The Lord Of The Rings stars Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd, who played the Hobbits Merry and Pippin have confirmed that a nude scene involving the duo was puled from The Two Towers.
The actors appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert earlier this week when they shared the unexpected anecdote with the host. The subject was raised as a result of the rumours that Amazon's upcoming Lord Of The Rings TV series has hired an intimacy co-ordinator to oversee nude scenes. Fans responded to these reports by setting up a petition against having any nudity in the show.
"Tolkien, a principled Roman Catholic, would inherently disapprove of the secular inclusion nudity to his life work," argued one of the petition's supporters. "Such an action is utterly disrespectful to his estate and legacy."
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"Here's the thing. There was almost nudity in the movies," Boyd explained to Colbert, before going on to describe what this would have entailed.
"[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.'"
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Monaghan added that he was very much up for doing the scene as he had a "fantastic ass" and that it was the right time to show the world. Unfortunately Monaghan's butt would remain hidden from the world, at least as far as The Lord Of The Rings was concerned. Maybe one day we can get an extended extended cut, eh? That'd go down well with the fans behind the petition.
Topics: GAMING, News, The Lord Of The Rings