Billy Boyd, best known for playing Peregrin “Pippin” Took in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, says the franchise almost had a naked hobbit scene. Before writing his masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote the children’s fantasy novel, The Hobbit, following Bilbo Baggins on a Middle-Earth adventure with a Wizard and a group of Dwarves. However, during said adventure, Bilbo obtains the One Ring. Its sequel, The Lord of the Rings, follows the quest to destroy the One Ring through the eyes of Frodo Baggins, Samwise Gamgee, Merry Brandybuck, and Pippin Took.
While not a children’s story in the same sense as The Hobbit (exploring a variety of complex themes), The Lord of the Rings is family-friendly. With his adaptations, Jackson leaned this mainstream appeal and even made The Hobbit into a more mature trilogy. Still, his films are a far cry from the graphic sex scenes, nudity, and gore of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire or its television counterpart HBO’s Game of Thrones. In 2018, Amazon announced they’d be making a Lord of the Rings TV series set before the events of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring during The Second Age. Rumors that the series will feature nudity have received mixed to negative reactions online.
Boyd and Dominic Monaghan, who played Merry in Jackson’s films, recently appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. During the interview, the pair touched upon the nudity controversy by revealing The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers almost included nudity as well. Read what Boyd had to say below:
"Here’s the thing. There was almost nudity in the movies,” said Boyd. “[Screenwriter] Philippa Boyens…she wrote a scene, because we’d been doing some kind of gags and winding people up…[and] she said, ‘Oh, it’s a new scene we’re filming next week, with the Ents. When Merry and Pippin are up Treebeard, he gets afraid and shakes his branches, which makes you guys fall, and as you hit all the branches on the way down, by the time you hit the ground, you’re naked. And Merry turns to Pippin and says, ‘It’s cold, isn’t it?’ And Pippin says, ‘Hold me, Merry.’"
Monaghan jokingly added that he “was kind of into it” citing a desire to show off his “fantastic” backside. While it would’ve been interesting to see how people would’ve reacted if this unnecessary nude scene would've made it into The Lord of the Rings, that reaction likely would’ve been different than the one prompting thousands of fans to sign a petition against nudity in the Amazon series. The production behind the series has reportedly hired intimacy coordinators and ensured the actors are comfortable appearing in nude scenes. Suffice to say, if Amazon’s Lord of the Rings contains nudity, it won’t be concerned with eliciting a laugh.
Since Game of Thrones aired its final season, every streamer has invested in fantasy shows in an attempt to capitalize on its popularity. It would seem Amazon aims to replace Game of Thrones with adaptations of The Wheel of Time and The Lord of the Rings. The latter has a total series cost of almost $1 billion, making it the most expensive television show ever made—it shouldn’t be limited in any way, ergo, there’s no need for nudity that doesn’t improve the story. If the upcoming series features a moving level of intimacy not seen in the films, that's one thing. A scene where a naked hobbit falls out of a tree is another.