Several years ago, Amazon acquired the rights to J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” series and sought creative guidance from Hollywood writers for a new show.
Latter-day Saint screenwriter J.D. Payne remembers some writers pitching ideas that centered on a single character, such as the adventures of young Aragorn or a spinoff about Gimli the dwarf.
Payne and his writing partner of 25 years, Patrick McKay, envisioned a grand, sweeping epic that he compared to a Christmas feast.
“If it’s going to feel like Christmas dinner, you want turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes,” Payne said. “With Tolkien, that means you want monsters, elves, dwarves, men, wizards and halflings.”
Their idea focused on the Second Age of Middle-earth and the forging of the great rings (three for elves, seven for dwarves and nine for men) referenced at the beginning of director Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy.
“If you can take that five-minute prologue and do that as a 50-hour TV show, that would be an epic worth telling,” Payne said. “We pitched that to Amazon, it went up the chain and eventually, in the summer of 2018, they told us we had the job and our entire lives changed.”
More than five years later, Payne and McKay have brought their creative vision to life as showrunners and executive producers of “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.”
“It’s a surreal experience,” Payne said.
Days before the highly anticipated premiere of the show’s second season on Aug. 29, Payne, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints originally from northern Virginia, spoke with the Church News via Zoom from London, England. He discussed his work on “The Rings of Power,” key experiences as a missionary that prepared him for his career and how his faith has blessed his life and family.
“This life is one that I feel I’ve been able to create in partnership with Heavenly Father,” he said. “I feel like it’s going through life with rocket boosters on. I’ve tried at various points in my life to live without the guidance of the Spirit, doing things with the force of my own strength, intellect and talent, and inevitably I don’t get nearly as far or go as fast. In the times I’ve tried to be the most spiritually in tune, the Lord is with me and is able to do miracles I could never do on my own.”
Lessons learned as a missionary
As a young full-time missionary in Rome, Italy, Payne said he learned several pivotal lessons that prepared him for a career as a writer and showrunner.
First, his mission provided Payne with ample opportunities to meet interesting people and discuss things that motivate and matter in life. “You are getting a window into people’s souls and what makes them tick, and that’s what drama is all about,” he said.
Each week on his preparation day, Payne documented his experiences in lengthy letters home.
“I have over 1,000 pages of handwritten letters that detail my mission experiences, and many of them describing people and characters,” he said. “It was like a young artist doing character sketches to develop their skills as a painter. I had a similar experience as a writer.”
Telling people about Joseph Smith’s First Vision and the Restoration, as well as teaching stories from the scriptures, especially of Jesus Christ, and seeing how they impacted others, taught Payne the power of storytelling.
“I came to see the power that story has for people,” he said. “And maybe there were stories that only I could tell.”
As a missionary, Payne learned leadership skills that have served him well as a showrunner. He oversees an organization of several thousand people — including production designers, costume designers, casting directors, stunts, props, visual effects and more — and is responsible for writing, pre-production, production, post-production and promotion, taking a story from inception to completion.
Another essential life lesson was learning to handle rejection, as well as perseverance and resilience. In the process of constantly being turned away as a missionary, he learned to visualize rejection as a trampoline.
“If I gave it to God, He would spring me back up like a trampoline,” he said. “Downward-pushing experiences became fuel to be lifted up by the Lord. After I started using this visualization, I would get almost spiritually high on the experience of just being buoyed up by God.”
After studying English literature at Yale University, Payne moved to Hollywood without a single connection or knowledge of the entertainment industry. He had no place to live, but he had his laptop computer, a suitcase, his Toyota Prius, his college degree and a couple of screenplays he had written.
“I got rejected many, many, many times before finally finding an agent and a manager and then starting to get work,” he said. “So that was an important experience, learning to deal with rejection.”
Faith, family and Church service
Over the last 25 years, Payne and McKay have collaborated on more than 20 screenplays, including work on “Star Trek Beyond” for producer J.J. Abrams, “Jungle Cruise” for Walt Disney Studios, and others. Their many feature and television scripts include projects for Sony, Warner Bros, Legendary, 20th Century Fox, Legendary, and Paramount Pictures.
Along the way, Payne has strived to start his days with prayer and scripture study, stay close to Heavenly Father and the Savior, and live the two great commandments — to love God and love your neighbor as yourself.
McKay is not a Latter-day Saint but shares similar Christian values. When they hire people, Payne says the two main qualifications are to be excellent at one’s job and to treat other people well.
“Having the Spirit affects how you interact with everyone,” he said. “It doesn’t matter where they are in the production ... you just try to love people and treat people well.”
Working on “The Rings of Power” could be a 24-hour-day job, but Payne has made it a priority to spend time with his wife and three young children, as well as serve in the Church.
His wife, Rachel Payne, is a classically trained mezzo soprano who has performed as an opera singer around the world. They were married in the Washington D.C. Temple. They attend the Hyde Park 1st Ward in the London England Hyde Park Stake, where he has served as the ward’s Sunday School president.
Payne has never turned down a calling, but he seriously considered saying “no” to one a few years ago. He and his wife were raising a special needs child and a 3-month-old baby as “Rings of Power” began production on Season One in New Zealand when he was called as an early morning seminary teacher. After some consideration, he said yes. One month later COVID-19 shut down production, and he was able to teach seminary remotely.
“It was a great spiritual boost during an otherwise difficult time,” he said.
Tackling ‘The Rings of Power’
Unlike conventional TV dramas about doctors, lawyers or police work, Payne said recreating Tolkien’s complex and detailed imagination is a daily challenge. Each element, from costumes to props and set designs, must be custom made. For fans of the show and out of deep respect for Tolkien, they don’t just want it to be good, they want it “to be amazing and excellent.”
“There is no Target where you can go and buy Middle-earth costumes off the shelf. There is no Middle-earth Walmart. Everything has to be created,” he said. “Take any frame from the show, and I could tell you 100 different creative decisions that went into that, and the 10 options we talked about for those 100 different creative decisions. The volume of it is a lot to keep up with.”
Along the way he has had “pinch-me moments.” The first time they did costume and make up tests for the dwarves, Payne felt like a Middle-earth portal opened and he was meeting one of Tolkien’s real characters. Payne wanted to speak to the dwarf — not to the actor playing the character — as if he were meeting an ambassador from another country.
“Thank you for being here with us. We love your people,” he said with a laugh. “I’ve had other moments like that where you have to pinch yourself because it feels so real.”
Payne said Season 2 is broader, deeper and bigger than the first season, with enormous battle scenes and a variety of new and interesting characters. He is thrilled for audiences to see it. He shared one theme from the show that he feels reflects the gospel.
Without spoiling the circumstances, in one episode, characters are lamenting the evil destruction that has taken place, and one character apologizes for not being strong enough to stop it.
“The other character thinks for a moment and says, ‘Maybe we need to remember that it’s not strength that overcomes darkness but light. For in its presence, all darkness must flee,’” Payne said. “In really difficult times, it’s useful for the world to remember ... to try to respond to the darkness with light.”
‘Hold on to your faith’
He’s not sure why, but Payne is often asked by others how to stay firm in the faith while working in the entertainment industry. He says he has always been upfront about his Latter-day Saint beliefs, and now his co-workers won’t allow him to work on Sundays even if he wanted to. He advises others to not be ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, but to be straightforward about it.
“Hold on to your faith. Don’t be embarrassed of your faith,” he said. “Your faith is part of what makes you unique.”
