally, Chris Smith, Tolkien Publishing
Director at HarperCollins, revealed in Vanity
Fair that the book titled The
Adventures of Tom Bombadil will be re-released in paperback by
HarperCollins on August 20, 2024, just ahead of the streaming series’ return to
Prime Video. Smith said, “It’s my hope that, with the introduction of Rory
Kinnear’s portrayal of Tom Bombadil in The
Rings of Power, audiences are inspired to learn more about this unique
character beloved of generations of readers around the world, and will delight
in sharing in his many adventures in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth.”
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