"In the normal run of things, there’d be quite a lot going on for me,"Martin Freeman told Empire Magazine in a recent interview on the set of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. "I’ve got ears, the wig and the feet, which three more things than an actor normally has… But then I look over at the dwarves and see what they’re lugging!" You see, while he may be finding those additional props a pain, his dwarven co-stars are carrying around nearly 80kg of accessories all while wearing fat suits and various prosthetics. "They’re absolute troopers," he sympathises.
As for how work on the movie is going, Freeman said that he’s enjoying it despite admitting that he’s far from an expert on the source material. "It wasn’t in my orbit at all. I’m not sure it would have been very helpful if I’d always wanted to play Bilbo Baggins. I’d have come up against someone else’s vision. We’re taking the work seriously, but when we’re looking up at tennis balls that are meant to be trolls, it’s got to be fun."
"The first thing I filmed was finding the ring in Gollum’s cave," he revealed, adding that it’s a scene he knew that he’d have to invest with a certain amount of gravitas.
"It’s good to know, but not play, the importance of the Ring. I’m trying to put a bit more heaviness into it. It’s not all comical." His co-star (and second unit director) Andy Serkis had nothing but praise for his co-star after sharing the iconic sequence with his as the mo-cap Gollum.
"It was great for Martin to start off with that chamber piece. He could find Bilbo within the confines of a one-on-one scene. It was almost stranger for me: for the first couple of days it felt like I was doing an impersonation!"
RELEASE DATE: December 14, 2012.
About The Author:
Comic Book Reader. Film Lover. WWE and F1 Fan. Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic and ComicBookMovie.com's #1 contributor.