A BIG thank you to AELFWINE for sending us this transcript of Andy Serkis’ appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” last night.
Jimmy: We’re back with Enrique Iglesias. Monet Mazur on the show tonight. Dave Anthony on the show tonight. From the capital city of Gondor to the fiery climbs of Mt. Doom, our first guest tonight slithered and hissed his way into our lives as Gollum in ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy. If you haven’t seen it already, see him now in ‘The Return of the King’ and read about him in his new book ‘Gollum: How We Made Movie Magic.’ Please say hello to the precious Andy Serkis.
[Cheers and applause; Andy enters and shakes hands with Jimmy and Enrique before sitting down. He’s wearing a black blazer over a yellow shirt with shiny stripes, and jeans.]
Jimmy: So this is what you look like!
Andy (in a jokingly candid fashion): Apparently. Well, ok, I’m a CG manifestation of an actor who plays me.
Jimmy: This is not you?
Andy: No, no, no, no, no.
Jimmy: Is the hair real and everything?
Andy (touches his hair): I think so.
Jimmy: It;s real. It;s surprising. You can see a little bit in there of Gollum.
Andy: Yeah, you would because the whole face of Gollum is actually based on, believe it or not, the facial structure of the way Gollum is supposed to be is based on the muscles in my face.
Jimmy: Wow.
Andy: That’s what the animators did over the years. They redesigned it to move in the same way.
Jimmy: Was it scary for your mom to see?
Andy (laughs): Very scary. And very scary for my wife. But it has its charms.
Jimmy: I heard that, how did you get to picked to play Gollum?
Andy: It was a straight-forward auditioning process. They said, ‘Andy, they’re doing a little film called ‘The Lord of the Rings’ in New Zealand.’ They were looking for, at the time it was going to be more of a voice for an animated character or so I thought and then Peter Jackson came to London and he saw the tape I did and said, “no I want the CG character to be the most interactive and real character in a live-action film.”So he wanted an actor to play the role.
Jimmy: Is it true that Vern Troyer tried to kill himself when he heard you got his part? [Light audience laughter]
Andy (smiling): Yeah
[Laughter]
Jimmy: It’s amazing. It really is an amazing-looking character. Let’s look at a clip for the two of you who have not seen ‘Lord of the Rings.’ (Andy laughs) Here is Andy as Gollum. Take a look.
[Clip of when Gollum frames Sam of eating the lembas bread and convinces Frodo of Sam’s ‘disloyalty’]
[Cheers and applause, shot of Enrique clapping his hands]
Jimmy: Yeah. That’s great. And so you that’s your head, and they put your head on that, on that deal?
Andy: Yeah. We shot everything on the set. Every scene we shot in the movie, on the volcano or on the stream or in a forest, me, Elijah and Sean, we shot all those scenes. And then the animators painted frame by frame over my movements or use a technique called motion capture wearing a suit with dots on it. That controls the computer-generated movements of Gollum; it moves in real time. I move and he moves in exactly the same way.
Jimmy: And the voice is that computer altered at all?
Andy: Nope.
Jimmy: How did you do that? Was it based on anyone?
Andy: It was based on my cats. You know, fur gets trapped in the back of their throats when they lick their bodies, and then they go through a [wretches, makes throaty noises].
Jimmy: I do that too.
[Light audience laughter]
Andy: I do it sometimes too.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Andy: And so that became [as Gollum] ‘gollum, gollum.’
Jimmy: Wow. Can you a little bit of it for us?
Andy: Well, you know, people do ask me to do the voice.
Jimmy: I’ll bet.
Andy: One of your writers on your team just asked me to do an answering phone message.
Jimmy (bit concerned, but in a humorous manner): Oh really. Oh really. Who is it? Do you remember his name?
Andy: ‘yeah Tony. [as Smeagol; the transmission of this part of the show had some audio problems, so this part isn’t that clear] Hello precious, Tony is not here right now ‘[as Gollum, angrily] no, he’s on the toilet doing drugs!
[Audience cheers and whistles loudly]
Jimmy: That’s pretty good. That’s really good. You do Gollum well. That’s something else. Do you do other do you do other voiceover work and characters and stuff?
Andy: no, I’m a regular actor. The whole point was that wasn’t just a voice part. I’ve never done this before.
Jimmy: It’s pretty great. And you’re in a movie with Jennifer Garner, as well.
Andy: Yes. I know you’re fond of Jennifer.
Jimmy (excitedly): I was the guy she was talking about through the whole thing, probably. I’m the Jimmy she’s talking about!
Andy: It’s famous in England. Your reputation for being your talk show, your thing for Jennifer Garner.
Jimmy: She’s a lovely woman. She is. [propping up ‘Gollum’ book] This is a fascinating book. Is it true you wrote this book just so people could stop asking you questions all the time?
Andy: You know its just really kind of you know you go to conventions and you meet a lot of fans you meet
(Jimmy: I’ll bet you do [Audience laughs lightly].)
Andy: a lot of people who ask you how it was done and everything. I just thought it would be a cool way of summing it all up instead of explaining.
Jimmy: So you can say, you know what, for $11.95 or whatever, $9.95 I’ll tell you the whole story. Do you get along with the ‘Lord of the Rings’ fans?
Andy: They’re the best.
Jimmy: Are they really?
Andy: They’re fantastic. They’ve supported the movies for a long, long time. There was funny enough not too long ago, I did a convention where, you know, mums always come with their kids and ‘look, look Johnny can do a really good Smeagol impersonation’ or ‘a really good Gollum impersonation.’ And I go ‘okay.’ And she’s like ‘they say to me ‘can you do the voice for him’ and I go [as Gollum, scarily] ‘HELLO, PRECIOUSSS.’ And actually the poor kid he nearly had a heart attack. [Audience laughter] They had to nearly call the paramedics. He had palpitations.
Jimmy: Really? Wow. You almost murdered a child with your voice (laughs). That’s the great thing about being famous, you know?
Andy: Terrible.
[Audience laughs]
Jimmy: That’s something else. Wow. That’s great. Are there any pictures of Jennifer Garner in the book?
Andy (jokingly): Yeah. There’s a whole, there’s the back
Jimmy: Really? All right. There you go. Gollum and Jennifer Garner. [Addressing audience and viewers] Andy Serkis is here. Enrique Iglesias is here. We’ll be back with Torque’s leading lady the lovely Monet Mazur.
[Right before commercial, there’s an advertisment for peole who want to be in the studio audience of the show. Andy, as Gollum, advertises this, in a prerecorded bit: [as Gollum] Hello precious if you want to see the show go to abc.com, AOL key word ‘kimmel’ [as Smeagol] Oh oh [it’s not very audible, but Smeagol sounds afraid (of Gollum)]
