Andy Serkis, who portrayed Gollum in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films, had nice things to say about the Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power show airing over at Amazon.
In an interview with Collider, Serkis said he appreciated that the series stayed true to Jackson’s original trilogy, as well as shouted out Howard Shore’s score, who also wrote the music for the films.
“Yeah, I absolutely watched it, and it really - once you get through understanding the rules of it, and actually how loyal to the trilogy and the feel of the trilogy music by Howard Shore for the opening sequence, et cetera - I found it incredibly engaging, and I really, really enjoyed watching it,” Serkis says.
Serkis also explained that his work recording audiobooks of The Lord of the Rings helped him follow the show and its overarching use of the series’ lore, then confirmed he will be doing an audiobook reading for The Silmarillion, a collection of stories by original author J. R. R. Tolkein published posthumously in 1977.
“And also, because I'd done an audiobook recording of The Lord of the Rings, and read the appendices, and had to read them out loud, I was quite clued up about where it was going to go, which was great, and it was really helpful because I'm going to be - don't tell anybody - reading The Silmarillion, as well,” Serkis says. “So you heard this first. Yeah, no, so I really enjoyed it very much so.”
The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power wrapped up its first season back in October, and Amazon has signed on for multiple seasons of the show, the second of which began filming last month.
Kenneth Shepard is a writer covering games, entertainment, and queerness all around the internet. Find him on Twitter at @shepardcdr, and listen to his biweekly video game retrospective podcast Normandy FM, which is currently covering Cyberpunk 2077.