To celebrate the 20th anniversary of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, ComingSoon spoke with Sean Astin. The actor discussed viewing the series in a new lens after reading the source material, his current book club, and more.
You’ve been open about not knowing a ton about Lord of the Rings when you first got the role. Since then, you’ve gone super deep into the lore, you’re now reading Fellowship of the Ring in your Fable book club. With all that extra insight, do you have even more appreciation for what you were all able to accomplish with these films?
Sean Astin: I think the answer has to be “yes,” but in a weird way, it’s sort of bifurcated. We are reading and I think there’s 300 people right now in the book club and we’re starting it, and I’ve made a commitment to myself and a commitment to the group that I’m gonna try and read it [but] not from the point of view of Sam. Everything I’ve experienced with The Lord of the Rings, from movies to the books and the fandom, toys, and everything else that has to do with Lord of the Rings, is always from the perspective of Sam. I’m a 50-year-old man with and I have been married for 30 years and have three kids and I’ve had this big career and have had education and done triathlons. I bring a lot to the literary experience and I wanna try and open myself up to experience whatever else might be in there in addition to Sam or separate from Sam.
So when you ask that question, I think about costume fittings and wardrobe tests where they set up the camera and we’re kind of walking around as the characters or checking the ears. Which ear mold feels like the most you? And you put the ear mold on. And somehow that seems in a weird way, like separate from the books. I mean, they’re not, obviously. Somebody else does the work. When you read a sentence and it says, “The hobbits have large furry feet.” It was somebody else’s job to conceptualize what that would mean in terms of how you make the foam mold and how you build the hair and set the wig lace on the hair so you can affix it to the top of the foot every day.
I’m probably appreciating it more in this moment answering your question than I ever have before. For me, I trade in ideas and emotions. That’s the space I live in. So I just trust, somehow. And it’s amazing that Peter Jackson and New Line and the producers of the movie and the creative inspirations like Alan Lee and John Howe, who are the visual inspirations, could find digital artists and costume designers and find all these people and bring them together, all these people who were individually charged with capturing the emotional life of what was on the page and bringing to life. I feel a little bit like the monkey in the rocket ship. Like somebody else designed it, somebody else built it, somebody else operated it, and I’m just sitting in the thing. If I survive it, I’ll be able to tell you what I was thinking about and how it felt when I went up there.
This is a 31-disc set that they’re putting out now. It’s got everything in it that fans of the films would want. It’s got the making of the films and every aspect that was gathered. It’s there in this 31-volume discs set. At the moment, I’m in a different mentality. I’m in this book mentality, like it’s just this one little book. And so my goal is I don’t wanna be thinking about the achievements of the movie today. I wanna be reveling in the achievement of the 20-year anniversary.
That’s why we picked it as the time to launch the book reading, but I almost feel like, and this happened on the movies, like you’d show up to set and it’s like an abandoned paint factory. There was nothing appealing about what you’re looking at. There was no water tower with the Warner Bros. logo on it. Maybe there was a guard gate, but it looked like a World War II setting, and you walk in and you sort of go, “Oh, wow, this is like a really amazing thing here.” And then you go do your bit. Everybody can take a moment to appreciate what other people are doing. And then you go do your bit.
And your bit is to go into the cubicle to work on the dialect for hour a day for five days a week for six weeks. Or somebody’s job is to go over and be building this part of a set. So, in a weird way, while you appreciate the whole, you are kind of compartmentalized into the thing that you’re doing. And at the moment, the thing I’m compartmentalized into is the emotion and ideas of the literary achievement of Lord of the Rings. So somehow it’s inextricably linked and yet it’s its own experience.
