Check out an exclusive and entertaining interview with our favorite Merry and Pippin, Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd from /Film. In the wide ranging interview, they discuss their recent Hobbit reunion (and plans for more), San Diego Comic-Con memories, and advice for The Rings of Power cast.
These comic conventions that in 20 years since we’ve made the movies, we’ve never done one together, all four of us, and met the fans and said hello and stuff. Someone came to us and had that idea to do a sort of Hobbit get-together and do a show. It’s been really fun so we’re doing six of them this year, different cities — Toronto, Boston, Dallas — and it’s been great.
I think with “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy and everything surrounding it, in a lot of ways that fandom has become the most fervent, the most passionate. They’re the biggest fandom and no one can compute something being bigger, but over the course of time, something will come along that will be bigger, but it won’t diminish what happened with that Peter Jackson trilogy, because it’s an extraordinary piece of work.
– Dominic on the LOTR fandom
My only advice that I would give to any cast members making “The Lord of the Rings” Amazon show now is, if you’re having great days on set and you’ve made great friends and you love the crew and you love the job that you did, don’t worry about the rest of it. You are working on an amazing job in that case, because if you can go to work and enjoy yourself, everyone else’s opinion doesn’t really matter.
– Dominic on his advice to the cast of The Rings of Power
Per a new popculture interview, Billy and Dom plan to watch and talk about the first episode of Rings of Power for their The Friendship Onion podcast in the future. Stay tuned.
IGN writer Cian Maher spoke with Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd as part of their seven show re-union tour of North America.
As well as sharing a few of the foursome’s many reminisces of their moments together on the set of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings, Maher observes that even now they share a close bond and friendship.
An excerpt:
“Billy said this thing recently about the scene of second breakfast, where we stop and Aragorn is saying, ‘What’s going on?’ and we have the second breakfast thing,” he says. “I didn’t remember this, but Billy is totally right and jogged my memory. That was an incredibly rushed scene because it started flash-snowing [Wood clarifies that this was in November, so this shouldn’t have happened in the Southern Hemisphere]. And Pete basically came over to us and was like, ‘You’ve got about 45 minutes to an hour to get this and go, otherwise we’re in real trouble with all of our gear.’ And we got what ended up being a real amazing moment in the film, but it was fast.”
“It was meant to be like a half day’s work,” says Wood. “It was so fast.”
Boyd explains that as an actor, that kind of hastiness usually leads to disappointment. Astin, meanwhile, recalls being concerned that maybe not everyone cared about a scene the hobbits were all excited about because it wasn’t strictly necessary for the film.
“But then it becomes a scene that a lot of people talk about,” says Boyd. “And it was honestly done in like, an hour. And then we’re sitting on washing machines drinking whiskey like… what just happened?
As we draw nearer to the end of our closer look at all twenty of the recently announced (or confirmed) castings from Amazon, staffer greendragon brings us up to speed with the incredibly impressive career of Scottish actor and film maker Peter Mullan.
For those of you who may not have been exposed to this tidbit of shareable humor, we thought we’d start the week off with a bit of fun. YouTube user BurtBot asks, ‘What if Uruk-hai had normal voices?’
It’s been an interesting couple of weeks… Since March 19, characters from Middle-earth, and other roles played by the same actors, have been battling it out to claim the title Champion of Middle-earth March Madness 2018. We started with four brackets comprising roles from The Lord of the Rings movies, other roles by those same actors, roles from The Hobbit movies, and alter-egos for those cast members. The brackets were mixed, to give actors a chance of coming up against ‘themselves’ – and indeed in Round 3 we did see Christopher Lee’s Saruman go up against his Count Dooku, and Lee Pace’s Ronan face his majestically-eyebrowed Thranduil.
Boromir fell in the first round, defeated by Gimli, but Sean Bean’s Eddard Stark did make it all the way to Round 3, where he was conquered by eventual semi-finalist Samwise Gamgee. Sam made it the furthest of all the hobbits; Merry and Pippin both went out in Round 1, and Frodo fell to Aragorn in Round 2. Both Martin Freeman’s and Ian Holm’s Bilbos were knocked out back in Round 1; they had tough battles, being drawn against Gandalf and Faramir respectively.
The elves fared rather better, with Galadriel, Elrond and Thranduil all getting through to the Elite Eight (though Legolas, alas, could not get past Aragorn in Round 1). Wizards Saruman and Gandalf joined the elves in Round 4; but poor Radagast was beaten by Dwalin way back in the first round. In the world of men, only Aragorn managed to get as far as the Elite Eight; Dr John Watson, Sherlock Holmes, Dr ‘Bones’ McCoy, Rudy, and Carl from Van Helsing all joined Eddard Stark in being vanquished in the Sweet Sixteen round.
Just two rounds remain in this year’s Middle-earth March Madness – we’re down to the final four, facing off against each other in the Semi-Finals! Who has the strength to rule over all?
Let’s take a look back at the Quarter Finals – where none of the battles was as tight as might have been predicted. In a pairing which presented voters with a tough choice, the stout-hearted hobbit overcame his long-shanked foe; Aragorn was defeated by Samwise, with the Ranger unable to claim much more than a third of the vote. This result may surprise some, but then, Master Gamgee has always proved to have hidden strengths and depths.
Division II saw Galadriel going nuclear on Gollum, but still losing to the tricksssy one! Who would have thought that one of the River-folk could overcome a high elf, and a margin of two thirds to one third?
The mighty Maiar match was also not the closely fought duel one might have expected; it must indeed have been Gandalf the White who entered the lists, as he thrashed Saruman, taking over 85% of the vote!
Finally, in Division IV two elves faced off; a high (but half) elf against a woodland dweller. Thranduil may have ridden in on his war moose, but in the end, it was Elrond who came out victorious, claiming about three quarters of the vote.
And now we are down to just FOUR. Samwise vs Gollum – there’s no love lost between these two! Will the faithful gardener be able to overcome ‘Stinker’, or if he lets his guard down, will Gollum defeat the ‘stupid, fat hobbit’? Will it just devolve into a contest of name calling?! You decide!
Gandalf vs Elrond – will the wizard finally teach Half-elven a lesson, for failing to throw Isildur and the Ring in the fires of Mount Doom at the end of the Second Age? Or does Rivendell’s ruler have a trick or two up his voluminous sleeves? It’s up to you – VOTE NOW!
The Semi-Final voting is open NOW, and will close at 10pm EST on Tuesday 3rd April. The FINAL will then run April 4th -5th. Only a few more days to play along with Middle-earth March Madness, before it’s over for another year. VOTE NOW![Final Four] [Elite Eight] [Round 3 Bracket] [Round 2 Bracket] [Round 1 Bracket]
