Rings Of Power rejected Ismael Cruz Córdova multiple times before he landed the role

Rings Of Power has the benefit of some returning characters and actors, but there’s also the excitement of new denizens of Middle-earth. One of them is Ismael Cruz Córdova as Arondir, one of the series’ new elves. In a new video for Esquire, the actor reveals that he wasn’t going to let anything stand in the way of this opportunity.

“It was epic,” he laughs when asked about the audition process. “It was like six, seven months long. I got rejected for the role about three times. My reply email was, ‘N-O-P’–I was like, ‘Nope! Nope.’ And I sent it, I was like, ‘I’m not gonna take a no for an answer.’”

He continues, “I kept going and going and going, I was in the desert for my last audition. And I shot it in a tent. We had to drive it an hour away in a car and upload it. That’s how I got my final, uh… rejection.” He laughs again. “And they came back around, and… now we know how it ended.”

It wasn’t just the allure of his biggest role yet that made the Ray Donovan alum so determined to land the part. “In one of my earliest moments, when I wanted to be an actor came from seeing the first film,” he reveals, later describing growing up “very poor” and “washing cars and cleaning lawns” in order to buy himself a television and a DVD of Fellowship Of The Ring, one of the first movies he owned. “But, you know, there were no elves that looked like me, so that was a thing that I just put in the back of my head.”

“And then when I, you know, went through the audition process and I got there and I became an elf, it felt like the most full circle moment, proud moment,” he goes on. “I’m in the process of living this dream.”