Last month IGN published two interviews with Ian McKellen and Martin Freeman, who talked, among other things, about their own experience saying goodbye to Middle-earth.
This wasn’t the first goodbye for Ian McKellen, who thought to have finished with the role of Gandalf over a decade ago, but, apparently, it wasn’t even the last one. “Well, I’m going straight to another job and my focus, I suppose, will just — as I get on the plane will switch to that and there may be a delayed reaction. As I say, there are premieres, there’s AD art to be done, adding the voices. It isn’t “never see you again” sort of thing, it’s not saying goodbye. It’s not the break-up of a relationship.”
The interview ends with Ian McKellen saying that he won’t cry when it will be time to actually say goodbye. “[…] When we finished the other trilogy, it was a big day, the day you finished, for the principal actors. We’d finished shooting and they said this is the last day for whoever, everyone went away, the actor got changed, and everyone came back. People didn’t go home. They waited. And I remember my last day was out here in the car park, the battlements of something or other, Minas Tirith. And Peter, Barrie Osborne, the producer, stood up there and they showed a film all about me. Five, six, seven minute film, full of fun, jokes, moments you wanted to remember. And then you were called up and you were given your sword. Which I still have at home, of course. And there was torch light. You couldn’t help being moved by that. We’ll see if anything similar happens tomorrow. I suspect it will just be b’bye. ‘Bye-bye, Hobbit, bye-bye.’ I don’t know. But yes, I should be very sad to say goodbye to some friends. But I sense that why won’t we be meeting up again in a few years’ time? We probably will. It’s possible, isn’t it?”
You can read the full interview with Ian McKellen here.
On the other side, Martin Freeman looked “quite ‘unsentimental’ (his word) about saying goodbye to The Hobbit after three years”. “I’m very sentimental about other things, but I’m never ever sorry to leave a job. Ever. Partly because, while I still have that experience and partly because recording has been invented and if I ever miss it I can, you know, play it. Please God, you know. I mean, I know that sound facetious, but it’s really true. You can play the record or play the DVD or whatever it is you want to play, thankfully. No, I won’t be [sad to say goodbye]. I hope I’ll be proud of it. And I’ll be happy to, really happy to have done it. But no, I’m always wanting to see what the next thing is, genuinely. There will be things about it that you will miss, there will be people and experiences that you kind of think, ‘Oh, that was— It’s a shame I’ll never have that particular one again.’ But, honestly that’s kind of like on every job. It’s like that on every job. This is slightly different I guess, because it’s longer, but in that way nature find its own way. The longer it is, the more you want to finish it, you know what I mean? Because you know, the longer something is, the more you’ve had time to get annoyed at people. I’m talking about them on me, actually.”
