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Lord
of the Rings has been hailed as a once in a generation epic of trilogy
to change the course of cinema. Is that how you see it? Do you believe
all that hype?
Yes,
I subscribe to that very much. I don’t think there’d be
many film production companies brave enough like Newline to do a
big project like this containing three films.
The
initial outlay was quite phenomenal really and obviously the gamble
was that the first one had to work to make all the money back because
if the first film didn’t work then people wouldn’t go
and see the second or the third, so a lot was hanging on the first
film.
It’s
very unusual - perhaps unheard of - to do a trilogy like that back
to back.
Yes,
it’s never been done before. Obviously with the Star Wars project,
the concept was to do six to begin with, but they only ever did
them one at a time. And there was a long time between the first
and the second one, something like two years I think.
With
such a classic book, you really had to treat it as one project.
And it just made complete sense to do all three at once.
Is
it a book that you were familiar with? Did you know the Lord of
the Rings?
I've
got a copy of it from 1977 for my birthday that I used as my reference.
I can’t
own up to having read it all, it is a bit of a heavy read, but I
read the second and third books when I heard that we were going
to do this.
The
first book kind of twists and turns so much, it’s much more
whimsical than the other two. I thought I’ll read the script
and get some background from the script for (film) one, but as far
as my character was concerned there’s not really that much
info in one at all.
Tell
us about your character.
I play
Theoden, King of Rohan.
When
they come across him in his castle, he’s under the influence
of Wormtongue who’s in the pay of Saruman who's been poisoning
Theoden. Theoden is possessed by Saruman who’s Sauron's underlord,
by that time arch enemy of Gandalf because they’re kind of
equal wizards.
In
film one there was a wonderful battle scene, a classic confrontation
between two wizards, it’s just breathtaking that sequence.
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