STACK NZ Magazine April 2015 Issue 61

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MARTIN FREEMAN's incredible journey as Bilbo Baggins
comes to an end in The Hobbit:The Battle of the Five Armies.
APRIL 2015 JB Hi-Fi
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How has your life changed over these years,
with Sherlock, Fargo and The Hobbit films
all proving so successful?
MARTIN FREEMAN: Those things have
definitely altogether made a real change and
a lovely change—I welcome it, of course. I
genuinely feel very lucky to have all these
plates spinning at once. It’s fantastic. It’s
more than you can hope for. So, yeah, my
life has changed. It’s more busy.
Do people shout “Bilbo” at you in the
street?
Occasionally, yeah. I did my time with
people shouting “Tim” [from The Office]
for a few years. So there’s a bit of that,
but it changed quite a long time ago from
character names to Martin Freeman, which I
was happy about.Yeah, there’s a lot of that,
I suppose.
Does Bilbo stay with you as a role?
It doesn’t particularly stay with you, but
you always keep part of your head open
to it. I did ADR a couple of weeks ago, the
last bit of voice-looping that I will ever do
on The Hobbit movies. So, you have to
psychologically and emotionally remember
where you were. If someone put a gun at
my head and said, ‘Inhabit Bilbo now’, I
would physically, ticks-wise and gesture-
wise, know what to do. But I don’t think I
carry him around. I don’t feel that with any
character I’ve played.
Is it strange for you that your
Sherlock co-star Benedict Cumberbatch
plays the dragon, Smaug?
Well, it is and it isn’t. I think he’s good
casting. Whether we had done Sherlock or
not, I think he’d be good casting for that part.
It didn’t feel that strange. Again, truthfully, it
felt like, ‘It seems to be following us around,
this screen relationship.’ But I didn’t see him
the whole time we did it. Even my bits,
I wasn’t even working with his voice.
I was just working with someone reading
his lines. So, in truth, it didn’t feel that odd,
but when you step back from it, it’s another
thing people will hang on us together.
Like, ‘They’re a couple in this as well.’ In
that sense, it’s quite odd.
What do you think Peter Jackson’s
greatest skills are as a director?
I was always amazed at his ability to keep
three films in his head at once, and juggle
those, and know where that was going to
go and what was needed five scenes down
the line, that he’s doing this little punch-in
for, and this cut-away is going to mean
something four hours away… it’s hard
to describe but he’s keeping that whole
universe in his head. It’s a huge undertaking,
a massive undertaking. Obviously he’s got
help. Jabez Olssen is a fantastic editor but
Pete is a fantastic editor too.That’s what
amazed me about him. On a human level,
he was surviving on very little sleep, and
a lot of stress. Outwardly, he seemed to
cope with it very, very well. So, in a way,
the things I was most impressed about him
were human things. Not necessarily director-
related. How are you not having a nervous
breakdown?
Have you stayed in touch regularly?
Yeah, we have the odd e-mail. But we’re not
best mates. Apart from anything, we live too
far away. I care about him. I like him. I think
he’s a decent person.
Were there stand-out scenes in
The Battle of the Five Armies
that you loved to shoot?
I had a nice scene with James Nesbitt as
Bofur on the battlements. I liked the fighting.
I liked doing that. I hadn’t done much
professionally, though at drama school I
was always quite good at stage-fighting.
Unless you are an action person—and I’m
not exactly one of those—you don’t tend
to do loads of it anyway. But I had a very
good team of stunt-doubles, and my stunt-
double was fantastic. But the understanding
was always: when I could do it, I would do
it. Where it was possible for me to do it,
without insurance going mad or running the
risk of injuring myself and being out for a
I suddenly realised I've
spent a good chunk of my
life with these mad people.
And I did get a bit emotional
[on the last day]