Nazanin Boniadi & Ismael Cruz Cordova Have A Forbidden Romance in 'The Rings of Power'

“We had an instant connection,” Nazanin shared of working with Ismael. “We are both activists off screen, we have a deep-rooted connection to wanting to make the world a better, more equitable place and to serve our communities. There’s so many things we have in common in overcoming against-all-odds challenges.”

She added that he is “very easy to work with and that, I think, helped with bringing this romance to life. That’s, at least for me, he’s gonna say something entirely different.”

Ismael shared that to make their on screen relationship really work, they “came together and we shared many layers of values, personal, professional, artistic, that we wanted to bring in, especially the commitment of wanting to do right by these roles and make something that had layers of importance, not only for the fans, the existing fans, but also for the new school, especially those fans that look like us.”

Nazanian also opened up about the backlash to their romance: “It’s the forbidden aspect of an elf and a human are not supposed to be together.”

“But on the other hand, they’re both sort of outcasts. They they feel misplaced among their own beings, you know him as an Elf, he’s not. He’s a poor Elf’s Elf. And I’m a poor man’s human,” she says. “If you compare like the southlanders to the Numenoreans, they’re covered in dirt and they’re rough and rugged. And he is also that in his own world, and so that outcast-ness is what draws us together.”

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power debuts Friday, September 2 on Prime Video.