Going from the Upside Down to Middle-earth might sound like a pretty significant career change, but if anybody can make the transition look effortless, it’s probably Jamie Campbell Bower. After terrifying Netflix audiences as Vecna in Stranger Things, the actor has traded Hawkins for a very different fantasy world, joining the third season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. As it turns out, finding the right actor for the role was no easy feat.
Speaking exclusively with Collider’s Maggie Lovitt for a new episode of our Behind the Scenes series, The Rings of Powerco-showrunner Patrick McKay revealed that hundreds of actors auditioned for the role of Celeborn before Bower was selected to portray Galadriel’s husband in Season 3, explaining that showrunner J.D. Payne had always intended to bring the character into the story in an unexpected way, but finding somebody capable of matching Morfydd Clark‘s performance as Galadriel was essential.
The casting process involved an extensive search led by casting director Theo Park, with a smaller group of candidates eventually invited to perform chemistry reads alongside Clark, but despite already being familiar with Bower’s work, McKay admitted that the creative team didn’t know whether they’d found their Celeborn until they actually met him.
“We always knew we wanted Celeborn to come back in an unexpected way and to be on Galadriel’s journey. But then it comes time to make Season 3, and you’ve got to cast him. We work with a great casting director, Theo Park. We saw hundreds of tapes. She saw even more than that. And then we brought a few people in to do chemistry reads with Morfydd. We did not know Jamie. We knew and were fans of his work, and felt there was something there. But it wasn’t until we walked in the room that we realized, we have a Celeborn, and this is it.”
McKay explained that the experience reminded him of discovering Clark during the casting process for the show’s first season, when the producers quickly realized they’d found the actress who could anchor their enormous fantasy series. “It was the same in Season 1 with casting Morfydd. We didn’t know her; we had no idea. Then we met her, and within five minutes, it was like, we have a show,” McKay told Collider. “And with Celeborn, it was scary. I mean, you’re trying to match her energy. He has to be, you know, the yin to her yang in a way. You need to believe their chemistry and believe the history there. And you want someone who’s going to bring something out in her. And you also want somebody who we all want to work with.” He went on to sing Bower’s praises saying:
“We work very closely with one another, and we don’t suffer fools, and we don’t need somebody who’s not going to be able to integrate. But lucky for us, Jamie is a wonderful addition on screen and off. We just feel lucky we got him. It’s the fact that he was interested in doing it and said yes, and we got really lucky.”
When Lovitt pointed out that Bower seemed almost perfectly suited to playing an Elf, McKay couldn’t help but agree. “Totally, he’s such an elf. Yeah, the show has been waiting for him,” he said.
Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes What Fantasy World Do You Belong To? Middle-earth · Grand Line · The Continent · Camp Half-Blood
Pick your magic, your crew, where you want to wake up and who you would rather be fighting, and we will tell you which world you actually belong in. Four are open to you: an ancient kingdom living through its last good age, an endless sea full of pirates, a continent that pays people to kill monsters, and a summer camp where the Greek gods are extremely real and mostly a nuisance.
💍Middle-earth(Rings of Power)
👒Grand Line(One Piece)
🐺The Continent(The Witcher)
🔱Camp Half-Blood(Percy Jackson)
01
What kind of power do you want? Every one of these worlds runs on a completely different sort of magic.
02
Who is travelling with you? Nobody gets through any of these stories entirely on their own.
03
Where do you want to wake up tomorrow? The best fantasy is usually just somewhere you would genuinely like to live.
04
How are you making a living out there? Even in fantasy somebody has to pay for the horse.
05
There is something in the woods. What do you do about it? All four of these worlds keep something unpleasant out there in the dark.
06
Who is the villain of your story? The enemy tells you far more about a world than the hero ever does.
07
What do you actually believe in out there? Every world hands its heroes one rule and asks them to hold onto it.
08
A thousand years from now, how are you remembered? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides your world.
The Map Is Drawn Your World Is…
Four worlds and four completely different ideas of what a good life
looks like. This is where you belong, what it would ask of you, and what you would get back in
return.
The Rings of Power · Prime Video · Since 2022
Middle-earth
You belong somewhere old enough that the mountains have names and
somebody can still tell you who gave them. Middle-earth is for people who think the right
thing is worth doing even when it will not be finished in their lifetime.
This is the only world on the list where doing good is understood as a very long defeat,
fought anyway, by people who will never see how it ends.
You are drawn to grandeur, to white cities and deep forges and the sense that almost
everything you touch is older than your entire family line.
The Rings of Power is set in the last good age before it all goes wrong, which gives
every quiet scene in it a slightly unbearable weight.
You would take the hard road, and you would take it on foot.
One Piece · Manga since 1997 · Netflix 2023
The Grand Line
You want the sea, a crew, and absolutely nobody telling you where
you are allowed to go. The Grand Line is the world for people whose main ambition in life is
finding out what is over there.
One Piece has run for decades on one very simple engine, which is a group of people who
each want something impossible and have decided to go and get it together.
You collect people. Your ideal crew is a set of misfits who were each written off
somewhere else before you turned up and offered them a better idea.
The world is enormous and deliberately ridiculous, and the emotional gut punches land
harder because of that rather than in spite of it.
You would set sail knowing the map runs out, which is more or less the entire point of
it.
The Witcher · Netflix · Since 2019
The Continent
You would rather be feared and useful than liked and useless. The
Continent is a world where the monsters are the straightforward part of the job and the
people are where it all gets complicated.
Witchers get paid to do what nobody else will and resented for existing at all, which is
a trade most people would refuse and you would probably accept.
You have no real illusions about which side is the good one, largely because on the
Continent that question tends to have a disappointing answer.
The best of these stories are not about the fighting. They are about somebody with a
rigid code being repeatedly cornered into caring about people.
You would take the coin, finish the job properly, and be out of town before the story
got told wrong.
Percy Jackson · Disney+ · Since 2023
Camp Half-Blood
You want the myths to be real and loose in the actual world, and
you want to find out at about thirteen that you were never anywhere near as ordinary as
everybody kept telling you.
Percy Jackson takes the oldest stories we have and drops them into car parks and diners,
which makes the gods considerably funnier and a great deal worse.
You would be the kid every school gave up on, who turns out to have been built for
something nobody thought to test for.
The series is genuinely about friendship rather than destiny, and it says so out loud
every time a prophecy tries to get in the way.
Camp Half-Blood is the real fantasy here: a place where the thing that made you
difficult everywhere else is the thing that makes you belong.
Why Is Celeborn So Important to ‘The Rings of Power’?
Although Celeborn has been a significant figure in Tolkien’s mythology for decades, The Rings of Power has spent its first two seasons exploring Galadriel’s story largely without him. The character was previously mentioned as her missing husband, with Galadriel believing that he had been lost during the conflicts that preceded the show’s events.
In Tolkien’s writings, Celeborn is an important Elven lord who eventually rules Lothlórien alongside Galadriel. Movie audiences will also recognize the character from Peter Jackson‘s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, where he was portrayed by Marton Csokas.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 3 is streaming on Prime Video. Stay tuned to Collider for all the latest news and updates on the biggest and best movies and shows heading to your favorite streaming platforms soon. You can watch the full episode of Collider Behind the Scenes above.
