Yahoo Movies Elijah Wood says an orc in Lord of the Rings was designed to look like Harvey Weinstein
Watch: Lord of the Rings orc mask styled on Harvey Weinstein, Elijah Wood reveals
Don't get on director Peter Jackson's bad side — unless you want an orc created to resemble you.
While visiting Dax Shepard's Armchair Podcast, Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood reflected on filming the epic trilogy that changed his career and admitted that one of the orcs in the film was designed to resemble Harvey Weinstein.
Alexander Koerner/Getty Images; Everett Collection Harvey Weinstein vs an orc in 'Lord of the Rings.'
Wood revealed that the story was recently brought up on The Friendship Onion podcast run by former Lord of the Rings costars (and fellow hobbits) 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."
Everett Collection
Ardent Lord of the Rings fans are well aware of the behind-the-scenes details concerning Jackson's epic trilogy, including how the films were originally supposed to be developed under Miramax and Weinstein (as Miramax owned the rights to J.R.R. Tolkein's series). But when Weinstein tried to pressure Jackson to make just one or two films from Tolkien's books, the director put his foot down.
The relationship between the two creatives reportedly became strained and eventually, Jackson was allowed to pitch his film to other studios under a tight time frame.
Pierre Vinet/New Line Elijah Wood in 'The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.'
"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 film. The popular opinion was, 'No, you have to see how the first movie does and then invest the rest of your money,'" Wood explained.
The film would ultimately land at New Line Cinema, where producer Bob Shaye saw Jackson's vision and agreed to the "three movies filmed at the same time" idea. The rest, as they say, is history — including Weinstein's orc face.
Representatives for New Line Cinema and Jackson didn't immediately respond to EW's request for comment.
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