The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power returns for its second season this August. One of the roles on the fantasy series, Adar, was recast, with Sam Hazeldine (Masters of the Air, Peaky Blinders) taking over for Game of Thrones actor Joseph Mawle. Hazeldine has now spoken for the first time about joining the show, telling Entertainment Weekly that he worked with Mawle years ago and is a big fan of what he did with Adar in the first season.
“So it was actually a pleasure to take the baton from him. Obviously we don’t look the same, but the character is instantly recognizable,” he said.
Hazeldine went on to say that the appeal of playing Adar for him is that Adar is a “dark character” but doesn’t see himself as a villain. “He’s just trying to protect his children, the Uruk,” he said. “So he’s doing what he feels he has to do to save them from the genocide, whether that would be from Sauron, who sees them as cannon fodder, or from the elves.”
The actor went on to say that getting into costume was quite a lengthy process, revealing it originally took seven hours before the team got it down to five. But that wasn’t the hardest part of the shoot. He said the most challenging aspect of playing Adar was learning Black Speech.
“It is hard on your throat, and it is hard to remember because it doesn’t really follow the elvish languages, which have roots in real languages like Welsh and Finnish. But he just didn’t write that many words in Black Speech,” Hazeldine said.
In 2022, Mawle said he was dropping out of The Rings of Power because it is his duty as an actor to “explore new characters and worlds.” He’s not the only actor from Season 1 who isn’t coming back for Season 2. Nazanin Boniadi, who played Bronwyn, won’t be in the new episodes as she “stepped away from acting” in 2022.
The Rings of Power Season 2 debuts August 29 on Prime Video. The creative team behind the series has five seasons mapped out, including the very last shot.
If the TV show doesn’t interest you, there are multiple new Lord of the Rings movies in the works, including the animated movie War of the Rohirrim coming this year and the live-action The Hunt for Gollum in 2026.