'Lord of the Rings' Prequel Star Lloyd Owen on How the Show Differs From the Movies: Sméagol is 'Not Around'
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Lloyd Owen is opening up about what fans can expect from the upcoming Lord of the Rings prequel series, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
On Tuesday's episode of the the PEOPLE Every Day podcast, Owen revealed how the highly-anticipated Prime Video show will differ from the original trilogy of films.
"If you only know the films — which are based on those books — that's a really dark point in middle earth history. There's not a lot left for everyone," he told host Janine Rubenstein. "And so you're just stuck in that one bit of world, that bit of Middle-earth. This time, which is thousands of years before, what you'll actually find is so many civilizations at their absolute peak of their powers at the top of their game."
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Owen plays warrior Elendil on the show, and shared more insight into what fans of the series can expect: "So the dwarves of Khazad-dûm, who are essentially gone in the third age, you see them and their minds at the height of their power, the elves at the peak of their power, Númenor at the peak of its power."
However, Owen admitted that Sméagol, who became a fan favorite character, is not a part of the series, saying, "He's not around. I'm afraid. No Sméagol. He comes later [in the story]."
The series will focus on the origin story of the popular fantasy franchise.
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"It explains how that journey happens. We are actually creating the rings themselves in this show way, way before he finds it," Owen explained. "That's the joy of this: This is where it all begins."
In July, Amazon Prime Video debuted an extended trailer for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power during a panel at Comic Con.
Elven warrior Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) is featured prominently in the extended trailer, as is a mysterious young character that could be the future villain, Sauron. The new footage essentially teases the action-packed arc of the show and all its players which, in a nutshell, will reveal what happened in Middle-earth to spark the forging of the Rings of Power.
The series is set thousands of years before the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, movies — before those storied rings were even forged — all based on a lesser-known part of author J.R.R. Tolkein's Middle-earth lore: the Second Age.
The Rings of Power co-showrunner Patrick McKay previously told EW he and partner JD Payne chose to focus their storytelling on Tolkein's lesser-known writing because they "were not interested in doing a show about the younger version of the same world you knew, where it's a little bit of a prequel."
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"We wanted to go way, way, way back and find a story that could exist on its own two feet," said McKay. "This was one that we felt hadn't been told on the level and the scale and with the depth that we felt it deserved."
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power will premiere Sept. 2 on Prime Video.
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