The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power actor Ismael Cruz Córdova blew up the representation narrative that Prime Video has been pushing surrounding their promotion of the upcoming television series.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power have been pushing the representation narrative for a couple of years.
Back in 2020, showrunners JD Payne and Patrick McKay issued a joint statement about the show, “The world that J.R.R. Tolkien created is epic, diverse and filled with heart. These extraordinarily talented performers, hailing from across the globe, represent the culmination of a multiyear search to find brilliant and unique artists to bring that world to life anew.”
The show’s executive producer Lindsey Weber told Vanity Fair in February, “It felt only natural to us that an adaptation of Tolkien’s work would reflect what the world actually looks like.”
“Tolkien is for everyone,” she added. “His stories are about his fictional races doing their best work when they leave the isolation of their own cultures and come together.”
Even more recently at San Diego Comic-Con, actress Sophia Nomvete, who plays Princess Disa, told PA Media, “We are redressing the balance within the film and television, television industry and of course, this franchise and I hope, lots of franchises moving forward.”
“These are the best people for the roles but what they’ve done is open up the doors for people of all backgrounds to come forward and have the opportunity to rise,” she continued.
She would go on to assert, “To be the poster child and to fly the flag, being a mother, being a woman, being a person of colour, being a curvaceous woman deemed as a thing of beauty is something we don’t always see.”
“So that image of Disa… that is all of those things personified in a face, and it happens to be my face,” she said.
Clearly, representation and diversity are part of Prime Video’s marketing strategy to promote The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. However, Ismael Cruz Córdova, who plays Arondir, shredded the entire narrative.
In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly (EW), he detailed that he “wanted to be an elf since I was a little kid.” In fact, EW details that Córdova recalled pretending to be an elf and using an imaginary bow.
Despite Córdova revealing that you don’t need to have characters that look exactly like you to use your imagination to be like them, he would try and return back to the narrative saying, “That was something I really dreamt about, but on the flip side, it was something that was a little painful because there weren’t elves that looked like me.”
He added, “It became a personal but distant dream, up until the moment where this opportunity opened up. So I ferociously went for it.”
What do you make of Córdova blowing up Prime Video’s representation and diversity narrative?