Cynthia Addai-Robinson Is Right at Home as ‘Lord of the Rings’ Royalty

Actress Cynthia Addai-Robinson trades the Shire’s misty mountains for a fantasy island in Amazon Prime’s prequel to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Read our Q&A to get to know the British-born actress. But first, the basics:

The Basics

• Age: 37
• Current Home: Los Angeles. I’m a Valley Girl.
• Go-to-eats: Sushi joints and tacos.
• Kiwi slang 101: “Sweet as.” Short for “sweet as honey.”
• Hobby: I have a bit of a travel bug.

The secrecy around The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power rivals the codes to the nuclear football.

The story’s been a secret that the cast and crew have all had to carry since February 2020. Now I’m about to go all in and finally say what we were up to when we were filming on the other side of the world in New Zealand. I play the Regent Queen Míriel. She rules the island kingdom of Númenor, which is part of the Tolkien lore.

On the set of what’s rumored to be the priciest series ever.

You’re definitely going to see Middle Earth on screen. This isn’t a small, little adventure. It’s epic in scale and scope with a whole new generation from Tolkien’s canon of lore. The story takes place in the fabled Second Age, before the events of The Hobbit and LOTR. It’s Tolkien’s take on the myth of Atlantis, with all the fantasy genre magical dust sprinkled on it.

Does Queen Míriel help hobbits triumph over dark forces?

It’s complicated. A Regent Queen is not fully in power yet. Essentially, I’m trying to lead my people and decide which direction this society is going to take. It’s a fork-in-the-road moment.