The undisputed standout in Peter Jackson's sixth and final Middle-earth movie The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies was Richard Armitage, whose rigorous performance as the increasingly deranged Thorin lent psychological weight to what was otherwise an action-heavy final chapter.

Digital Spy spoke to Armitage this morning to discuss the final days of Thorin Oakenshield, his upcoming role on Hannibal, and his plans for a theatre reunion with The Crucible director YaÃ«l Farber.

Warner Bros.



Now that you're more than a year out of it, how does it feel to look back on the Hobbit experience?

"You know what, it feels like a lifetime ago. I mean, I think we wrapped in 2013, but then the release of the final film at Christmas reminded us all of the work that we've done. It was such a nostalgic time because it was Pete's farewell to the Middle-earth saga, and it was really nice to be there with him and celebrate and give him a round of applause for his achievements."

The Battle of the Five Armies was very much your film, and felt like a kind of self-contained tragedy for Thorinâ€¦

"Yeah, and had it been two films I'm sure a lot of the meat of Thorin's journey would have ended up on the cutting room floor, because there just wouldn't have been enough time to deal with all of the characters and all of Thorin's arc in detail. So in a way it's a godsend that it was three films, because there was plenty of time to re-investigate the end of Thorin's journey, the end of his life, the descent into madness, the corruption of the gold, his relationship with Bilbo - there's so much in there. Pete, Fran and Philippa really crafted a fantastic script and I think fans have appreciated it, and I think it's one of the things that they love about that third film, is the depth of Thorin's journey."

Your final battle with Azog is a standout too...

"Yeah, that was one of the greatest challenges that Pete faced, because Tolkien doesn't really deal with that battle particularly well in the book, it's quite curtailed. Pete had to find a way to allow 13 dwarves to change the course of the battle, and tell each story as a narrative rather than just one big fight, and bringing it down to Thorin and Azog in single-handed combat was a way of doing that as well. I'm pretty sure that's how battles were, you can fight six people but ultimately you end up in combat with one person, and so I was very appreciative of that."



Are there any cut scenes that you're particularly keen for fans to see in the extended edition?

"Yeah, there's a big funeral scene which was cut from the final film, and I know they were quite upset that that had to be lost, so I'm looking forward to seeing that. There's also a fantastic chariot chase during the battle - they built this incredible chariot with a crossbow on the back, and I think we had Dwalin and Balin and a couple of the other dwarves on the chariot. I heard a sneaky rumour that they may do a limited cinema release just because some of the footage is so epic, and WETA Digital have been working like crazy to get it finished."

What stands out most in your memory from the entire filming process?

"The period that sits in my head most vividly is the final pickup period - I think it was just supposed to be three weeks and then it worked out as 13 weeks, so we were all quite spent by the end of it. I actually shot that final battle between Thorin and Azog in the last two weeks, and slowly everyone else had been wrapped, and I just had this huge mountain of work ahead of me. I was saying goodbye, and people hung around for the end, but it felt a little bit like the end of school and I still had the most challenging part of my work left, and I was sort of last man standing as it were. Having to still go to the gym every night when people were kind of kicking back and having pints!

"But I remember those last few weeks, and Pete wasn't well, he'd got a little bit sick because he was so tired, and we really sort of propped each other up in those last couple of weeks. He could see how spent I was, but I really felt like we were very much together in those last moments, and I knew that I had to give him everything that I had, and I just couldn't underperform for him. So it was a really lovely couple of weeks actually."

So much of the final film is Thorin alone, isolated from the group - did you withdraw from the group dynamic on set to help get into that mindset?

"For most of the filming it was a bit of both, actually. Because my hours were long and I was always pretty tired, I couldn't really party with everybody in the way that I would have liked, and actually towards the end of the shoot I was probably much more social than I was at the beginning. In the beginning you're very much studying the character and trying not to be distracted whereas by the end, I felt like I had more understanding of where he was going, so I was able to allow that to stay at work and be social in my downtime.

"So towards the end, I was out a little bit more with everybody, but I just had to be very careful. I couldn't be on all-night benders and go and drink too much, because you just have this very limited period over a weekend to recover. I mean, I never had to go on set with a hangover, and it would have been the most awful thing. In all of that make-up and costume, you can't imagine how uncomfortable it would have been! It would have been hell!"



How much has The Hobbit changed your career in terms of the roles you're offered?

"What's interesting now is that the movies are definitely on the radar, primarily because of the amount of money they made, so I do get to go into meetings with people that I probably wouldn't have done before. But the first comment I get is, 'Oh! You're 6 foot 2, I thought you were a dwarf!' [laughs] The other thing I've noticed is I'll read a lot of the descriptions of the characters I'm up for and they often have a beard. So like, they've kind of gone, 'Oh, we need someone who's good at growing a beard, let's call Armitage!' That's a talent I definitely have now, hair growing. I mean, I would love to think it was to do with my unique acting talent, but it is probably the ability to grow facial hair."

Were you familiar with Hannibal before being cast as Francis Dolarhyde?

"You know, I wasn't familiar with the show, and of course I was already saying yes because it was Bryan Fuller, even before I'd read the script. I actually just wanted to work with him, and I read the script and then realised this was a really interesting character. Then I read the book, and suddenly realised that I was actually going back on something that I'd said a long time ago, which was that one of the genres I probably won't do is horror. But I just didn't see [the role of Dolarhyde] as horror, and I then went and watched Hannibal seasons one and two.

"To me, it sits in a very interesting place, it's the horror genre but there's something beautifully decadent and gothic about the way that it's shot, and the performances are extraordinary. I think Mads Mikkelsen and Hugh Dancy and Laurence Fishburne just give it an elevation, so I knew that the bar was high when I went in there. And of course Thomas Harris's original novel Red Dragon, where you first meet Hannibal, is very much about Francis Dolarhyde and dealing in detail with the psychology of a serial killer."

Bryan mentioned that neither of the films has really had the time to delve into Dolarhyde in depth...

"No, it's true - I mean, most movies are maximum two hours long, and we get six hours to really explore the fine detail of what it means to be a psychopath, and to understand the roots of that and the birth of a child that turns into a monster. It's going to be very interesting."

Johan Persson



What are you working on at the moment?

"I'm shooting Pilgrimage, which is kind of a 12th century road movie about a relic which is making its way back to Rome with a group of monks, and I play a French Norman who has a personal agenda to corrupt this little journey. It's interesting, and most of my character's dialogue is in French, so I've been having to buff up my French."

Do you have any plans to go back to the stage after The Crucible last year?

"Yes, I do. The Crucible was such a turning point for me, I hadn't been on stage for 12 years, and I was looking for a real event, and it certainly turned into an event. It's had a great afterlife because it was put onto film and shown in cinemas, and it sold out in pretty much every venue that they played it.

"But I am building something else, probably with [The Crucible director] YaÃ«l Farber and hopefully for 2016 or 2017. I can't tell you what it is, but it will definitely have a much more physical base to it. One of the things I love about theatre is the limitless way that you can kind of use the body, so we're gonna push the physicality of that kind of theatre a little bit more."

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is available now on DVD and Blu-Ray.

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