We still know very little about Amazon’s Lord of the Rings series. It will take place sometime prior to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring, director J.A. Bayona (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom) and consultant Bryan Cogman (Game of Thrones) are involved and the writers’ room is operating under intense security precautions. Now, we’ve got another vague morsel: the first casting news!
If you’re looking for a household name or an iconic character, however, that’s not what you’ll get. According to Variety, the first actor cast is relative unknown Markella Kavenagh, playing a character named Tyra. That’s all we know! Tyra is certainly not a name from Tolkien’s books, so it very well could be a placeholder to keep their secrets… safe. We shall see.
Kavenagh’s biggest role to date is probably starring alongside Natalie Dormer in the recent Australian TV adaptation of Picnic at Hanging Rock, inspired by the 1975 Peter Weir film. Australian readers may also recognise her from the 2018 Stan-exclusive Romper Stomper TV adaptation.
The “stuff we don’t know” list regarding Lord of the Rings also includes a “when,” as in “When the hell is this thing coming to Amazon?” The “no timetable” guesstimate we got back in February appears to still be the case, but the fact that casting announcements have begun is definitely a sign of forward momentum.