Amazon's 'The Lord Of The Rings' Casts 'His Dark Materials' Actress As Young Galadriel

Just a few days after losing actor Will Poulter to scheduling conflicts, Amazon's The Lord of the Rings show has added another member to its cast. Morfydd Clark – who can currently be seen in a supporting role in another fantasy project, HBO's His Dark Materials – is reportedly playing a younger version of Galadriel, the character inhabited by Cate Blanchett in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies.

According to Variety, Morfydd Clark will play Young Galadriel in Amazon's ambitious upcoming series. The part is said to be one of the series' leads, and it's the first major character from author J.R.R. Tolkien's mythology which has been announced as part of the ensemble. In Tolkien's stories, Galadriel was one of the most beautiful and powerful elves in the world. This show is set during Tolkien's Second Age, which is an era preceding everything in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings stories we know. But Galadriel is a key figure in the Second Age, establishing the realm of Eregion with her husband Celeborn and later meeting settlers of an area that would eventually be known as Lothlórien, the wooded paradise where Frodo and his friends first meet Galadriel in The Fellowship of the Ring. Perhaps more pertinent to the show, she's also a major player in the drama surrounding the creation of the Rings of Power.

Morfydd Clark has popped up in things like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, The Man Who Invented Christmas, and Crawl, as well as bringing a chilling quality to her role as a brainwashed nurse on His Dark Materials. She's about to play the lead in A24's Saint Maud (the trailer just dropped yesterday, and our review praises Clark's performance), and also plays Mina in BBC's new version of Dracula which arrives in a few weeks.

Other cast members include Markella Kavenagh, Joseph Mawle, and Maxim Baldry, but as we saw with Will Poulter's exit late last week, none of them are set in stone until Amazon officially confirms the show's cast. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom director J.A. Bayona is helming the first two episodes of the show, which is being overseen by JD Payne and Patrick McKay. There's no premiere date in place for the show yet, but production is said to be getting underway soon in New Zealand, the same country Peter Jackson used for his Lord of the Rings-related projects.