Last week, we shared the first part of our exclusive interview with actor Jed Brophy (Nori) during Dragon Con 2014. Here is the second part of the conversation with Jed and reporters Amanda Capley and Valdís Longbeard.
Dwarf brothers Ori (Adam Brown), Nori (Jed Brophy), and Dori (Mark Hadlow). Photo credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.
VL: So, of course, Nori’s on screen a lot, and he’s doing lots of things, but we haven’t heard a lot of dialog from him yet. So what, for you, are the challenges of being able to really flesh out this three-dimensional character, with all of this back-story, without a lot of words to help convey it to the audience?
Jed Brophy: Yeah. I think it was a very difficult thing for the film writers, actually, to write for thirteen characters. Because in the book, really, there’s only four dwarves that really speak. As much as your ego goes, “Wow, I’d like to have more to say,” you kind of have to pay tribute to the writing of the original book. It was very difficult for them to take a mass, which is really just one dwarf mass, and turn it into a lot of individual characters. I kind of feel for them there’s been a lot of people say “I wish you’d given people more to say.” There’s a lot of characters in this film, and if you wanted a four-hour film you could have done that, and I know that we shot a lot of stuff that we’d like people to see, and one day people will see it. I know that Peter, his intention is to put as much back, from what we filmed, in there, for a new big box set, one day down the line. But it’s very, very difficult, you have to have one or two, maybe three people to carry the story, and I like the fact –you know, personally, I like the fact that they stayed true to the book, that it’s Thorin and Dwalin and Balin, in particular, and the hobbit who actually do most of the talking. Our job is to be there supporting Thorin’s quest.
The Company of Thorin Oakenshield approach the end of the quest of Erebor. Photo credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.
You just have to put your ego on the back burner, you know. We’d all like to have lots to say. But you sort of have to go, “What would Nori say in a situation like this? He’s a watcher, he’s the one standing back going, ‘No, I don’t really think we should be doing this.’” So, you end up doing a lot of it with looks, and I do get a lot of screen time where I’m actually looking at – Nori’s way of doing things is to be sort of looking at people going “I don’t really think that’s right.” But it’s all internalized, because he’s been on his own. You know, that was my rationale, was that he doesn’t have a lot to say, because he’s not been part of a group. They’re a disparate bunch of dwarves. But even in Dwarven society, you have your leaders who speak, and the rest are followers, and that’s the way that it is in Dwarven society. You have your leaders who do the talking when it comes to situations. And we do a lot of sign language. I don’t know if you pick it up in the film, but we did a lot of stuff where we kind of just, you know, we do a lot of nudging each other and patting each other on the back, which – it’s a physical thing that represents words rather than having stuff to say.
AC: I’ll look for that now.
Jed Brophy: Yeah, it’s built into the fabric of our everyday stuff on set, that we would make decisions, especially Mark and Adam and I, where we would say, “Well let’s try and get together as a unit so you see the three of us.” I think actually, we probably did the best job of all of the families of creating a family dynamic. It was kind of easy, because we had the mother hen, the very naïve one, and then the one in the middle, and I think it really paid us good dividends to really go for that family unit. It certainly kept us interested during the day. Mark would always tell us where we needed to stand, and Adam and I would be going, “Why? Why don’t’ we get to stand over there?”
Bombur (Stephen Hunter), Ori (Adam Brown), Dori (Mark Hadlow), Nori (Jed Brophy), and Gloin (Peter Hambleton) at Bag End. Photo credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.
AC: What was your favorite memory from filming The Hobbit?
Jed Brophy: The barrel scene was the one we really enjoyed doing. But I think, for all of us, the thing that we’ll take away is that first day on Bag End. There’s Ian McKellen as Gandalf – and he WAS Gandalf – and Martin Freeman WAS Bilbo, and we WERE our characters, for the first time we weren’t actors any more, we were characters in a film. And that was a pretty special moment. You know, I didn’t imagine we’d ever be back in Middle-earth, I didn’t imagine I would ever be in Bag End. You know, I read the book when I was seven years old, and had lived with it like everybody does in my imagination, and here we were, recreating people’s imaginations, because now when people read the book, they will have us in mind. They’ll be OUR characters when they read them, and that’s a huge privilege, but also it’s a… You have to get it right. You know? There was a lot of nerves on that Day One, and that’s the thing that I remember, is just going “Oh! There’s no going back. There’s no more training, there’s no more practice, there’s no more dialect coaching. We’re doing it. We have to get it right, it’s up there forever. And I looked around the room, and there was this air of excitement, but also this air of responsibility. I know that Martin felt it very deeply, that he wanted Bilbo to be the Bilbo that people read in the book, and I know that Richard was the same, and that Ian obviously has created Gandalf forever.
The Black Riders pursue Frodo in ‘The Lord of the RIngs: The Fellowship of the Ring.’ Photo credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures, New Line Cinema.
AC: And in contrast, your favorite memory from Lord of the Rings?
Jed Brophy: Yeah, I think the location doing the gallops, doing the Black Rider, galloping as a Black Rider, but also doing the big Rohan charges. I talk about that a lot because we’ll never get to recreate that in New Zealand, we’ll never get that many horses together in one place. We really struggled to get that many horses in the first place. And when Bernard Hill came down the line and he hit all those spears, and he was talking about a “red day…” All of the extras that we had on horseback were actors that day, no one had to go, “Okay, let’s gear up and pretend we’re going to war,” there was this palpable feeling that we were going to charge to our deaths. And I talked about this with Peter Jackson, actually, we just went… That was one of the first times I’ve been on a set where we weren’t ACTING, we were just BEING, and Bernard really set the mark for that day, he was amazing that day. And we were charging off, going to war. It was incredible. And that, for me… You know, I grew up on horseback, so to have the experience of doing what I love and doing what I LOVE, and marrying the two together, was incredible.
King Theoden (Bernard Hill) leads the charge of the Rohirrim at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. Photo credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures, New Line Cinema.
VL: You play a couple different orcs, right? So, the question is: Who would win in a fight, Snaga or Sharku?
Jed Brophy: Sharku, definitely. He’s much meaner [laughs]. Yeah, Snaga likes to talk, but Sharku is a “doer,” and you can see from his face, he’s already had a warg try and rip his face off and he survived it, so I think he’s pretty tough.
VL: I can totally buy that.
Jed Brophy: He’s the only person who kicked Aragron’s butt, let’s be honest!
AC: Exactly!
Snaga was always ready to speak up when it came to dinner. Photo credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures, New Line Cinema.
Sharku may have survived a disagreement with a warg, but he wasn’t so lucky after the battle on the road to Helm’s Deep. Photo credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures, New Line Cinema.
AC: If you weren’t an actor and could choose any profession regardless of your skills or abilities, what would it be?
Jed Brophy: Rock star. If I had my time over, I’d probably go into music, I think. I talked with Billy a little bit about this. When you’re standing on stage playing music, it’s an immediate thing that people either love or hate. And even doing a play is different, because people are respectfully sitting there, and they might laugh and they might cry, but you don’t really know until after the show’s over how people felt about it. With music, you know immediately if people are enjoying it, because you can see them right there, and if they’re dancing, having a good time, it’s kind of a unique thing. I play in a band, I play the drums, and I can sit there at the back, just watching people, just kind of, “Well, this is just the best gig in the world!” Because you’re having a good time, and they’re having a good time, it’s not up there forever, you can always get it right the next time you do a gig. So, yeah, that’s what I’d do.
The multi-talented Jed Brophy on drums. Photo credit: Jed Brophy.
VL: Who would play the role of “Jed Brophy” in a film, if you couldn’t play yourself?
Jed Brophy: Hugh Jackman, obviously. Yeah, I think he’d do a pretty good job at playing me. Umm… I don’t really know. I think if you’re using me as a young man, probably one of my sons. I’m doing a theatre show with my older son [Riley Brophy] at the moment, and people say, “He’s so like you!” Same mannerisms, a lot of the same…
AC: I’ve heard people who went to Hobbitcon say that.
Jed Brophy: Yeah! That’s my other son, Sadwyn, yeah.
AC: They loved him.
Jed Brophy: He’s my younger son, and he looks a lot more like me than my older boy, but they’re very… You can’t help but pick up your father’s traits, I think. So I think they’d probably get him to play him [Jed] as a younger man, and then Hugh Jackman as me. Don’t tell Hugh that, though [laughs].
Riley Brophy and Jed Brophy in ‘An Unseasonable Fall of Snow.’ Photo via TheatreReview.org.nz.
