Veteran British comic turned actor Sir Lenny Henry applauds the choice by producers of The Lord of The Rings collection to create a racially various solid.

Henry  performs Sadoc Burrows, a harfoot (proto hobbit), in Amazon’s big-budget present, which launches this Friday, and which has diverted from each Tolkien’s unique books and the Hollywood movies with their primarily fair-skinned characters. Henry instructed The Occasions:

“That’s to do with it being the twenty first century; folks wish to see themselves. In fact, when you return, there’s going to be that factor that prevails as a result of the books don’t say . . . though a few of the characters are described as hard-skinned and darker in complexion . . . however that was then, that is now and we’re telling the story now.”

After many years spent campaigning for higher variety within the leisure business, the place he was one of many few Black faces on British tv all through the Nineteen Seventies and Eighties, Henry is relieved that different stars like Idris Elba, David Harewood, David Oyelowo and Riz Ahmed have joined him in talking out.

“I didn’t see anyone accountable for something that appeared like me for a really very long time, so that’s lonely,” he instructed The Occasions. “You’ve acquired all of those folks now saying the identical issues that I began saying in 2000, which is ,‘The business wants to vary and might it hurry up, please.’”

In addition to his function in The Lord of the Rings, Henry might be on display in Netflix’s upcoming The Witcher: Blood Origin.