Morfydd Clark – A Star in Waiting

Morfydd Clark’s breakout moment was supposed to come last year. She’s been too busy shooting The Lord of the Rings to worry about it.

- By Joseph Bien-Kahn

SAINT MAUD begins streaming on Epix on February 12.

THESE DAYS, the Welsh actress Morfydd Clark frequently wakes up disoriented, wondering how she got here. Her first leading role, in A24’s latest horror film, Saint Maud, earned her rave advance reviews last year, but as far as the public is concerned, it doesn’t yet exist. Just before the pandemic began, she had moved to the North Island of New Zealand—now one of the only countries in the world to have successfully tempered the spread of covid-19—for a role in Amazon’s billion-dollar Lord of the Rings series. Not far from the set are mammoth green mountains, a 500-foot waterfall, and a bubbling mud pool. “It’s hard to decipher what is real and what is a dream,” Clark tells me over a video call. She can’t figure out how to turn off her virtual background, which has applied a distorting effect to her face. As we speak, I am confronted by six eyes and ten brows.

She begins with an apology for her technological struggles and for being late. (“I was just lying in bed anxiety-ing about it!”) Clark is an anxious person, and she hides her nerves under a slightly frantic mix of self-deprecation and humor. She tells me she was a little relieved when she learned, in March, that the press tour for Saint Maud would be canceled and the film’s release delayed. (It’s finally in theaters now, to be followed by a mid-February streaming release.) Playing the lead in an A24 film (Moonlight, Lady Bird, Uncut Gems)