Boniadi was on the street selling one other venture when she submitted her first audition tape in April 2019 for the then-untitled Lord of the Rings venture. The casting course of was arduous. It was six months of self-tapes, an in-person assembly with the casting director in London, and plenty of anticipation earlier than she came upon she acquired the job and would wish to relocate to New Zealand three weeks later. It was the alternative of “hurry up and wait” till months of intense preparation—stunt coaching, gymnasium classes, dialect teaching, and costume fittings—got here to a screeching halt in March 2020. “I used to be a day away from filming, and so they needed to shut down,” she recollects. Boniadi waited out the early days of the pandemic again residence in Los Angeles earlier than being known as again to New Zealand in August, the place she would keep till filming wrapped in July 2021.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Energy is ready within the Second Age of Center-earth—1000’s of years earlier than the occasions of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings—and options the primary solid of twenty-two individuals. The story covers main occasions of the time interval, together with how the notorious rings have been cast. Boniadi performs human Bronwyn from the Southlands, a healer and single mom preventing for the rights of her individuals who have lengthy been oppressed by the elves. It was a personality that instantly resonated with Boniadi—not simply due to the serendipitous healing-sciences connection but in addition Bronwyn’s tenacity and resilience. “There’s a component of preventing for her individuals’s rights that I can relate to as a longtime human-rights activist for my homeland, Iran,” she says. “The individuals on the forefront of the motion towards democracy and freedom in Iran are the courageous ladies of Iran. They’re risking all the things for a greater tomorrow. The tales I hear, the circumstances I work on, the ladies I converse to inside Iran, they gave me all of the inspiration I wanted to construct Bronwyn from the underside up [and] to anchor her within the fact of what ladies all over the world and in my homeland are doing—risking all the things for a greater tomorrow.”
The sequence showrunners Patrick McKay and JD Payne welcomed inventive collaboration from the actors in constructing out their characters, and for Boniadi, it was essential to make sure Bronwyn’s actions got here from a spot of affection. “She will not be solely a healer, not solely the mom of a rebellious teenage son, not solely in a forbidden romance with an elf, however she’s a pacesetter,” Boniadi says. “And the factor I associated to most and conveyed to the showrunners that they have been very receptive to was [this]. As an activist, you may be pushed by certainly one of two issues: The need for justice can come from a spot of vengeance … or it may possibly come from a spot of affection for the disenfranchised. So I wished to base all the things that Bronwyn does from a spot of affection—her love of her individuals, her love for her son, her love for the elf—and a want to beat versus ‘I’m going to indicate you. I’m going to carry you down.’ And I’m hoping that’s what the viewers will see.”