Anya Taylor-Joy Says She’s Excited to Play ‘Lethal Elf’ Seren in The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum

“I’m about to read the books now, actually,” Taylor-Joy said. “So as a child, I had a misguided idea that you could only be a Harry Potter fan or a Lord of the Rings fan. Nobody told me that. I just came up with that on my own. Luckily, throughout COVID, I then watched all of ‘Lord of the Rings,’ and… turns out you can love both, and you should.”

Without giving anything away about her role in The Hunt for Gollum, Taylor-Joy added: “It’s so fun. I mean, if my tombstone can say ‘Lethal Elf,’ I feel like I did a good job on this planet. So yeah, I’m excited.”

The creation of Seren for The Hunt for Gollum has certainly got Lord of the Rings aficionados talking. Reacting to the news, many fans have commented that Seren’s role sounds similar to Tauriel — the character played by Lost and Ant-Man star Evangeline Lilly in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit movies — who was also an elven aide for Thranduil, as well as being one of that trilogy’s most controversial additions.

The Hunt for Gollum is based on a period only mentioned briefly in The Lord of the Ring, and depicts Gollum’s whereabouts prior to the events of The Fellowship of the Ring. At this time, Gandalf, Aragorn, and Sauron’s forces all seek the Ring of Power, and we’ll get to see more of Gollum’s origin story.

This week it emerged that The Hunt for Gollum will digitally de-age some of its characters using machine learning and AI. Elijah Wood and Ian McKellen reprise their iconic roles of Frodo and Gandalf over 25 years after The Fellowship of the Ring came out, so the tech will be used to make them look younger even than they appeared in the 2001 classic.

The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum hits theaters on December 17, 2027. The Lord of the Rings: Shadows of the Past, co-written by Stephen Colbert, is also in the works.

Photo by Maya Dehlin/WireImage.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.