Lord of the Rings star Dominic Monaghan explains the recasting of Aragorn during the weeks leading up to production on The Fellowship of the Ring. The role of Aragorn is one of the most important in the entire trilogy and director Peter Jackson offered it to a few well known stars before initially casting Stuart Townsend. Jackson asked Daniel Day-Lewis to come on board as the heir to Gondor's throne, but he declined. The role was then offered to Nicolas Cage, who also turned it down.
Vin Diesel, a fan of the books, auditioned for the part of Aragorn, but the role eventually went to Townsend who was infamously replaced just days before shooting began. In searching for a replacement, Russell Crowe was considered for the role, but he, too, turned it down, feeling that the part was too similar to his role in Gladiator. Day-Lewis was offered the role for a second time, but declined again, leading to the casting of Mortensen who is now irrevocably associated with the character and the films.
Monaghan revealed to Manchester Evening News that the recasting came as a surprise to most of the cast. The cast was told that Townsend would no longer be working on Lord of the Rings, but the crew wouldn't tell them why at the time. Monaghan says, "We didn't get a chance to say bye to Stu," as the whole thing happened very quickly. During pre-production, Jackson began to doubt Townsend's ability to play the role of Aragorn because of his youth and, when he left production, the rest of the cast was upset and unable to reach out to Townsend at the time because of the lack of e-mail and cell phones available at the time in New Zealand.
He left very quickly. I think he was probably sad about how it turned out. I obviously can't speak for him but we were on set and we were coming towards the end of week one and the producer Barrie Osborne had said to the four hobbits ‘can you just wait around on wrap because Peter and I want to talk to you about something’.
And in my naivety I just thought they were going to say we'd had a great week, we love what we're seeing, love you guys, have a great weekend blah blah blah. And unfortunately they said Stuart has left the project.
We were all stunned, I didn't think we could get fired at that point, I thought you were in... but it wasn't the case. And Sean [Astin] said ‘well has he left the project or has he been fired?’ And I think they were trying to protect Stuart as much as they could. They just said 'we will let Stuart tell you that, but he's no longer with us'.
We couldn't contact him. Email was very new at that point. He just disappeared.
By now, Mortensen's turn as Aragorn in Lord of the Rings has become synonymous with the films and they ultimately propelled the actor to a new level of stardom. While Mortensen had been working in the industry for quite some time before landing the role of Aragorn, most of those roles had been in a supporting capacity. With Lord of the Rings, Mortensen took center stage and brought a new layer to the films.
Mortensen's commitment to the role of Aragorn is well known - the actor would walk around on set in character - and that translated into his intense and emotional performance on screen. It's safe to say that the Lord of the Rings films would not be the same without Mortensen's dedicated performance, but Townsend's firing is an interesting glimpse into the arduous process in getting this massive trilogy onto the big screen.
Source: Manchester Evening News