Andy Serkis reflects on the pivotal Gollum scene from ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers’
Despite it being 21 long years since Peter Jackson’s first instalment of The Lord of the Rings trilogy hit the cinemas, the status of the franchise has not diminished one bit, and naturally, its almost flawless quality is the metric that every hardcore Tolkien fan uses to measure subsequent adaptations against, as Amazon’s new series The Rings of Power has just found out.
Each film in Jackson’s trilogy is a masterpiece, with every aspect lauded by man, from the cinematography to the soundtrack. Undoubtedly, the most scintillating facet of its success falls at the feet of the acting talent on show, with all the main cast members delivering what are arguably career-defining performances, including Viggo Mortensen, who has turned in many stellar roles over his career. However, no part in the franchise is more iconic than Andy Serkis as Gollum/Sméagol.
When Serkis was hired back in 2000, he, Jackson and the director’s Weta Workshop did something that would change the face of acting and animation forever. Playing Gollum, the former Stoor Hobbit ruined by the malice of Sauron’s ring, their use of motion capture for the part was pioneering, helping to spread the gospel as a viable means of working in real-time, instilling genuine feeling in FX and animations, taking the form to the next level.
Famously, Serkis acted against himself, and in the second movie, 2002’s The Two Towers, this reached its pinnacle when he played out a tense debate between both sides of Gollum’s personality, the evil one and the good one. Speaking to Vanity Fair, Serkis reflected on that monumental scene: “We began to evolve this whole notion of Sméagol and Gollum being two very different personalities,” said. “One of which was the visceral controlling Gollum, but then this schizophrenic feeling toward Frodo and then the power of the ring was manifested by the Sméagol side, who became the younger brother that is manipulated and abused by the elder, brutal kind of sibling. And obviously that came into being fully in that scene. I knew it was a really important scene, you just have the feeling.”
Serkis concluded: “At the world premiere at the Ziegfeld here in New York in 2002, I just remember when it came to that scene I literally felt the audience all as one lean forward in their seats. As an actor, I’ve never experienced anything like that, or hadn’t at that point. You could hear a pin drop, you could also hear people not kind of understanding— is this an actor, is it a real person? It felt kind of emotionally real and present. It was really gratifying”.
