Morfydd Clark's Preparation For Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power Sounds Terrifying

Preparing for any role is a tough and arduous process, but preparing for something as physically intense and demanding as "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" is arguably going to be more difficult than preparing for say, the "Cheaper By the Dozen" remake. "The Rings of Power" is set thousands of years before the events of "The Hobbit," but is filled with as much fantastical action as any of the adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien's works we've seen before. Actor Morfydd Clark is known for her roles as the titular "Saint Maud," Dora Spenlow in "The Personal History of David Copperfield," Mina Harker in "Dracula," and Sister Clara in "His Dark Materials," but her new role as Galadriel in "The Rings of Power" required a completely different set of acting skills that she doesn't often get to explore.

For the uninitiated, Galadriel is the Lady of the woods of Lothlórien and considered to be one of the greatest Elves in all of Middle-earth. She's beautiful, intelligent, and fiercely powerful, which is the opposite of many of the roles Clark is known for. In a recent interview with Empire, Clark confessed that she required a specific form of training to pull off the role. "When I was playing Galadriel, the stunt-team said, 'You've got a problem, because you're used to being attacked on film,'" she said. 

The answer? Exposure therapy.

"Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" assembled a cast of mostly up-and-comers, with Clark serving as one of the more well-known stars. Clark is only 5' 3" (or 160 centimeters), so thinking about a group of gigantic, armed men barreling down at her sounds like an absolute nightmare of fight/flight/freeze/fawn response, but the preparation tactic seems to have done the trick. "I would flinch a lot when people came at me, so they did exposure therapy with me where I would have all these huge, huge men running at me, screaming with swords." She said the goal was to keep her from appearing frightened because although she's made a career being cast as victims, "Galadriel is not that."

In the same Empire interview, Clark says that it wasn't until another actor mentioned they were up for a new "Lord of the Rings" series that she actually understood what this could mean for her:

"I went into the toilet and just stared at myself and was like, 'You've gotta pull yourself together. You've been training for this for years. You know what to do, it's in your blood.' Because I'd been obsessively watching 'Lord Of The Rings' for my whole childhood."

Clark's performance as Galadriel has already been hailed as wonderful by critics, even if Clark didn't originally know what she was auditioning for when pursuing the role.

"Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" is available on Prime Video.