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LUKE EVANS
Is Bard the hero in
this final film?
LUKE EVANS:
Yeah.
He does heroic things, as
do many of the other characters in the
film. He’s a fascinating character. He’s
the human storyline. He’s forced to
make decisions to fight for what he
believes in, and he ends up doing something
incredibly heroic that I don’t think even he
believed he could do himself. It’s quite fun
to think that this historical enemy of the
humans and Dwarves and everybody else
comes down to one Dragon and one man.
It’s a journey of self-discovery for him and
digging it out from somewhere he didn’t
know he could find it. He’s a good man.
Did you ever get to meet Benedict
Cumberbatch, when he was acting out the
Dragon?
No, because it was all CGI – so he
would’ve been rolling round a carpet
somewhere covered in dots. I had my own
idea of what he looked like.
Was there a stand-in for Smaug while you
were on set?
Nope. It was me up a bell-tower,
surrounded by cameras and cranes, but
nothing else. But Peter [Jackson] played
amazing, orchestral, rousing music that filled
this big sound-stage, and it really worked.
Lots of actors, they play music before
they play an emotional scene. It gets them
in the mood. Or there’s a certain song that
gets them emotional. I don’t have any of
that. But I did realise how clever that tool is,
while I was acting, to be able to have music
and feel like it’s the soundtrack to
your moment. Even though it’s not
the music of the film – Howard Shore
was still writing at that point – it still
helped. Very rousing, heavy stuff.
Were you shooting scenes from the
second and third films in the trilogy
simultaneously?
Yeah. Let me tell you now: the scene
in the third film, near the beginning, was
my first day. Peter knows where he is, and
explains to you where you are – that’s how it
works. If you have a little question or you’re
not entirely sure where you are, then he’s
there to answer those questions. He’s been
living with this story for a hell of a long time,
longer than anyone else. So he’s had to
answer those questions.
I kept going to his blogs on the internet
because it’s such a brilliant insight into
how these things are created and how you
process how you’re going to shoot certain
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