[Water Lily]

By Marcelo Forlani, from Paris
25/12/2002


Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan are so closed and funny live as their characters in Lord of the Rings, Pippin and Merry. Talking with these two "hobbits", we could realize that the friendship that started in the set of filming, in New Zealand, must last forever. But beyond having a lot of fun, the two actors prove that they can also be serious (once in a while) and can approach subjects such as the deforestation, something that happens every day. Catch your pipe, your grass-of-smokes, relax and enjoy the interview J




What's this in your hands? Lembas?

Billy Boyd: Lembas! Hehehe, it's chocolate, from Vienna. We got it from a very nice journalist....what do you have there for us?

Dominic Monaghan (Merry): It's my birthday today [it was actually his birthday!]. Give me one of these CDs!


Do you want then? This one is from Blur, their old records.

BB: Hmmm, I like Blur.

Have you already listened to their latest single – Don't Bomb when you're the bomb?

BB: Not yet. Is it good? I'll see if I can find it.


What kind of music have you been listening to? Only hobbits songs?

BB: Lots of different things. Coldplay, Gomez, Radiohead.

DM: Wu Tan Clan, Sigur Rós, Public Enemy, Bob Dylan, Rolling Stones, pretty different things.





What about those hobbits songs, how it was to sing them?

DM: It was so much fun! We did it in the end of the night, after we finished eating. In the morning we knew everything by heart. At night, after eating and drinking, we couldn't remember anything! But it was pretty funny.


Could you sing a bit now?

Both: Noooooooo....

DM: We only sing if we are paid for that. (laughs)


What are these rings you guys are wearing?

BB: One is a celtic ring that I got from my sister and the other one is a ring from New Zealand, called Tree Ring. It mixes silver, skin of a tree and wood; you put all these in a mould than you melt all together. The final result is like this, non uniform. It doesn’t look like a pretty thing, and that's why is nice.

DM: This one was given to me by an ex-girlfriend, who unfortunately isn't among us anymore [starts a fake crying and puts his head on Billy's shoulder]. This other one was given to me by my favorite uncle, this one is from New Zealand and this one I bought when I got my first job as an actor [Billy starts clapping]. This one has to do with the movie. It has my character's name on the internal part and LOTR outside.


And what's this on your hand? Isn't the famous tattoo, is it?


DM: No. It's just written 'trees', because we like trees. Before we've started this promotional tour, we were talking that we could use this to try to talk about some other things, like the environment, for instance. Tropical forests areas of the size of 11 football fields are destroyed around the world every single day, searching for oil or some other kind of richness, without thinking about the extinction of plants and animals. Tolkien had already alerted us to these lost in the 40's and until today nothing was made to save the trees of our planet.



Had you read LOTR before starting to shoot the movie?

DM: Yes, I believe most people in England read Tolkien in their teens. I've read when I was 15 years old. And I've also known the story of 'The Hobbit' because my father was a big fan and we had a tape with the story of Bilbo that we've listened in the car when I was 5 or 6 years old. It's part of the British culture, isn’t it?

BB: Yep. I'd never read it until I was called to this project.


What are you doing to avoid being linked to this project only, like Mark Hamill and Star Wars.

BB: I believe it's a question of being careful with your choices. In the next years we have to try not to make many fantasy movies, that wouldn't add much to our careers. For example, I've just filmed Master & Commander with Russell Crowe and my role is very different from Pippin. He's a sailor in the 19th century who knows exactly what he's doing. When I've read the script I've realized it was the right thing to do after Pippin.


And were you offered other roles in fantasy movies?


BB: Yes. Anytime an elf or a goblin appears they think: "Ah! Send this to those guys that made LOTR". And we say: "you can take it back".

DM: You have to be realistic about that. We hardly will make another project as big as this one.


Have you managed to get a lot of money?

DM: No if you think in terms of how much we worked. It was a year and a half with excessive hours of shooting! But I believe that no one there worked for money. Even people that could have asked very high salaries agreed in something smaller just for the fact that they would be joining this project.



How is it to go to a toy store and see the action figures of your characters with your faces?


BB: I don't think they look a lot with us. I look them and I see another person there. It isn't as strange as it seems.


Which characters would you choose to play if you could change?

DM: I'd like to be Gollum. I like the way he is; important to the story, is always close to the Ring and has a lot of conflicts, which, for an actor, is a great challenge. Andy Serkis played the role wonderfully well.

BB: Besides Pippin, I'd like to play Sam. He's a wonderful character.


Have you shot that scene where Aragorn, Legolas, Gandalf and Gimli arrive in Isengard and find you completely full of eating, drink and smoke?

DM: Oh yes!! It turns out so funny!! I had to make a face of someone who had drunk and was stunned after smoking for 3 hours in a row [Dominic makes a drunken face]. There were food everywhere, bread, meat, fruit. This is a paradise for a hobbit.



When you were shooting, were you aware of what was happening in the story?

BB: Because we were familiarized with the book, we knew sort of where we were in the story. For example, when we were with Treebeard, we knew that that was going to be used in the second movie. But we faced it as one single movie.



How was it to act with an ent?

BB: The best thing they've built was Treebeard. It was a 6-meter tree that could move its arms, legs, head, etc. The scene where it takes us and put us in its shoulders, it actually happened! We weren’t in those sets with a blue screen pretending how our reaction was going to be. And that made pretty easy for us. It wasn’t a comfortable place, but we spent so many time there that we got used to.

DM: It was up there that our screenplay started.


About what is this screenplay? Do you intend to direct as well?

DM: No, we won't direct. This movie is just a way for us to act. The story is about two guys from the United Kingdom who open a scuba diving school in Miami and got themselves in a lot of trouble. This all started because we had to stay up there for 11 hours a day without anything to do! And we've learned to dive there in New Zealand and we had some ridiculous experiences because we couldn’t communicate down the water. Once we were training in a pool and I was doing the basic signals like "Ok?" (thumb up), "do you wanna go up?" (pointing the thumb up), etc. And Billy made me this gesture (joining the 2 index fingers). I thought he wanted me to sit on his finger!!! (laughs)

BB: I only wanted him to lean his finger on mine, to show him how the sense of depth is different under the water!!

DM: And I told him "Noooooooooo!!!!" and we started laughing and we had to got up. Then we realized that there are a lot of situations that you have to talk but it's impossible and you have to manage in some other way. The script is pretty funny.

BB: Is f***** great!! Dom likes to say that is funnier than a penguin playing banjo!