Glaswegian Billy Boyd, who plays hobbit Pippin Took in the Lord of The Rings Trilogy, chatted exclusively to Nazli Erten. What was your reaction to the huge success of the first film? It's been great. The reaction has been even better than we have imagined. When we were filming in New Zealand it felt like the rest of the world didn't exist for a while. As we came closer to the release date we thought 'Oh God, people are actually going to see this, it isn't just something that we did. It as kind of scary at first but when the reaction came in it was quite incredible. People have really been moved by the movie. What was it like working in New Zealand with Peter Jackson? One of my friends moved from being a runner on the film to an assistant director. It lasted for so long that people could change jobs. People were having kids and people were getting married because it lasted such a long time. It is an absolutely amazing country and what a way to see it. We were travelling over the tops of mountains with helicopters. Peter Jackson, in my mind, is a genius and his knowledge of movies is just so vast, which is good because the movie demands so many different styles of movie making. I don't think there are many directors who could cope with that? Did you read the Lord Of The Rings trilogy as a child? I didn't actually, I read The Hobbit along with a lot of friends at the time. We would all read it at night and next day in school we would talk about it, which was fantastic. Before that none of us realised you could get so caught up in a book. At that time, I don't really think I realised that there was another book set in that world. I don't think I even knew there was a Lord Of The Rings . I wasn't until I was working in a printers and I used to put the covers on it. I never read it then either. I didn't actually read it until I got the part. How does your character Pippin develop throughout the Lord Of The Rings trilogy? I think it's good the way Pippin starts in the story cos it gives him a lot of places to go. He is so naïve and young, he is the youngest hobbit. He is very inquisitive and it gets him into a lot of trouble. And I think through the story he realises he can't behave like that in the world he's living in. He never totally comes to terms with the world that he's in. I think he' always want to go back to the Shire if someone offered it to him, as long as his friends could go back with him. He'd never go back without Merry or Frodo or Sam. But although he never comes to terms with it he definitely matures and some of the things he does in the first movie he would never do in the third. So he matures as a person, or as a hobbit, and he learns that there can be terrible consequences to your actions. He becomes more careful. But even amidst all that he's still Pippin. he can find humour and good times virtually anywhere. Even in the midst of a war he could find something that could cheer his friends up and bring a smile to somebody's face. He's a lovely character to play because of where he starts and where he finished off. Were there any difficulties or funny moments on set? Yeah, when you are filming for a year-and-a-half, and mainly on location, there are definitely going to be difficulties. I remember one time, we were trying to film the scene where we come out of the Mines of Moria and because of the weather we couldn't fly up to the top of this mountain. In the morning we would get up, get into make-up, wigs, feet, and we'd basically hang around in cafes all day waiting for the weather to break. And it it didn't break for four days. So for four days we would get up at five in the morning, and put on make-up, and stay like that until seven at night and then we'd take the make-up off and go home! Also, when we were filming in Queenstown, the river flooded its banks and the whole town was under water, and to get into the hotel you had to climb up a ladder to get into the fifth floor cos the rest of the hotel was under water! It even took away some sets. There was somebody saying all the time we were meant to be filming on the river and they asked if we could film that scene but one of the producers said that we couldn't because the river was under water! But it was great fun. All the Fellowship have tattoos of Nine in Elvish. Where is yours? I had it done on my ankle, as I was playing a hobbit and spent a year-and-a-half having a lot to do with feet. I thought it would be a good place to have it done to remember the times we had. Nazli Erten This interview first appeared in Big Lens magazine, the film journal of the University of Kent Film Society |
