Tyroe Muhafidin as Theo in “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” Season 2.Credit: Ross Ferguson / Prime Video
Tyroe Muhafidin is ready to embrace his villainous side.
The 20-year-old actor plays Theo in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, his first professional role. A young Southlander, Theo has spent the first two seasons of the series caught up in a battle between good and evil that he can barely understand. But in Season 3, Theo hopes to take matters into his own hands, a choice that brings him face to face with Sauron (Charlie Vickers).
Over the course of Season 3’s first four episodes, Theo officially joins Sauron’s army as a Nazgnagôl, or Ring-servant. Later, in one of the show’s heaviest scenes, he kills his former mentor, the elf Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova), at Sauron’s command. Between accepting a ring of power and murdering Arondir, Theo’s arc has bent entirely toward darkness, especially since the Nazgnagôl will soon become entirely corrupted, turning them into the Nazgûl of The Lord of the Rings.
In a conversation with Mashable, Muhafidin unpacked Theo’s turn to the dark side, his final scene with Córdova, and whether Theo may become the Witch-king of Angmar, as the show so heavily implies.
This season, Theo gets up close and personal with Sauron. In the first episode, he and the men of Pelargir head to Mordor for a ring of power. Tell me about how the five years under Númenórean rule have led to this decision from Theo.
In the last five years, I think any of those dwindles of hope that Theo had have now all dissipated. Basically, in the first two seasons, Theo was was very hopeful for a better life, and he really did believe that something good was going to come for his people. Then it just became pain upon pain upon pain, and loss upon loss for him. Five years, especially for a human, is enough time to set in stone for him the idea that those good days weren’t ever coming, and if he was ever going to have any life that’s different to the one that he’s having now, it would be in Barad-dûr.
That fight between the Southlanders for the ring is the most involved combat Theo’s been in so far. Walk me through training for that scene and embodying that fight-or-die feeling.
I feel like I’ve never really done anything where I was the attacker. A lot of the stunty stuff that Theo had done prior was always him running away from something. So I feel like this is the first time, and it’s showing that he’s grown now, and he can take on battles for himself, full-on, headfirst.
That fight was a bit hectic. It took us a few weeks to choreograph and nail down. Adam [Basil], who’s the loveliest guy ever — he’s this 6-foot-8 guy, and his name on the call sheet was “Big Farmer” — was absolutely a dream to work with. He’s on top of me, and you think that he would be heavy, but he did such a great job at keeping his weight just enough off me that it looked like I was holding all this weight. It was really fun, but it was really grueling to shoot. The conditions in Barad-dûr aren’t the most fun. There’s fire everywhere and blood everywhere, and it’s dark. But I guess that’s the exact vibe that Sauron’s lair would have!
Speaking of Sauron, I’d love to hear more about working with Charlie Vickers this season and establishing that intriguing dynamic between Theo and Sauron.
Working with Charlie was a dream. He’d always had a particular kind of arm around me since the first season. We were all out in New Zealand by ourselves, and he’d invite me around to play FIFA with him a bunch. It was kind of like an uncle relationship, Uncle Charlie. So we already had this dynamic, and now actually working with him, we could actually build upon that kind of big bro energy.
There’s been certain moments that they’ve shared prior, like the moment where Theo held the sword up and said, “Strength to the Southlands.” Halbrand, at the time, recognized that. So, I think Sauron had an eye out for Theo. I think the moment that he stepped into Barad-dûr, her knew there was something about this kid.
I love the whole scene where Sauron uses dark magic to invite Theo to commune with his late father. What’s running through Theo’s mind in that moment as he learns the truth about his father and his ties to Mordor?
At this point, his mind is racing. It’s so filled with everything, it would be hard for him to think rationally at all. He just did a complete fight to the death with six other guys, and now he’s having to talk to the Dark Lord and meeting his dad all of a sudden, whom he hasn’t known for the last 20 years. It’s literally the most insane sequence of events, so at this point he’s genuinely the most vulnerable, mentally. His brain is at a point now where it will soak up anything that Sauron says to him, and it has left him easy to manipulate.
Finding out who his dad was is a question that he’s asked his entire life, and when he learns, it’s disbelief and shock. It’s one of those things where you’ve been wondering for so long, so when you find out, you can’t believe that it’s true anyway. It’s this weird, in-between world of knowing now, but still feeling like he doesn’t know. I think Sauron can use that uncertainty in his brain, and with the presence of a ring, it was very easy to say what needed to be said.
I have to talk about the Witch-king in the room, because Sauron tells Theo he has it in him to be a sorcerer and a king. Obviously, a very famous sorcerer king with a ring of power in The Lord of the Ringsis the Witch-king of Angmar. Are you able to confirm that Theo is going down that path?
[laughs] You could theorize along those lines, maybe, but I guess you’d have to ask [co-creators] J.D. [Payne] and Patrick [McKay] about that one.
Theo puts on the ring and becomes one of the Ring-servants. When did you learn that this darkness was really going to become a part of his arc?
There was always a presence of it from the first season. With the sword hilt, there was already a connection to the dark side, and there was the scene with Waldreg [Geoff Morrell] at the watchtower trying to get him to join him. There’ve been temptations throughout, and they were planted carefully, so that when it came to the point that he got offered the ultimate question, he’d already been broken down gradually, and let the darkness in so much that it was easy to say yes.
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I’d only found out just just before Season 3 I actually get a ring. In the five years prior to that, I’d been poking at J.D. and Patrick saying, “Will I get a ring? Will I get a ring?”
They always flipped it back on me, asking, “Should Theo get a ring?” And I was like, “I don’t know. That’s too much pressure!”
I did a little bit of sweet talking all the way through, saying it’d be cool to play a villain. Villain arcs are really cool, and there’s some cool depth to them. Theo does have a real great sense of depth and reasoning behind his darkness.
Speaking of the rings, they all look different. Did you get a choice in which one you got to put on?
I think I got the coolest. I remember seeing them all and being like, “I hope that one’s mine.”
Then when I got my costume for the first time, I got to see which ring was mine, and it was exactly the one I wanted. It was my favorite one out of all of them.
We have to talk about the costume, because the image of the Nazgnagôl armor and mask recalls the Nazgûl in Lord of the Rings, and that has a lot of weight for the series. What was it like, stepping into that for the first time?
I’d done a lot of movement workshops and things like that to try and gauge a sense of the power that the Nazgnagôl would have. I’d done it for a few weeks before any kind of costume fitting, but it wasn’t until the day that I had my first costume fitting — there was no armor or crown or anything, it was literally just a bunch of black robes — that I immediately could feel the darkness attached to it. You could get a sense of power, even just in the robes. Then at each costume fitting, they introduced more and more to the costume, and then by the last costume fitting, I’d fully felt the power.
I also requested if I could do some movement workshops in the costume, because it was actually really complicated to move in. The crown is essentially an extension of your head, so any movement of your head will be really exaggerated at the end of the crown. We had to figure out how to walk in a way so our heads weren’t bobbing a bunch. There was a sense of trying to move like you’re floating, because if we didn’t do that, the crown would have just made us look goofy.
What’s the secret to moving like the Nazgnagôl?
There’s a sense of real strength and power, but also a sense of otherworldliness. The Nazgnagôl live in both the mortal life and the immortal life, so we wanted them to move as if they were in between worlds, and they’re coming from one world to another. It was very much about moving with a slight bend at the knees, so every time you’re moving, it’s more of a glide than a walk. I think once the costume’s on, though, it does 80 percent of the work for you. You just automatically feel it.
It’s very imposing. We’ve got to talk about the final scene of episode 4, with Arondir’s death. Tell me about filming that final scene with Ismael and finding that last connection?
We shot that scene over two weeks, so we’d shot that specific sequence and the stabbing multiple times without getting any close up. We’d done it wide a bunch of times, and every point up until then, we were really light-hearted. We were having fun on set, and then the day came where we were doing our close-ups, and the air just felt cold, and everyone could feel the sad energy. It was so heavily emotional, like for both of us, it was a real bonding and brotherhood moment. We got a lot closer, because we could open up on our feelings. Feeling so deeply at that time in that moment, it really opened up a big space for us to connect. It was fun though. We had a really great time, and it was a really great group of us on set. It was daunting, but it was very fun. It was a big celebration of Ismael and all the hard work that he’s put into this job and how awesome Arondir is. I’m so glad that he got to do all this really cool shit at the end.
What was your reaction to first reading that Theo stabs him?
I knew beforehand. I think initially J.D. and Patrick’s plan was to wait for me to just get the script and read it, but Charlotte Brandstrom, the first episode director, just blurted it out to me. I was like, “Oh, I guess that was the whole secret they were trying to keep from me.”
So, I knew it was coming, but I didn’t know how. I knew at some point if I was going to go to the dark side, there would be a confrontation between them, because obviously they’re fighting on opposing ends of the war, and they’re both frontmen. Reading it, I just didn’t imagine it to be as heartfelt as it was. I always thought that it was going to be a lot colder and a lot quicker. So, reading it and seeing how close he was to really accepting Arondir was really heartbreaking. This is actually such a love-filled scene, and that’s why it’s so tragic and so heartbreaking, because there is so much love between them, and it just disappears in an instant, which leaves a real hollow feeling at the end of the episode.
There’s that moment of compulsion from Sauron that makes Theo stab Arondir. What’s he thinking at that moment? Is he reevaluating his choice, or is his humanity too far gone?
Theo is definitely someone who’s been a product of who his role models are and who is giving him guidance. This is the moment where his two biggest role models in his life at this point are meeting head to head. For the last few weeks, Theo has been under the influence of Sauron. He has been fed however many ideas in his head about the elves. But then when he sees Arondir’s face, all those ideas that Sauron had planted disappear, and he’s almost ready to accept the hand that’s put out in front of him because he can see the the love in Arondir’s eyes. That moment when Sauron arrives is him thinking, “Oh yeah, I remember what I’m supposed to be doing now.” It flips back into work mode, or servant mode.
Right now we know the Nazgnagôl as Ring-servants, but we know that the final iteration of them is the Nazgûl, who are totally far gone. Assuming Theo stays on this path, what is an element of that transformation that you’re most excited to play?
The cool thing about the Nazgnagôl and the Nazgûl is that they have a completely different living experience to anything else in Middle-earth. They are living in between two worlds, and so you’re trying to explore what it looks like to be detaching from the mortal world, becoming more spirit-like, and losing a sense of reality while being completely controlled and manipulated. It’ll be really interesting because at this point in time, the Nazgnagôl are still men. They have autonomy over themselves and their decisions and what they can do, whereas it’d be great to see them slowly not be able to do that.
The show has such a massive array of locations to visit. Going forward, what is one of the worlds within Middle-earth that you would like to work in?
I would love, love, love to do work in Númenor. The sets are just so magnificent. Everything around it is so glorious and beautiful, and there’s a real community vibe. Any time I’ve been on the sets with the Númenóreans, they all seem to be getting along real well, whereas I’ve been hanging out with orcs who most of the time aren’t that happy. [laughs]
And who is someone from the ensemble you’d love to work with?
I’d love to do work with more or at least more stuff with Leon [Wadham], who plays Kemen. I really wish we had more to do. I love Leon. When we were shooting Season 3, he was actually living above me, so we were constantly just borrowing stuff off each other all the time and just talking about work or whatever. We only ever had two days on set, and it was the last scene of Season 2 and the first scene of Season 3. But I also just think Kemen is not a nice guy.
Every time he’s on screen, I’m angry. I don’t even care if Theo’s on the dark side. He deserves his vengeance a little.
Yeah, I’d love for Theo to face off against Kemen and give him what he deserves.
The interview above was edited for length and clarity.
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Belen Edwards is an Entertainment Reporter at Mashable. She covers movies and TV with a focus on fantasy and science fiction, adaptations, animation, and more nerdy goodness. She is a member of the Critics Choice Association and the Television Critics Association, as well as a Tomatometer-approved critic.
