Cynthia Addai-Robinson on the role of a Númenórean queen in the Rings of Power

I’m going to pull you back into Rings for a minute because I have a few questions about your character. We saw a lot more of Míriel in Episode 3 and quite a bit more in Episode 4. We’ll see more of her, and there isn’t much in Tolkien’s writings about Tar-Míriel. What was it like finding the details needed to make things like her understandable and give it a story arc, knowing that you have that structure but there isn’t a lot of detail to fill it in?

I certainly tried as much as possible to do my due diligence and see what kind of details were available in terms of writing, not only specific to the character of Míriel, but also to the larger world of Númenor, Pharazôn , and tried to take that information and then take a “How do I portray this person?” approach. One of my approaches [was that] I’ve thought a lot about her parentage. I’ve thought a lot about it: “What does it mean to stand in line and know from birth that one day you will be made queen; what could this education look like?”

Likewise, [there’s] the king’s consciousness and during his reign what was the reaction to some of the decisions he made for Númenórean society and how this would affect the kind of leader she aspired to be. It was interesting because there is so much to me. What’s really exciting about Númenor is that as the story progresses there are many opportunities for interesting and complex storytelling within a society and the direction a society is taking and the impact that has on the greater good.

Some of these ideas can be a bit abstract. For me it was more about Míriel’s state of mind and how she felt in the scenario she is in. I kept coming back to this idea of ​​isolation when it comes to having knowledge that other people don’t and being tasked with making decisions that, in a way, are yours and yours alone. She’s the ultimate decider of things… Not only are there not many people she can absolutely argue with or go to, including her king and including Pharazôn, but there’s this inner sense of heaviness, the weight, about pondering all this and trying to decide what to say, what not to say, what to reveal, what steps to take, especially when Galadriel arrives. Your arrival is the prelude to the feeling that something has started.