The heartfelt support for actor Ismael Cruz Córdova is coming from all corners of Middle Earth. On Sunday (September 18), actor Orlando Bloom, who played the elf Legolas in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, posted a photo posing with Córdova with his hand around his back. He posted a second photo of the word “mellon,” which means “friend” in Elvish.
The post was another example of an actor from the film trilogy stepping up to let everyone know they have Córdova’s back after racist posts have been spreading through social media since the debut of the new Amazon series The Rings of Power earlier this month.
In the series, Córdova plays Arondir, a silvan elf. As Arondir, Córdova, who is Puerto Rican, has become the first person of color to play an elf on screen in a J. R. R. Tolkien project.
Córdova reposted the photo of him and Bloom on his Instagram and Twitter accounts. On his Instagram page, he captioned the photo “amigo.”
Bloom was the fifth actor from the original The Lord of the Rings films to stand in solidarity with Córdova. Earlier this month, actors Elijah Wood, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, and Sean Astin, who all played Hobbits in the films, took to social media to defend all the actors of color featured in the few series, including Córdova.
“You are all welcome here,” Wood tweeted along with a photo of him, Boyd, and Monaghan dressed in matching shirts that feature the ears of several LOTR creatures with different skin tones. In a separate tweet, Astin posted a photo of himself wearing a cap with the same sentiment as his co-stars.
“When we see ourselves, we begin to exist,” Ismael Cruz Córdova told Remezcla during a recent interview. “We allow ourselves to exist and to grow.”