Dominic Monaghan & Billy Boyd

Merry & Pippin

The hobbit double act get serious for The Two Towers and reveal how they surprise and impress with their off-screen height...

Do Merry and Pippin have more to do this time?
Monaghan: Yeah. Merry and Pippin get themselves in a couple of scrapes and have a little bit of swordplay. And that was nice. As young guys, it's frustrating to see people like Orlando, Viggo and Ian McKellen getting involved in the action and we have to stand in the background and get scared. It's nice to grab a sword and cut some people in two...
Boyd: There's only so much of that a hobbit can get away with, though. If a seven-foot-tall Uruk-hai comes at us swinging a sword, we're not going to have much of a chance.

So what have you made of the reaction to Fellowship?
Boyd: Everything has been pretty much on the positive side. People recognise me on the street now, which is odd. You kind of get used to that where you live, but it's much stranger when you're abroad. Being recognised in a country like Mexico is very weird.
Monaghan: People I chat to on the streets can't wait for the next one. They also can't believe I'm as tall as I am.
Boyd: They all say that but I don't know if they are or not. It's probably just a line...

Is it true you guys couldn't get into he Oscars?
Boyd: Yeah, but we weren't turned away at the doors or anything. We always knew that there were only tickets available for the nominees...
Monaghan: They only invited Pete Jackson and Ian McKellen from the film. They didn't even invite Elijah-- Pete Jackson took him as his guest. The rest of us guys went to watch it at the New Line party, which was good fun. A dinner lady at my dad;s school was asking my dad if there was a chance of her going to the Oscars. My dad was laughing, saying, "Well, at the moment he's having difficulty getting hold of a ticket for himself, Doreen..."

What else have you been up to since the first film came out?
Monaghan: I've spent this year getting my head around America, stalling my career a little bit. I did a short film in New York, I've been traveling, I've been surfing all year...I've also been writing--a script on my own, and Billy and I are still in the middle of writing a script...

You're writing a script together?
Boyd: Yeah, we've been writing it for quite a long time and it's getting to the point where we're ready to show it to people. A few friends have pushed us to get it done. It's a sort of character comedy. As Dom says, it's funnier than a penguin playing a banjo...

Ceri Thomas

[From Total Film Magazine, November 2002 (#72 The Two Towers), archived at www.dominicmonaghan.de.vu , archived at the Internet Archive.]