Lord of the Rings cast 'had to' return for War of the Rohirrim, says Philippa Boyens

Watch: Lord of the Rings producer Philippa Boyens discusses The War of the Rohirrim

Any Lord of the Rings fans watching The War of the Rohirrim, the new animated chapter in the franchise, will likely recognise a few of the voices they hear. And that is by design. Producer Philippa Boyens admits to Yahoo UK she, Peter Jackson, and Fran Walsh 'had to' bring some of the cast back.

The War of the Rohirrim (in UK cinemas from Friday) is set more than a century before Frodo Baggins travelled across Middle Earth to destroy the One Ring telling the tale of Rohan ruler Helm Hammerhand and his daughter Héra. It charts the conflict that arises between the king and the Dunlendings over Héra's hand in marriage, with the battle forcing them to take a stand at the stronghold that would go on to be known as Helm's Deep.

While it is set so long before the Lord of the Rings trilogy it was important for Boyens and the team to bring back Miranda Otto, Billy Boyd, and Dominic Monaghan from the original cast — Otto reprises her role as Eowyn whereas Boyd and Monaghan voice orcs. While the late Christopher Lee is also included in the film as the wizard Saruman using archive recordings from when he appeared in The Hobbit trilogy.

"We kind of had to do that," Boyens says of ensuring Lee's character was included in some way, adding: "He is there in the story, when you go into the timeline you go 'oh he's part of the tale.' Miranda was amazing, it gave me chills honestly, anyone who's a fan of her original performance can imagine how I felt when she stepped up to the mic.

"Hearing her do it again was just like [wow], and she just knows that character, it stayed with her, she knows it inside and out. She's a mother now so we talked about how maybe this is Eowyn talking to her children, she's telling a tale from her homeland."

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It certainly feels that way when you listen to Otto narrate the story, giving it a gravitas that makes it feel like she's telling the story over a campfire. Boyens adds: "We also talked about the fact that Eowyn is probably in Gondor and she might be a little homesick as she's telling this tale.

"What that gave us, having that character that some of the audiences will be really familiar with, is it's a voiceover that's actually quite emotional... which is unusual in a piece of voiceover. But we kind of went for it. This [narrative] is resonating with her because she was besieged in that stone fortress herself [in The Two Towers], so that's kind of cool."

Boyd and Monaghan, who famously played hobbits Pippin Took and Merry Brandybuck in the original movies, voice orcs Shank and Wrot who are searching for rings across Middle Earth for their master Sauron. It's a way to keep the story connected to the larger narrative around the War of the Ring, and Boyens jokes having the duo return for new roles was about her "ringing them up and going 'can you do me a favour'".

"In terms of Billy and Dom, we knew that whoever did those voices we wanted them to have an immediate connection between the actors," Boyens says. "Having two actors who knew each other really well to do Wrot and Shank... the fact that they knew each other and could play off each other immediately like that was why we actually picked up the phone. I threw myself on their mercy and they very nicely said yes."

A new tale in Middle Earth

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is one that fans of JRR Tolkien's Middle Earth would only know if they'd read the appendices of The Lord of the Rings, and even then the story only makes a passing mention of Héra (and not by name). This gave Boyens, who co-wrote the story, a way to do something unexpected by taking the narrative and focusing on Héra.

"It was actually, honestly, organically looking at that story," Boyens says of the decision. "Without giving too many spoilers away, if you look at what's on the page —and I know it doesn't seem like there's a lot of story there it's only a few pages of story in the appendices about this particular tale— but at the heart of it, at the very beginning of it, is this unnamed female character who was almost a pawn that's been fought over.

"She is the bone of contention between these two really powerful men, one says 'I want your daughter to marry my son' and then for Helm to say 'over my dear body will my daughter be thrown away on your son', this kind of conflict that was created between the men was because of her, and so immediately you start thinking, well, what did she feel about that?

"If you follow the story along, who's left standing as you follow this story to its natural conclusion? She is. And that again gives you a whole story to follow, which is how does she survive? Is it the choices that she makes? Is there any point at which maybe she's not going to survive this? And if not, why? That actually gave us a wealth of things to begin with.

"Because we were having to build out the story, we always try to be as authentic as we possibly can so we did actually go and delve into some of the Anglo-Saxon tales, and tales of medieval women, historical characters who actually existed that we could draw upon to kind of flesh out who might be within the Rohirrim as Professor Tolkien might have imagined them."

Bringing Héra to life is voice actor Gaia Wise, who saw her character as an ancestor to Eowyn but entirely separate to the legacy character.

"She is sort of a more original shield maiden," Wise says of Héra in comparison to Eowyn. "As much as you want to have the through line of the ancestry towards Eowyn it's important that they are standalone characters, but I hope you can see and feel the ancestry."

Meeting fan expectations

The film is directed by Japanese anime auteur Kenji Kamiyama, who previously worked on projects like Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and Akira. He tells Yahoo UK how a project like The War of the Rohirrim was "huge" in comparison to anything else he's worked on before.

"Initially it wasn't supposed to be such a huge project actually, in the beginning we were only going to make a smaller animation about Middle Earth," he admits. "But as we went along Philippa said to me that a Lord of the Rings film is going to have to be a big project, and we'd have to do it three times [as big]. I couldn't really imagine what it was going to be like, but halfway through the project it was getting bigger and bigger.

"Having said that, Phillipa and Peter Jackson have made a huge [films] up til now so it was so stimulating and such a joy to work with them."

Boyens was a big support for all involved, including Wise and her co-star Laurence Ubong Williams, who voices Héra's cousin Fréaláf in the movie. Both characters were expanded upon in the movie compared to the appendices, giving them the chance to make them their own whilst looking past fan expectations.

Wise says: "It was lovely. We had the support of Arty [Papageorgiou], Phoebe [Gittins, who were co-writers of the script], and Phillippa Boyens as well who's sort of a walking encyclopaedia of Tolkien. So if there was ever a moment that I wasn't quite sure about, I had people who I could turn to.

"I feel very privileged that they sort of gave, I think, both of us free reign to explore where we wanted them to sit within ourselves, as much as anything else, and that was an incredible experience."

Williams adds: "I agree, they felt so supportive of the backstory of these characters. The backstory was so rich but you have to dig through the annals of Tolkien's work to find them so I guess that homework was kind of done for us a little bit too.

"What's interesting to talk about fan expectations, because it was only after the casting was announced — I think we'd done a few turns — that the Instagram DMs started piling up. People had questions!"

When asked if the DMs were good or bad, he adds: "I suppose good, it seems to come from a good place, [but] I didn't have all the answers straight away. Wait until it comes out and I've finished doing it and I can give you some answers. It's amazing, I hope I don't let them down."

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim premieres in cinemas on Friday, 13 December.