![]() But, when they’re filming this scene, Astin stepped on a branch that was poking up in the water, which “punctured the bottom of his foot and left a massive gash,” Wood remembers. Then Jackson changed the ending so Frodo would save Sam instead-the version that is now in the movie. And it took about an hour and a half to get warm again.” “And so I was in the water for about 45 minutes. It was essentially a mountain runoff lake,” Wood remembers. ![]() Originally, it was supposed to be Sam who saves Frodo, which they filmed first. ![]() This is actually the alternate version of the climactic scene. Sam finds Frodo paddling away off to Mordor by himself, and starts wading into the river despite the fact that he can’t swim. They were filming the scene where Frodo parts ways with the Fellowship. “It's stuff like that I sort of treasure the most, because these movies are so massive and the scale of them is so extraordinary, and they really are the culmination of thousands of people's work and artistry.”Īnd then there was the time Astin impaled his foot. The time in between setups-we'd have a couple hours where we'd take naps in each other's trailers, or bring rented DVDs or VHS tapes from the local video store and watch them in one of our trailers,” Wood says. Get unlimited access to decades of chats with our favorite guys with Esquire Select. Thinking back on it 20 years later, Wood says it’s the small moments that have stuck with him the most. Everybody else has read it,” he says, laughing. “I still haven’t read it, 20 years later. I sort of pivoted my focus to just live in the world of the character as written in the scripts and trust the process. “I found it taxing to read the book with all the work in tandem I was doing on my character. “The book is dense and verbose and incredible and literary and beautiful, but heavy,” Wood says. Maybe this is partially why Wood has still never finished reading Lord of the Rings. Without the lidless eye of the Internet, they had to trust in the team they were working with that they were adapting this the right way, or at least in a way that could appease millions of fans. “ existed, there were eyes on us, but not even close to the degree of scrutiny that exists now.” “Thankfully, at the time, the Internet was in its infancy,” Wood says. It also didn’t hurt that Twitter didn’t exist. They were all in it together, sharing the burden, and the pressure of getting it right. ![]() Wood credits his companionship with his castmates for helping him bear the stresses of adapting such a beloved series of books. I had a life that I built in New Zealand playing a role that was a huge responsibility.” This is coming from still living at home. Like, fuck,” Wood says looking back on it. So it was a giant leap for me in terms of growth and maturity and responsibility and life experience. “That was my first time living away from home for any long period of time. And, looking back as a now-40-year-old, he’s amazed by how formative his years filming Rings actually were. Wood was a spritely 18 years old when he touched down in New Zealand to begin filming Rings. From remote mountain tops, to the middle of orc armies, to grueling hours of make-up, and local pubs after 16-hour days of shooting, the hobbits formed a real fellowship during those 16 months filming in New Zealand (three months longer than it took Frodo and Sam to walk the ring to Mordor and make it back home to the Shire). Together, they had been on a journey that began in 1999 and lasted through 438 days of filming (all three movies at once!) in New Zealand. “They’ve been texting each other in the morning, like ‘Let’s go get coffee.’ We haven’t really been able to hang out like this in 16 years probably.” “They’ve been going out to dinner and they’ll text me a photo of my seat at the dinner table without me in it, which is really, really sweet,” Wood tells me over Zoom from his home in LA. This month, they traveled to New York City for an upcoming anniversary event, but their Ring Bearer couldn't make it there in person, a fact that’s caused him not a little FOMO. Until now, as the most beloved fantasy series ever made celebrates its 20th anniversary. The hobbits have remained friends but they’ve rarely had the chance to get all four of them together in one place. “Yes, we call ourselves the hobbits,” Elijah Wood confirms before I can even ask if Sean Astin, Billy Boyd, and Dominic Monaghan really refer to themselves as “the Hobbits.” It’s a title they’ve embraced for 20 years now, since they first appeared as Frodo Baggins, Samwise Gamgee, Pippin Took, and Merry Brandybuck, respectively, in Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.
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