For those well versed in the lore of JRR Tolkien, Elendil is a character who is always lurking in stories and the corners, never really being fleshed out by the author. While characters like Galadriel or Elrond are more popular, Elendil has an important part to play in the narrative.
Now, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has introduced a whole new set of faces as well as fleshed out popular characters that were mere footnotes in Tolkein’s world. One of them is Elendil. He has a key role to play in the eventual battle against Sauron, and it’s his sword Narsil that shatters into pieces, only to be reforged centuries later and wielded by his descendent Aragorn.
Now, in a recent interaction for All Rings Considered podcast, Lloyd Owen, who plays Elendil opened up about prepping for the character and learning Elvish.
Speaking about studying with experts and linguists, Owen said it was a great experience, reminiscing about the time he worked in Thugs of Hindostan.
“A couple of years ago I did a Bollywood film called The Thungs of Hindostan with Aamir Khan, and I had 36 scenes to do, which were all in Urdu. The director wanted my English character to be so good at speaking the language that he would be even more fearful as a member of the British East India Company, as a baddie, basically. I’d had this experience of being given words essentially as sounds and trying to make sense of them,” he said.
The actor went on to add that when he was given the Elvish to speak, it was another moment where he recognised that this was a similar journey.
“And it’s a joyful journey because you have to unpick language in a way that you try and relate to your own language. You work out where the vowel sounds are, what the conjunctions are, which words are important, what the rhythm is. Obviously, Tolkien being a philologist, it’s very beautiful to say Elvish. It’s quite joyful to get your tongue around,” he added.
