Lord of the Rings' Elijah Wood reveals 'an orc was designed to look like Harvey Weinstein'

The Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood recently made an appearance on Dax Shepard's Armchair Podcast. The actor reflected on filming the epic trilogy that changed his acting career. He also made a rather interesting revelation, that one of the 'orcs' in the film was designed to resemble the infamous former Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. Orcs, in the Tolkien-conjured LOTR universe are humanoid monsters that resemble terrifying, violent goblins in appearance.

Elijah Wood: 'One of the orc masks was designed to look like Harvey Weinstein'

While speaking to the host Dax Shepard, Elijah Wood revealed that the story was recently brought up on The Friendship Onion podcast that is run by former Lord of the Rings co-actors and his fellow hobbits - Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd who played 'Merry' and 'Pippin' in the movie series. 

The actor said, "They were talking to Sean Astin about his memory of getting to New Zealand for the first time," Wood told Shephard and his cohost, Monica Padman. "He had seen these orc masks. And one of the orc masks — and I remember this vividly — was designed to look like Harvey Weinstein as a sort of a f*** you." He continued after sharing the story, "I think it's okay to talk about this now. He's f*****g incarcerated."

The dedicated Lord of the Rings fans is pretty aware of the behind-the-scenes details that focus on Percy Jackson's epic trilogy. It also includes how the films were initially supposed to be developed under Miramax and Weinstein (as Miramax originally owned the rights to J.R.R. Tolkein's series). However, when Weinstein tried to pressure Jackson to make just one or two films from Tolkien's books, the trilogy's director decided to put his foot down and not do it.

Since then, the equation between the two reportedly became strained. Eventually, Jackson was allowed to pitch his story to other studios under a tight time frame. Wood further explained, "The window of time was insane. They shopped it around town. Peter made a pitch video that's pretty impressive, taken to a variety of places. Most people were balking at the notion of doing more than one film. The popular opinion was, 'No, you have to see how the first movie does and then invest the rest of your money.'" Ultimately, the film landed at New Line Cinema, where producer Bob Shaye looked into Jackson's vision. Shaye agreed to the 'three movies filmed at the same time' idea. 

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