Several cast members of Amazon’s new series “Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” have been besieged by hateful comments from viewers who criticized the casting of people of color as Elves, Dwarves and Harfoots, among other races. fictitious. (Most of the roles were created for the show, including the elf Silvan Arondir, played by Ismael Cruz Córdova, and the dwarf Princess Disa, played by Sophia Nomvete, two actors who have been the target of hate messages.)
The cast members spoke out about the racist comments they received, and now they have the support of the original hobbits Wood, astin, Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd, who played Frodo, Samwise, Merry and Pippin, respectively. All four actors appeared wearing gear that read, in Elvish, “You’re all welcome here,” as well as several different character ears in an array of skin tones. (Tolkien created various dialects of Elvish for his works.)
The shirts and the hats were made by Don Marshall, a TikTok user with over 590,000 followers who shares “obscure ‘LOTR’ facts.” Earlier this month, Marshall, who expressed his enthusiasm for the new series and its new characters, asked his fans to help him identify users who had left racist comments on his videos, saying he had already blocked a hundred of them.
JRR Tolkien, who wrote “The Hobbit” and the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy between World War I and World War II and the period after, has been accused by some readers of espousing racist ideas in his novels, especially in his portrayal of Elves, Dwarves and Orcs. And Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” film trilogy features virtually no people of color in critical roles.
“The Rings of Power,” meanwhile, features people of color in central roles, including Córdova, Nomvete and Nazanin Boniadi, who plays Bronwyn. The British-Iranian actress thanked the “tenacious, courageous and resilient women of (her) homeland” for inspiring her character.
But some fans have been angered by the newly inclusive Middle-earth, sending hateful comments to the actors themselves amid reports that the show has been “bombarded by critics” (i.e., flooding the internet from so many bad reviews that it misrepresents the true percentage of critics and viewers who liked it).
Córdova, an Afro-Latino actor from Puerto Rico, is the first person of color to play a Tolkien elf, yet for the past two years he has been inundated with ‘pure and vicious hate speech’ on social media. social, he told Esquire.
“I fought so hard for this role for this exact reason,” he said. “I felt I could carry this torch. I made my elf the most elven, the most amazing, because I knew it was coming.”
Nomvete also anticipated a hateful reaction to her casting, especially since she is also the first female dwarf in a film adaptation of Tolkien’s work. She told The Daily Beast that her main focus is on improving representation in the fantasy realm.
“People of color exist in the world. And so I find it utter madness that we don’t exist or can’t exist in the world of fantasy, of all places.”
Other cast members defended themselves: Morfydd Clark, who plays the elf hero Galadriel, told Inverse that fans claiming the show’s departure from Tolkien’s original ideas is unfounded.
“This idea that anyone could know exactly what (Tolkien) would have wanted or liked is, I think, nonsense,” she said.
Córdova thanked Astin and Wood for supporting the cast of “Rings of Power.”
“We belong to Middle-earth”, Córdova wrote.