Richard Armitage, who plays Thorin Oakenshield in The Hobbit, is continuing his round of interviews in Australia and is delighting us by always seeming to find something new to say!
In his interview with yourmovies he says they call Tauriel ‘Towel Rail’ and that he never saw Evangeline Lilly do any shooting and talks about working with Martin Freeman and the dwarves, Peter Jackson’s trousers falling down and meeting Prince William. Here are some extracts from the interview.
266 days of filming is a long time with one character.
Richard: Yeah it is, but I think he’ll stay in my head for a long time. I’m curious to see how he evolves for the second and third films. Because we shot it, but I don’t quite remember what we did. I mean, I saw movie one and there were moments when I was like “I don’t remember doing that“.
What was the biggest challenge of the role?
Richard: The physical challenges, that was the endurance test really. When it comes to the physical thing, you just go to the gym and work hard and bear the heat and discomfort. It’s not exactly rocket science, it’s just about endurance.
One of the challenges I always found was that I came up with a voice for him and keeping my voice at that level was complicated, because your voice changes from morning to evening — if you’ve done a lot of shouting the day before with fighting — trying to keep a constant sound to him was challenging. But of course we can go back and do a lot of sound post-production.
Which other actors did you bond with most of all, while making The Hobbit?
Richard: I worked quite closely with Jed [Brophy], because of the physical stuff and also Graham [McTavish]because our two characters played a lot together, so we did a lot of our fight training together. But also Aidan [Turner] and Dean [O’Gorman] because they’re my nephews [in the film]. I love them both as characters and actors, they’re just such lovely people.
Also Martin [Freeman] and Ian [McKellan] — I spent a lot of time working with both of them. I can’t even begin to tell you how great they are all as a family. I mean we were away from home, all of us — apart from the kiwi guys that were half of the cast. But that meeting of two cultures was very much like the dwarves assembling from all areas of the Blue Mountains to come together and go on a quest. It matched and it was great, I’m looking forward to seeing them all again.
Martin Freeman is such a funny guy too, did he get up to any practical jokes?
Richard: Constantly. Martin is just like a one man band. He’s the most entertaining guy I have ever met. He’s so funny. He can really pull out an emotional card as well and be very moving. It always took me by surprise, because I’d be watching going ‘You’re going to be funny now aren’t you’ and he wouldn’t he’d move you.
There’s a moment in movie three — they said we couldn’t talk about movie two — but [not movie three], where he just did something and it kind of took me to the place I needed to go. He’s just such a generous actor and incredibly funny.
Peter is so funny too. Did you have trouble understanding his New Zealand sense of humour.
Richard: I always understood it, it’s very close to the British humour. There was one scene where Thorin was running down a log towards Arzog and Peter was demonstrating to me how fast he wanted me to run, so he charged down the log and his trousers fell down at the bottom — in front of the crew. But he just sort of pulled up his trousers and said, ‘well don’t do it like that’ and just went back into the tent. But it was one of the funniest things I have ever seen.
I could hear him chuckling over the microphone once he got inside the tent.
When you met Prince William, you guys had a bit of a chat. Do you remember what he said?
Richard: I think I said something about him playing an elf because he’s so tall. Of course he knocked it away and was like “no no no, not at all”. And of course you get briefed on the protocal of what you should and shouldn’t say and I was like “oh my goodness, I’ve said the wrong thing”.
After the movie, I was sitting on the aisle and he left and he kind of walked past me and shook my hand and said “that was a really really great performance. Kate’s going to love this when she gets to see it”. My dad was like “What did he say?” I was like “Did you not hear him?” And my dad’s like “no, I’m deaf, I didn’t hear him”.
That was one of those days that I felt very proud.
You can read the full interview at yourmovies
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