LOTR Castmember Quotes

Treebeard
Speaker
Topic
Quote
Billy Filming Treebeard gets incredibly sore for your bum. We were up that tree for about twelve hours a day. The strange thing was, they built this tree. It was 20 feet tall. It made the acting easier because his face was there; it was animatronic. There was an actor there reading the lines. Really beautifully, which helped. And as Treebeard swept us up to look at us, we were actually being lifted 20 feet, so it all felt quite real. But we had to be hooked in for safety reasons. With the hands and the branches, the natural sitting position was forward about 45 degrees, so you're always kind of hanging out of it. It got to the point that it was so difficult to get unhooked and to get down the ladder and then get back up again that we only went down for lunch. So in tea breaks, they would just hand us up a cup of tea and everyone would leave the studio, and it'd just be me, Dom and Treebeard. Sittin' there, havin' a cup of tea.
John Voice P.J. came up one day and said, 'John, [co-screenwriter] Fran [Walsh] and I were just talking. Would you mind taking a shot at doing Treebeard, the voice of Treebeard?' I thought, 'Oh good, a bit more money. Yes, fine, I'll do it.' And then my nightmares began, I've had more cold sweats, more waking up in the middle of the night thinking, 'God, how do I play this bloody thing?' than you can imagine. I've had more problems with this than any three or four other parts put together. How the hell do you make a walking and talking tree work? What does a tree sound like? I asked this question to a talk-show host in New York City. He had three friends who were Tolkien experts and he faxed them the question, 'How does a tree talk?' They each sent back a letter. Every one of them disagreed with my own instinctive way of doing it. And one of them actually said that the only person who really could do this was James Earl Jones. And with that I concur utterly. But you've got to try these things.

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