While visiting Dax Shepard‘s Armchair Podcast, Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood talked about filming the classic trilogy that changed his career and confirmed that one of the orcs in the movie was designed to look like Harvey Weinstein.
Wood also said that the story was recently brought up on The Friendship Onion podcast run by former Lord of the Rings costars Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd.
“They were talking to Sean Astin about his first memory of getting to New Zealand for the first time,” Wood told Shephard and his cohost, Monica Padman. “He had seen these orc masks. And one of the orc masks — and I remember this vividly — was designed to look like Harvey Weinstein as a sort of a f— you.”
“I think it’s okay to talk about this now,” Wood continued after sharing the story. “He’s f—ing incarcerated.”
Ardent Lord of the Rings fans is well aware of the behind-the-scenes details about Jackson’s epic trilogy, including how the movies were originally supposed to be developed under Miramax and Weinstein. But when Weinstein tried to pressure Jackson to make just one or two movies from Tolkien’s books, the director didn’t take it well.
The relationship between the two creatives became strained and finally, Jackson was allowed to pitch his movie to other studios under a short time frame.
“The window of time was insane. They shopped it around town. Peter made a pitch video that’s pretty impressive, taken to a variety of places. Most people were balking at the notion of doing more than one movie. The general opinion was, ‘No, you have to see how the first movie does and then spend more money,'” Wood explained.
The movie would ultimately land at New Line Cinema, where producer Bob Shaye saw Jackson’s vision and allowed the “three movies filmed at the same time” idea. The rest, as they say, is history — which includes the Weinstein’s orc face.