The Hobbit's clash of the kings

PM Saturday Dec 7, 2013

The second Hobbit movie reminds us that the dwarfs and elves of Middle-earth just don't get along - and in the new film the respective team captains Thorin Oakenshield and Thranduil finally come face to face. The actors behind the characters talk to Des Sampson

He's renowned as a meticulous method actor who painstakingly prepares by creating detailed biographies of the characters he plays.

But no amount of homework or training could prepare Richard Armitage to play Thorin Oakenshield, the leader of the Company of Dwarves, in The Hobbit trilogy.

Armitage had his fair share of action in previous roles in television's Spooks and Robin Hood and a brief turn as a Nazi spy in the first Captain America movie.

But he admits he was overwhelmed by the physical intensity of playing the pivotal part in Peter Jackson's epic franchise.

"it was quite a shock when we first started. i remember doing the sequence in the goblin tunnels from movie one and it was so hot and so taxing that a lot of the dwarves and the stunt guys were coming off the set and vomiting. that's how extreme it was," he reveals. "that's why, from the start, i viewed these films as a marathon rather than a sprint.

"it's just as well i did, because that's how they turned out.


"On the last day of filming, i honestly thought i was going to be carried out on a stretcher because i was on my knees from exhaustion. it was also incredibly moving filming those last scenes, because it marked the end of a very long, emotional journey."

Armitage says he became so absorbed in his role as Thorin Oakenshield that he even ended up dreaming in character.

"I started having weird dreams and realising it's not me, it's the character. I used to have this recurring dream about going into a tunnel and not being able to find my way out. it was something to do about the scenes with the secret door.

"But it's kind of cool because you don't have to work that hard if your mind is already wandering in that place, without you having to remind yourself to think about the character; it's just there in your subconscious ... that's what you want: you want to lose yourself in the character."

"i think it's an anxiety dream and it mirrors the anxiety that thorin feels about taking his people back to the mountain. the magnet is the gold but the repellent is the dragon. so he has this terrible dilemma of wanting to find what's in there, but what's in there could be a ticking bomb that destroys his people too."

Despite the pressures of the shoot, Armitage insists he never held any reservations about accepting the part, nor having to relocate to New Zealand during filming. in fact, he relished it. "I remember when i first sat down with Peter Jackson, during casting, and he said: 'the thing is, we're going to shoot this in New Zealand and it's going to be a long commitment', expecting me to question it, or somehow be disappointed by that," he recalls. "But that was possibly the biggest pull of all.

"Part of the adventure, for me, was the chance to go to New Zealand and immerse myself in Middle-earth, which many fans - and Kiwis - believe New Zealand to be. I wanted to experience that whole mythology and feel what they did when they shot Lord of the Rings there."

He admits he wasn't disappointed by what he found. in fact, his expectations were dwarfed by the realities of his experiences while filming.

"They'd be days we'd go to work and there'd be a line of helicopters that would take us to the top of a part of the mountain, because there were no roads up there. Then they'd leave and we'd be all alone, filming in a place where very few people had ever stood. It was magical."

And he was able to combine work with recreation - or that is how it might look in Desolation of Smaug's escape-by-barrel scene, which offered Armitage and his cast a spot of whitewater rafting. Though the weather cut that part of the shoot short.

"When we were shooting the barrel scene on the Pelorus river, we were supposed to have one more day of shooting and a huge storm was coming in so they pulled the shoot and we flew back to Wellington. But the big storm came in and washed the road away between where we were shooting and the location, so if we'd gone to the location we'd all have been stranded in the location. and it took six to seven weeks to rebuild that road, which made me realise how fragile the infrastructure is there, in New Zealand. But I kind of like the fact that it's like that, that it's not too intrusive."

Armitage says despite the wild ride of part two, which presumably ends with team dwarf encountering the fiery beast of the title, it's what Thorin faces in next year's part three that worried him the most.

"The thing that was always looming for me - and I don't think this is giving too much away, maybe it is - was the Battle of the Five Armies, because it contains so much for my character. In terms of physical effort we were always working towards that battle [scene] because the battle had to be bigger and better, physically, than anything before.

"So that scene was always something that I was frightened of. But I was also using that with the character because, for me, it represented the beast - the dragon.

"So as Thorin is on his journey into the mountain it had that same kind of anxiety of 'I know what it's going to take to combat this and i don't think I have it'.

"So it was kind of useful to have that fear inside me."

And when he wasn't acting his little dwarf king legs off, the actually rather tall Armitage was off having a very good time.

"I visited a lot of remote, ruggedly beautiful and pristine places that I still dream about, even now. I also did a lot of fly-fishing, kayaking and skied just about every mountain there was - not that I told peter [Jackson], at the time. The whole experience has definitely made me want to retire to New Zealand.

"Being there, filming The Hobbit, has totally changed me."