Photo credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.
Middle-earth News reporters Amanda Capley and Valdis Longbeard had the opportunity to sit down with Jed Brophy during Dragon Con 2014. We’ve been saving the interview for a rainy day, so to speak. To tide you over to the DVD/Blu-ray release of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, here is Part 1 of our interview with the warm, charming, and engaging Jed Brophy.
AC: This is your first Dragon Con.
Jed Brophy: It is indeed, yeah. It’s not my first convention, but it ‘s my first Dragon Con.
AC: What is the craziest experience you’ve had at a convention?
Jed Brophy: They’re all pretty crazy in their own way. I guess the first one I went to, because coming from New Zealand, being an actor isn’t all that flash, people don’t – we don’t really have a celebrity culture in New Zealand and so to have people recognize me and then scream at me was really… It was quite weird, and not something that we’re used to in our country, and it does take a bit of getting used to. We don’t think we’re all that, you know, it’s just a job for me. And I enjoy my job, it’s a great career, but the celebrity part of it is something that you kind of… we don’t really buy into it. So that was the craziest thing, just a room full of, you know, three or four thousand people screaming out your name, you kind of go, “What? OK,” that is a bit weird.
Jed Brophy is a fan favorite at cons and other special events. Photo credit and copyright: Lennie Freeman.
VL: In The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films, you’ve played almost every race in Middle-earth, but – if we’re remembering correctly – not a hobbit.
Jed Brophy: Not a hobbit. Yeah.
VL: So, if you could be a Hobbit for a day — it’s kind of a 3-part question – what would you want your name to be?
Jed Brophy: Yeah, that’s a good question, actually, I don’t know! Maybe Filmore. Filmore, I think. That sounds like it would be a really good Hobbit name. Bilbo, Filmore… Yeah.
VL: Any particular family?
Jed Brophy: I think I’d like to be a Took. Yeah, they’re the most famous… Well, you know, maybe the second most famous family in Middle-earth.
VL: You strike me as rather Took-ish. So where in the Shire do you think you would live? Or maybe would you live outside the Shire?
Jed Brophy: I think I would live outside the Shire, I think maybe closer to Bree.
VL: And what would your hobbit persona do?
Jed Brophy: I think he’d be a dealer in contraband, mainly Longbottom Leaf. I think that he would be a tobacco runner. He’d be one of those hobbits that they don’t talk about in good society.
Jed Brophy appears multiple times in ‘The Lord of the Rings’ films, playing orcs, Nazgul, Rohirrim, and even an elf. Photo credit: Warner Bros, New Line Cinema.
AC: Apart from Scene 88, what was the most physically demanding scene in The Hobbit?
Jed Brophy: The one that’s very similar—and I talked about this in the panel today—is we did a scene on the wet set where we were fighting the stone giants or the stone giants were fighting, and when we got wet it… just the weight… I weighed my costume, I weighed myself and then I weighed myself with my costume, my costume was 27 or 28 K’s [kilos] full of water. And it was really, really hard. That was a day where we were incredibly tired. And also the full battle armor. It was quite restrictive, and, you know, wearing that all day, it got very heavy on the shoulders. But, you know, having said that, they were tough days, but I don’t remember them now, I don’t remember the physically, you know, at the end of the day, be like “Man, this is really, really tough, I’m not looking forward to tomorrow.” But we’d do it, I think all of us would do it all again tomorrow, because it was one of those extraordinary experiences. I think that the discomfort is minimal in comparison to the good times.
VL: You said that you thought that your hobbit would be a bit on the shady side. Of course we know that Nori is indeed a bit of a thief.
Jed Brophy: All the characters I’ve played!
VL: So how did Nori the thief come about in the development of that character?
Jed Brophy: Philippa, Fran, and Peter, they wanted to distinguish the dwarves from each other, so they came up with incredibly detailed back-stories for the families, and then within those families for the individuals. And I think they came up with the idea that Ori and Dori were living at home, that Nori had been ostracized, and that kind of developed into “Well, why would he have been ostracized?” Well, probably because he didn’t just take things from other races, he took things from his own race. And I think he’d always been a bit light-fingered, and maybe a bit bored, you know. I think he was definitely bored of Dori’s overbearing, motherly nature, and he wanted to go and see the world. And from that perspective, they wanted him to be a bit more worldly, in terms of the races that he’d seen too. So I think, you know, that Peter sort of came up with the idea that he’d seen wargs from a distance, he knew of elves, he may have traded with them, he’d certainly seen trolls—that wasn’t the first time he’d been in Trollshaw. But having said that, you know, he also wasn’t maybe that good at looking after himself, in terms of dwarves are much better as a unit than they are individually. I think he would have hidden out rather than being actually confrontational with orcs on his own. Having said that, being backed into a corner, he’s quite vicious. And all that was stuff we were then asked to build on, and it was a fantastic opportunity to kind of explore those little nuggets that they gave us really fully. I think I said in the panel before that I managed to procure quite a lot of stuff off set. Most of which I gave back, because it had to be used for filming the next day, but I did definitely try it on. The props and costume people would pat me down at the end of scenes just to make sure I hadn’t taken stuff. But I did manage to score quite a bit of gold, which I gave away. I’ve given a lot for charity auctions and I gave a lot to Graham McTavish, which is how Peter found out about it, because he told the world on Twitter.
Photo credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.
VL: Following up on you and Nori, and your relationship with the character… You spent over two years as Nori in the process of filming The Hobbit. Did Nori in any way change or affect you—Jed? Did you learn anything from Nori as you created him?
Jed Brophy: Yeah, physically… The physical mapping out of the characters in terms of the way that they ran, walked, fought, ate. Those things are great in terms of character development, and definitely made us a lot stronger. We had to have an incredibly strong core just to be in those costumes and to run around. And we had 8 weeks of Dwarf Boot Camp and we got to work with the amazing Terry Notary, who of course works a lot with Andy Serkis. And so, I trained as a physical education teacher, I trained in kinesiology, and for me, that was incredibly interesting, learning how to develop a new character, and a new creature. Having said that, you know, we did a lot of that in ‘Lord of the Rings’ too. I played lots of different races, and you sort of have to work out where the balance of the character comes from, you know, where is their center of gravity. Orcs have their head out in front, they kind of lead with the head, whereas dwarves tend to lead with the belly. That’s the first thing, really. So, yeah, that kind of physical remapping of your body, in terms of being strong in the legs, strong in the shoulders, but letting yourself go here [pats stomach] is quite tough for me, because I try to stay incredibly fit, so. Yeah, from that point of view, it was a nice exploration. And a lot of the things did stay with me, in terms of just—you can’t play a character for that long without it actually rubbing off on you. You know, I do find myself looking at people’s stuff going, “I could probably pocket that!” [Laughs] “I reckon I could get away with that. I reckon I could put that…”
VL: Maybe we need to check our bags when we leave…
Jed Brophy: No, I say that, but I’m actually not like that at all. Also, just… I know that Philippa and Fran especially wanted to get that little cheekiness in there, they wanted some of them to be a bit cheeky, and a bit… less respectful. I don’t think that Nori thinks Thorin is all that, I don’t think he’s got the making of a king until a good way into the journey, where he starts to go “OK, well, I could follow this guy.” But originally Nori’s intention is to go for the gold. He wants to get to Erebor to get as much money as he can, and that’s what he’s there for. I might have said as Nori that I’m there to hang out with my brothers, but really he’s only got one thing in mind, and that is to set himself up.
