Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings Features Black and Maori Hobbits, Empowered Females

Get your screaming Soyjak faces ready, kids.

This is going to be EPIC.

NME:

The Lord Of The Rings star Lenny Henry has revealed the forthcoming Amazon TV series will be more diverse than the Peter Jackson movies.

The award-winning actor is set to play a hobbit, who is part of an indigenous tribe, in the show.

The forthcoming series is based on JRR Tolkien’s book The Silmarillion.

“What’s notable about this run of the books, it’s a prequel to the age that we’ve seen in the films and books,” he told BBC Radio 4.

“It’s about the early days of the Shire and of Tolkien’s environment, so we’re an indigenous population of Harfoots, we’re hobbits but we’re called Harfoots. We’re multi-cultural, we’re a tribe not a race, so there are Black, Asian and brown, even Maori types within it.

Lenny Henry

The actor, who confirmed that he was joining the series in 2020, also said there is stronger female representation as well, with Morfydd Clark one of the leading stars previously confirmed for the show.

There’s a very strong female presence in this, there are going to be female heroes in this evocation of the story, and there are going to be little people as usual,” he added.

Basically, the problem is, The Lord of the Rings, a saga created by an evil white man, is just as racist as something like The Jungle Book.

We have to ask why it is that we keep recreating these white supremacist stories instead of just using stories written by people of color.

What about all that colored people’s literature?

Like, uh… Maya Angelou or whatever the crap. Some kind of colored people stuff.

Why doesn’t Amazon want to film that?