Lord Of The Rings | 'Harfoots' On Adding Light To The Dark World Of Lord Of The Rings

hi we're talking lot of the Rings rings of power you are watching me on ND TV my name is Arun with JD the show runner and of course we have supremely talented marela and Megan very warm welcome to NDTV we as a warm-up we'll start with some uh PNY riddles right okay here we go riddle in the morning yeah why are harfoot so humble because they're they never sell themselves short I don't know that's a good one that's a good that's very that's a good one although my my answer was they are down to earth down to very nice we have another one why we have another one why is Elanor so active why is because she's I'm terrible with riddles she always on her foot I like itce now of course the overall theme of the series is dark how did you um balance it if you had to with the comedic themes that that these two characters bring um well their world is one of the joyful worlds spend time in I think whenever uh they come on screen people just just smile um because they have such a fun energy together they have such fun energy as characters uh they play really well with the stranger together um and uh you need that in token's World um you know it's the the smaller and you sort of simpler creatures in in the world that uh you know just can hold on to those basic human values like hope and friendship uh that ultimately can prove stronger even than armies or the dark lord himself and you know comedy is mostly about um improvisation as well were there any moments where you were improvising as actors or was it to the tea was it I I mean between like you know like moments I mean it was more sort of just like fluidity but no improv I don't think I don't know I can remember I feel like we definitely added certain kind of we've definitely played within the within the structure of the lines for sure but within a I think we improvised with intention but we definitely honored the script any light-hearted moment that will stay with you from the from the sets I mean most of them yeah most of the time anyone that you can share with us um oh I mean we had lots of amazing new casts that joined us and they were really really fun we had like lots of very like we had lots of big group scenes yeah and we worked closely with Tanya Moody for example and she is so funny without even like intending to sometimes just her natural personality she's just hilarious so FB yeah and as I asked JD about you know balancing it with the darker theme as actors was that in your head ever that you have to you know balance it with with the the light-heartedness that that your characters bring was it there in your mind ever yeah I mean I think it's written I think it's kind of written within our story and within the script is that they just naturally have some really light hearted bits but I don't think playing Nori or playing those like betraying those scenes that I was ever thinking make it light-hearted make it comedic it was just by Nature that's just how this scenes were written and then we really do have some quite vulnerable really uh quite dark scenes within that as well and we actually try to give them in some ways a direction that that cuts against the grain of that like because we find that like if you know harf foots by Nature are kind of cute because they're sort of small and they're you know they're they're they're quirky and if you play it to cutesy it's sort of sugar on top of sugar and it ends up feeling like too much if they just be who they are and if they're just natural it will come off as cute because it just simply is I was just going to say it looks very natural to us as audience oh great and and I love the chemistry that you two have did you do any exercise for it or you just hit off at the at the first time you met yeah what about your Chemistry did you do any exercises as some actors do to build that chemistry or or was it just your personal equation I think um a bit of both for sure when we first met there was instant chemistry I think between us we didn't do a chemistry test so we met in New Zealand um and thankfully it worked out um but um we did lots of improvisation and workshops in the first season um with ja and the showrunners and um yeah just kind of we did a lot of improv then actually um and we sort of like improvised within sort of some of the scenes that the show Runners gave us um and then yeah just kind of did sort of character creation together it was really nice and scenes that didn't exist as well we like particularly with J we yeah we just made up scenes in the in the rehearsals yeah for that reason yeah my last question other than your own characters which one is your favorite or you wish that you had played in the Cs oh I mean my I love the ants just anything to do with the ants that's I just love them what about you I've been saying I've really want I'd love to voice Shob at some point or angolian I think we can do this yeah I know let's make it happen if you ask Rob he would literally be like yeah I've said it to him so many times but I but I do think I do think I would want to would want to just have a go but cuz there's no character that I would want to touch cuz they're just so well done by all of those and casted as well yeah yeah thank you so much for talking to us thank you so much