Production Designer Kristian Milsted joined The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power team for its second season, where production was moved from New Zealand to England. However, as he explains to Awards Radar on Zoom, he began to have early discussions with showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay as they were shooting the first season. This allowed him to know where the story would be headed while also knowing what their technical priorities would be as Sauron’s (Charlie Vickers) influence and power grew over Middle-earth:

“I didn’t work on season one, but I began to have conversations with them when they were in New Zealand. They were great at sharing ideas for where they wanted the show to go. They talked about how things get more serious and darker. Season one was more about Galadriel’s [Morfydd Clark] story, and season two was more about Sauron’s. He’s the one who pulls all the levers. That allowed us to turn the whole world a lot darker and scarier. They were also keen on more technical things, trying to do more in camera. They built beautiful big sets in season one, but they still had extensions beyond those big sets.

For season two, they wanted to build as much as possible in-camera. That was something I enjoyed. There’s nothing better than designing a set and building it. Directors, actors, and cinematographers can say, “Wow, we are feeling here that we’re really in a place.” That’s always what you want to do as a production designer. However, many of the prominent exterior sets we built also had one or two views out to a wider world that would be VFX-generated. I’m not trying to say that this is not a VFX-heavy show, but there are many ways of doing it so that you can be clever about it and then keep the costs for those amazing VFX extensions that knock you off your feet. That’s what we went for.”

Season two developed much of what the first season established, most notably the world of Khazad-dûm, which “had a relatively small footprint in season one, but they did have some amazing world-building. Durin’s house was a season one set that we rebuilt for season two, but the great hall and that extensive composite set that contained pretty much everything else were done on one big set. That was one of our biggest builds, if not the biggest, on season two. It was great to find a place where the VFX department had generated the inside of Khazad-dûm as a massive 3D model. We adapted the world they had created to create this big King’s Hall for the dwarves to celebrate in an entirely new set.”

As with any discussion pertaining to The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, there was much to talk about, including designing Celebrimbor’s (Charles Edwards) forge, Tom Bombadil’s (Rory Kinnear) house, and how the story’s direction for this season fed how some of the show’s sets were designed. Of course, there are spoilers, so if you have not seen the second season, it’s best to listen to the conversation after you have done so.