Amazon Prime Video's upcoming Lord of the Rings series will introduce a new race of Hobbits that were only mentioned in the original books by J.R.R. Tolkein: the Harfoots.
British comedian Sir Lenny Henry, who will appear in the series as a Harfoot, a multi-ethnic tribe of Hobbits that were mentioned in the original Tolkein books but were absent from the original film trilogy, recently spoke about what it was like to play a "black Hobbit." "For the last two years I've been working on Lord of the Rings and it's an extraordinary thing, it's the biggest television show that's ever been made, in terms of money and head count. Literally, a hundred people on set glaring at you and trying to work out what you'll look like four feet tall…," Henry said in an interview with BBC Radio 4, as reported by Bleeding Cool.
"I'm a Harfoot, because J.R.R. Tolkien, who was also from Birmingham, suddenly there were black Hobbits, I'm a black hobbit, it's brilliant, and what's notable about this run of the books, its a prequel to the age that we've seen in the films, it's about the early days of the Shire and Tolkien's environment, so we're an indigenous population of Harfoots, we're Hobbits but we're called Harfoots, we're multi-cultural, we're a tribe, not a race, so we're black, Asian and brown, even Maori types within it," Henry said.
Harfoots are one of the three breeds of Hobbits, the other two being Stoors and Fallohides. Like every people in Tolkein's literary masterpiece, the Hobbits have a complex history that wasn't fully realized in Peter Jackson's iconic film adaptations. The series, which takes place during the Second Age, thousands of years before the events of Lord of the Rings, will depict an early age of Harfoots when they first began migrating West. In the books, Tolkien described the Harfoots as "browner of skin" than other Hobbits. They were also the first to migrate Westward and were on particularly friendly terms with the Dwarves.
"It's a brand new set of adventures that seed some of the origins of different characters and it's going to take at least ten years to tell the story. Because it's based on the Silmarillion which was almost like a cheat sheet for what happens next in this world in the second and third ages. And the writers have a lot of fun in extrapolating it all out, and it's going to be very exciting."
Henry also noted that, along with a commitment to diversity in the cast, this adaptation will have a "very strong female presence" as well. "There's going to be female heroes in this evocation of the story, they're going to be little people as usual," he said.
Amazon Prime Video's sweeping, big-budget fantasy series began filming in Feb. 2020 but paused for several months before resuming in September that same year. Amazon recently made an official announcement for Season 2 after committing $250 million for the franchise's television rights, reportedly aiming for a five-season run. Season 1 wrapped filming in early August, and it was recently announced that the series would be moving from New Zealand to the UK for filming on Season 2.
Developed by J. D. Payne and Patrick McKay, The Lord of the Rings will premiere on Amazon Prime on Sept. 2, 2022.
Source: BBC Radio 4, via Bleeding Cool