Jonathan Meets... Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan

Dominic Monaghan (Merry) and Billy Boyd (Pippin) kept up the double act when they met Jonathan Ross at the UK premiere of The Return Of The King.

You must be delighted with the finished film...

Billy Boyd: Yes, I think it's a really special one. It seems to have got the [balance] between these big battle scenes and the characters, it just seems to work really well. The rhythms are perfect.

How was the first time you watched it with an audience?

Billy Boyd: It was pretty special, but I was kind of still watching it for the performance... but I watched it the third time and then watched it as a movie and it just blew me away. And the audience was cheering the movie!

Dominic, you're right in the middle of one of the biggest battles. How does filming that compare to seeing the end result, when Peter Jackson has added all the many other elements?

For me the filming was a mixture of a huge amount of green screen work, sitting on what I called a 'phoney pony', which was a horse that was oversized for my hobbit gait, and a lot of weaving around, jostling. Pete would come in and paint the picture, [saying], "You're going through an oliphant's legs and you have to go left, and then go right," - we did a whole bunch of combinations of that. It never feels truly as hectic as what you are seeing in the film, but for an actor that's good, to watch a film and be surprised.

Orlando Bloom is not with us tonight, but what can you say about him?

Dominic: He's the combination - which is sickening - of a good-looking guy and a very sweet man.

Billy: The way his career is going, and he honestly hasn't changed a bit. We went down to visit him on the Troy set and he's just the same Orlando who just left drama school.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2003/12/19/film2k3_boyd_monaghan_2003_article.shtml