A chat with the Rings of Power star
In 2019’s Years and Years, Maxim Baldry plays Viktor, a Ukrainian refugee, who finds himself part of the central Lyons family as dystopia sets in. As Isildur in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, he’s an outsider looking in once again. He’s no stranger to the industry though, having appeared as a child in Mr Bean’s Holiday and in Hollyoaks. Sitting down with Port shortly after San Diego Comic Con, he discussed what he hoped to do in his roles as well as in the future.
Isildur is a huge figure in the lore that hasn’t had any screen time, really. How does it feel to play him?
Exactly. There’s a definite weight of expectation from the fans because every time I meet them, they’re like, oh my God what’s going to happen? Thankfully, I’m not writing it, I just have to portray it. But it is an amazing journey to be a part of. You have the signposts for this character, but you don’t quite know how you get there, I think you’re able to explore him from the beginnings – inthe first two seasons of the show you don’t really get stuck into the lore too much. This is all just explorative stuff.
In your Years and Years role, you had a concrete start but no idea of the future, and this is sort of the opposite, with a a fixed end instead. How did those compare?
Is that easier? I think I always struggle a little bit because I have such an opinion about the character, and I always talk to the show runners. I’m like, okay, well, we know, we know exactly where he’s ending. So can we work backwards? And they’re like, no, no, we’re working from the start and we’re going to end there rather than working retrospectively. I think that’s kind of a really refreshing way of looking at it.
I think he’s a deeply troubled character, one that’s sort of grieving. I wanted to make him as honest and personal as possible. You can see a little bit of yourself in him in some way, because I think everyone’s been lost or confused or hurt and or having a fractured relationship with your parents – I think there’s a little bit of everyone in him. I wanted to put my own experiences of growing up and feeling a little bit lost and confused into him. Yes, you’re in the fantasy world, you’re exploring these big epic themes. And there are orcs and flying eagles. But yet there’s still this honest human sort of connection. I think that’s what connects so many people to Tolkien. Yes, there’s all these big themes, but there’s also this human emotion between people and characters that just bring us in.
It’s funny you say grieving, that was a word I’d written in my notes.
I remember auditioning for Rings of Power. Obviously, because it was such a secretive show, they were like, this is an untitled Amazon show, and we’re looking for a character – I quote verbatim – “we’re looking for a young mercurial soldier who has the weight of the world on his shoulders”. That’s all I knew before I auditioned, and I think that’s still that’s stuck with me. Where does, how do you have that output as a character? Where does it go?
I think for Isildur it was just like, I want to run away. I want to explore. I think season two kind of catches him by surprise because he’s like, uh, yeah, maybe that wasn’t a good idea. Maybe running away and being abandoned and being stuck in Middle Earth is the complete opposite of what you wished for, and I think he is forced to grow up. He stops being this child and having this youthful edge and optimism to him, he sort of is grounded by this experience, by surviving and fighting spiders and monsters and even people. He has to learn how to trust people.
That is literally the epitome of being an actor. You know nothing until the very last minute. And then they’re like action. Okay, I’ve had zero time. Let’s give this a go.
How do you navigate that?
I think I have internal strategies. I’d like to think I do, but really it’s just chaos, and it’s about learning how to ride the chaos. Instead of it consuming you and making you stressed and anxious, just purely learning how to ride that, just saying, okay, one foot in front of the other, how am I going to get to this next job, or audition, just going with the flow. I know that sounds so cliché, but that truly is my way of navigating this very bizarre but rewarding career because it makes no sense. And I think if you try to make sense of it, you’ll go a little bit crazy.
How did you know that the crazy unpredictable acting lifestyle was something that you wanted to do?
I think by process of elimination, really, because I don’t think anyone should act if they can do anything else. I am jealous of my friends that have normal jobs. I look at them, I go, oh my god, life is so chill, you have this structure around you and you must feel so safe. And they’re like, no, I’m so miserable. You must have it so well. I don’t know, man, I don’t know what I’m doing tomorrow, let alone next week. I could be working or I could be unemployed.
I was obsessed with it growing up, and I was lucky to have got jobs early on in my career to then learn it. I think the idea of drama school really scared me, because it was just being in a sort of vacuum of loads of people that all want the same thing and you’re fighting to get attention. I just don’t think it’s something you can learn. I think it’s just something you can do and learn on the job, and I was grateful that I had early opportunities to do that. People took chances on me, you know.
Is the chaos part of the appeal, or something you’re making peace with?
That’s just part and parcel of being an actor. I try to have an internal peace that I exist in because obviously it’s not sustainable to just barrel through loads of things. I think for me, it’s about being busy, I’m happiest when I am busy. I struggle with the long days of, I’ve done nothing today, how do I feel worthwhile? Where’s my purpose come from?
So I always played music, and music has been such an important part of my life that, and acting, you know, takes up only so much of your time that I still want to be or remain creative in some way. I started a band called Terra Twin when I was in New Zealand filming Rings, and it just sort of now has a sort of life of its own. When a lawyer wanted to represent us, for the band, I was like, okay, you know, this is a real thing. Because it’s no longer like a bedroom project, which it was, when I started it was, and now we tour around the UK, we played shows in Europe. It’s just wonderful being with my friends that I grew up with at school, and I can switch off my brain from acting for a second and live in the music world, which is so different. I haven’t done theatre recently, so I have this connection with audience that I don’t have when I’m filming or when I’m on set on Rings, it’s much more volatile, again, chaotic, but I can really feel something in the moment. Whereas with acting, you connect with audiences after it’s come out. That’s why Comic Con was such a great celebration. It’s this nice navigating of two worlds that make me feel at peace.
I can see why a lot of actors have problems with mental health and substance abuses, because it is such a terrifying journey. It’s full of adrenaline, it’s full of highs and lows.
I didn’t know you were touring as a band at the same time. How was that? How does that fit in? Is it like, a six-month block of filming and then a three-month tour?
I wish I was more like that I sometimes do it simultaneously and it ain’t fun. I remember actually, I was shooting night shoots for a week. So like, you go from waking up at about 3 AM, 3:30 AM to get on set into prosthetics and all that. Then you finish work at about six, and then the next day, they’re like, oh, your call time is 3 PM. And you finish at about 3 AM. So I went on to like nights a bit confused, that was a massive adjustment. I did five days of night shoots. Then there was only one free day, a Saturday, to do a music video for the band. And I stupidly said, let’s do it, I’ll make it work. I went to bed at, I think about 4 AM. And I got up at 7 AM to film all day for the music video. I had a day off on Sunday and then Monday, I woke up at 3 AM. And I remember my body just going, you can’t do this no more. Like this is it. You’re cooked. From then on, I think I’ve managed to separate the two a little bit more, when I’m filming, I’m filming, and when I’m doing music, I’m just doing music. And that gives a bit of respite.
I think it’s also just a fear of, you know, being an actor, opportunity is such a valuable thing. I’ve done so many different jobs. I was a delivery rider when I was out of work. I’ve worked in a pub. I was a, I was a check-in host for Airbnb. I know how scary it is to be out of work and how grateful I am to be in work. I know what it’s like when things don’t come, so I’m like, yes, yes, yes to everything. I’m learning now how to just take more of a step back and just allow myself to exist in things rather than just be consumed and obsessed to a point of oblivion, you know?
In the two big shows I’ve seen you in, you’re carving out a niche in a huge ensemble show, is that a preference?
I think that’s sort of that’s sort of what I gravitate towards. I think what I sort of tend to tend to play well with is that sort of tenderness; the outside looking in is what I’ve always been interested by. In some way, I’ve always been on the fringe. I grew up in Moscow, I’m Armenian, assimilating to like British society was quite odd. Now I’m very British, I went to a British school, but culturally I’m very Armenian and Russian at home, I speak Russian. So like that, I think is in my DNA, observing people, observing how things are done, and watching a lot of the time. That just feeds into the work that I do.
I came to the UK in 2003. Russian was my first language and I did have a very thick accent when I came to the UK. I learned very quickly that I needed to sound like a Brit. Otherwise, it was going to be a tough time.
You have to assimilate. That was something that really stuck out to me – I was quite different when I was younger, and people don’t like difference. People don’t like people that stand out, and I found that quite interesting as a point to add into my characters or people that I portray, that being different doesn’t necessarily mean bad. It doesn’t necessarily mean difficult. It means that you have a different perspective and outlook on the world, and you have ideas to bring to the table.
Do you get much room in the roles that you’ve done so far to shape characters in that way?
So with Years and Years Russell T Davies is was just so obsessed with every syllable with every word and letter in the script that all he said to us was do not change a single line. It was so fertile as an actor to respond to and there was only one way of doing it. I’ve found a good script sometimes can only be done one way.
With Rings it’s more of a collaborative approach. There is a sense of me living with a character for such a long time now that I can offer an idea, and Patrick and JD, the showrunners are so responsive to it. I think every everyone in the cast is grateful for that, our opinion is valued and and we can help create the show together and I think it’s important to do, with the fact that we live with the character for so long.
It takes 10 months to shoot eight episodes, which is obscene – the showrunners are doing so much, there’s so many different storylines that they are thinking about, whereas we’re self-obsessed actors, we’re just thinking about our roles a lot of the time. We can try and help.
I think they have grand designs for it from the get-go, and I think that’s what is exciting from an actor’s perspective, you can really kind of decide which bits of the character you want to explore. Again, we know where he’s going and we have this amount of time that we can go into… I love crafting the journey. I’ve never done this before, I’ve never had to do a second season of a character, that’s been a very liberating experience because there’s just time!
Are there any sort of roles you’re hoping to do in future?
Hamlet 100%
That makes sense to me.
I’m glad that makes sense to you! I just find him fascinating, and I think I’d love to to throw my hat in the ring and explore him for a prolonged time as well. In theatre it’s not just one performance, it’s consistent exploration throughout a four or eight week run.
Then, I love westerns. I think there’s something about westerns that I find gritty and dirty and honest and they’re timeless and they explore these themes – it’s quite, in a way, biblical So I gravitate towards that.
Then there’s directors that I that I love at the minute – Ira Sachs, who did Passages, which I just I think is a phenomenal piece of modern writing and and directing. The characters are very relatable and honest, and I love that about his directing. Also Luna Carmoon, Hoard is a is a bonkers journey, wild. I love things that are not necessarily easy to watch, that are thought-provoking, that are just outside of the box. When I see things like that on screen, I’m like that is wonky and I’m attracted to wonky.
Do you think you’d ever want to work in a different part of the industry?
I actually was just speaking to my manager about this, he’s like, “you must have loads of stories that you want to tell of just like Armenian or Russian stories, growing up in a different culture, there must be something there that you want to explore.” I did a short a while ago that I wrote and starred in, and that was an amazing experience, but then I put my head towards acting a lot and building a sort of reputation and a name, and becoming more established. Now I’m itching to create something myself that is part of my life story in some way. And yeah, I was actually speaking about it yesterday, so that did instill a bit of fire in me to get out my scripts again – I have a load of scripts that I’ve been kind of working on in quietly in the background. I have a lot of stories that I want to tell, and again that they’ll be exactly what you think they’ll be, they’ll be wonky and true.
I like fairytales as well – I like the the nostalgic feeling of a fairytale. The ability that anything can happen, and also the timelessness of a fairytale that it can be told in 50 years time and still hold relevance and meaning and weight. I’d want to explore and go down a sort of Guillermo del Toro kind of hole; Pan’s Labyrinth is such a wild ride, but it’s a fairytale in essence, that that’s kind of upside down and flipped on its side. That’s what I’d wanna do.
Is there anything about you that surprises people?
I think no one really knows where I’m from – I’m not very placeable, so they’re surprised when I say I’m Armenian Russian British, they’re like, I thought you were Spanish, you must be Italian, Brazillian. There’s so many things that I could be, which in a way makes it quite exciting to be an actor because you want to be transformative, and you don’t really want to be placeable, you kind of remain anonymous in some way or you don’t want to fit into a label. Living in a time where labels are kind of everything I like to evade that.
I think it’s okay to just exist and be who you are, and I think difference should be celebrated rather than labelled. It’s something that I always run away from, and I think that’s the nature of an actor, to slip through the the nets and inhabit different roles.
Is there anyone whose career trajectory you look at and think you’d like to have?
Robert Pattinson had a really interesting career because he went from being a young child actor in a way that I can relate to, he did this big commercial vehicle in Twilight – how do you make choices after Twilight? His was just I want to work with incredible independent directors and I love the way that he transitioned from young heartthrob in a romantic fantasy movie to then make these bold creative choices as an artist. I thought that was fantastic, and he remains really relevant and bold. I get a bit of energy from that, that’s the sort of stuff that I want to emulate, and do. I just want to work with independent filmmakers and create films, isn’t that the dream?
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 is out now on Prime Video
