Spurs stories

Charlie Vickers
Sauron & Spurs

"To see the players this close is, I mean, I'm in heaven right now…"

Charlie Vickers

N17 must have seemed a million miles away to Charlie Vickers as he snuck up in the middle of the night to watch his beloved Spurs on TV as a young fan growing up in Melbourne, Australia.

Turn the clock forward 25 years and those miles were reduced to a matter of metres as the actor, now a Season Ticket Holder living in London, joined us pitchside for our live Warm Up show ahead of our 4-1 win against West Ham at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Saturday. “I’m in heaven!” he declared as the players were put through their pre-match paces.

If Charlie’s gaze was fixed Sauron-like (although, obviously, without the evil of his character!) on his football heroes, then that gaze is something he might just have to get used to himself in his career as an actor.

He is currently playing one of the biggest roles on TV as Sauron in Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power, now into it’s second series on Amazon Prime. Critically acclaimed (rated 83% on Rotten Tomatoes and 5/5 on Empire, who summed up, ‘lavishly made, endlessly beautiful to watch and substantive enough to make you care, this is fantasy at its absolute highest level’), Charlie committed two years of his working life to the project, with the first series filmed in New Zealand.

Joined by Warm Up regulars, presenter Ben Haines and Senior Club Journalist, Paul Miles, Charlie spoke about all things Spurs and Sauron - not forgetting the irony of us playing twice in Melbourne and four times in Oz after he’d moved to London - before casually joining 17,500 fellow fans by taking his regular seat in the South Stand in time for kick-off.

"You come here and just forget about everything that's going on in your life, and just focus on watching the team for 90 minutes."
Charlie Vickers

Charlie all smiles with Warm Up presenter Ben Haines and Senior Club Journalist Paul Miles ahead of the West Ham game...

Ben: Charlie Vickers from Rings Of Power, thank you so much for joining us. Milesy, you missed this, but I said to Charlie earlier what a buzz it is to be here, and the team comes out, and you here that roar…

Charlie: They just came out now and I mean, I normally sit up there, but and it's still exciting when they come out, but to see them come out this close is, I mean, I'm in heaven right now…

Ben: You’re a Season Ticket Holder, amazing, but how do you find time?

Charlie: I normally you don't work on the weekends, sometimes I'm away, but whenever I'm here, I live here... I've lived here for, like, 10 years so, whenever I'm here, it's kind of a weekend ritual, like it is for so many people. You come here and just forget about everything that's going on in your life and just focus on watching the team for 90 minutes.

Ben: You’re an Aussie, but you’ve been a Spurs fan for as long as you can remember, right?

Charlie: My grandfather was born not far from here, but I grew up in Melbourne, so I had a childhood and an adolescence of watching Spurs in the middle of the night…

Ben: Sneaking downstairs…

Charlie: Yeah, exactly, in the pitch black. So, when I moved here 10 years ago, my Tottenham fandom intensified because I could just, you know, watch them at 3pm or at 12.30.

Milesy: I bet you landed from Oz 10 years ago, put your suitcases down and the next morning, ‘right, how do I get a Season Ticket?’

Charlie: I was on the waiting list straight away! It was literally like that, and then I think maybe five years passed and when we when we had the season at Wembley, they opened up a whole bunch and I got it then and I clung onto it ever since!

Ben: I love as well that you've got one of my favourite kits on (2013/14 home shirt) so when you think back to your first games coming here and seeing Spurs play, who was in that group that you enjoyed watching?

Charlie: The Pochettino team was the first team I watched when I was in England. The teams before him with Peter Crouch and Gareth Bale and Ledley, those generations, I watched from Australia. It was really the Poch team. Christian Eriksen is on the back of this (shirt). I have another (shirt) with Mousa (Dembele) - the same kit, but the away kit with Mousa on it, the blue one, which is equally cool. Mousa is my favourite player, ever for Tottenham, at least in my lifetime. Everyone always talks about him as well. The players, they always say Mousa was the best player they played with.

Charlie pitchside at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium...

Charlie interviewed at the World Premiere of Season 2 of 'The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power' at BFI Southbank...

Milesy: I'm just having a little chuckle to myself, Charlie, because you’ve grown up supporting Spurs from Oz, then you move to England - and we go to Australia four times!

Ben: Have you been there for any of them?

Charlie: No, never. I've had some mates go to matches there, because I have a whole bunch of mates and we're all huge Premier League fans.

Milesy: So, you're watching Spurs here (in the UK), playing at the MCC?

Charlie: Exactly – and I was here!

Ben: We're very grateful that you've that you've come over and we’ve got you as a Season Ticket Holder, and now down at pitchside as well. Tell us what you’ve been up to recently – what a wonderful production to be a part of…

Charlie: Thanks Ben, yes, it's been amazing, an amazing life-changing experience. I’ve been doing a show called Rings Of Power, which is about Lord Of The Rings, and I play the bad guy, I guess, Sauron…

Milesy: A very bad guy…

Charlie: Yes, as bad as you can get! We filmed the first season in New Zealand and the second season here in the UK, so it's been nice to be back at home now with my family and working here. We’ve just finished at a promotional tour, so it's going to be nice to return to real life for a bit.

Milesy: I remember watching Lord of the Ring, those fantastic Peter Jackson films, and Sauron is the ‘all-seeing eye’, the embodiment of evil, but it's not a physical person (in the films). Someone has to bring that embodiment of evil into life!

Charlie: That’s me!

Ben: The smiliest guy in the stadium!

Charlie: It’s so often the way! That was a real challenge of doing the role, I guess, because that eye is iconic (in the LOTR films), but our show is a prequel, in the earlier ages of Middle Earth, and Sauron was a guy walking around, and making a bunch of rings!

Charlie and fellow cast members from Rings Of Power pictured recently at the Empire State Building in New York - Charlotte Brändström, Benjamin Walker, Robert Aramayo, Markella Kavenagh, Cynthia Addai-Robinson...

Ben: Is it strange when you get cast when you find out you got the role… is that moment of excitement, ‘oh my, I've got this’, and then you go, ‘oh my, I've got this…’

Charlie: I think it's like it's that five minutes, yeah, five minutes of excitement and then the dread of actually having to do it sets in, and the expectation…Milesy: How long were you out there (in New Zealand) for?

Charlie: We were in New Zealand for two years.

Milesy: A massive commitment…

Charlie: I think it was originally meant to be six months to a year, but it was during COVID, so that doubled the time we were out there. The second season production moved back here (to the UK), so we filmed the second season over 10 months, so it is a long commitment, but I'm so grateful to be a part of it.

Milesy: He's thinking, ‘I've just got my Season Ticket, now I have to go to New Zealand’!

Charlie: It was exactly that!

Ben: I've seen before you speak a lot about your knowledge around the Lord Of The Rings, was there a lot of preparation going into it for you? Did you have to go back to the early text as well as the films?

Charlie: Yeah, I mean, The Silmarillion, it's like books like that, which are big prequel books to the Lord Of The Rings trilogy. There is so much research, and that's part of your job as an actor, that’s how I see it. It's one of the really enjoyable bits for me, the preparation.

Milesy: It's one of those series… you’ve got to get it right, haven’t you?

Charlie: You could never get to the end of all the research there is to do, but I wanted to try, and in order to do the character justice, just to learn as much as I could about it, to inform what I was doing.

Ben: I assume you were a fan before of the Lord Of The Rings films?

Charlie: Yes, but not a super fan. I watched the films, and then I played the PlayStation games. I was big into like, the PlayStation 2 video games.

Ben: They were so good…

Charlie: Unbelievable, very hard.

Ben: A lot of hours wasted there as a kid!

Charlie: So many!

Ben: Talk to us about today, how excited are you to be pitchside and here for a London derby?

Charlie: It’s incredible. I've been to a quite a few now against West Ham, it's always an important match for both teams. After this, I'll go up to my seat in the South Stand and watch it like a normal match. I'm excited. I'm excited to see Sonny back and to see the players this close.

Milesy: You’ll see them closer soon as part of the warm up is right behind you…

Charlie: I’ll linger here as long as possible!

Ben: Linger as long as you want to! How do you think it’s going to go today?

Charlie: Let’s go bold. A return to winning ways. 3-0!