In the back storeroom of a Sportsgirl in central Melbourne, one day in 2019, Markella Kavenagh got the email that changed her life. The actor was being asked to audition for an 'Untitled Amazon Project'. Very little was known about this forthcoming small screen series, other than that it was shrouded in secrecy. "I was like, it's The Lord of the Rings," Kavenagh says now, laughing.
The nascent streaming platform – albeit global retail juggernaut -had purchased the television rights to JRR Tolkien’s fantasy series, previously adapted into beloved films by Peter Jackson, for an eye-watering US$250 million in 2017. The one proviso was that Amazon would produce at least five seasons of Middle Earth-centric storytelling, set many centuries before the world-renowned films. The projected total cost for such an endeavour was rumoured to be in the vicinity of US$1 billion; this would be the most expensive TV series ever made. And Kavenagh, then a teenager with only
