MEDIA: How’s the mood different on this shoot?
ORLANDO BLOOM: How is the mood? Obviously, everyone is ten years older. All right, twelve years older. So makeup people, hair people, wardrobe, all the girls, all the people that came back are all ten years older.
So that’s kind of interesting because we’re all a bit like– Rings, it was a different time. We were all young and impressionable and having wild times whilst making this thing that we didn’t really know what it was about. In a way, it was like a giant student movie, which still has that wonderfully chaotic feel to it.
Otherwise, there’s a lot more dwarves on set. And I think you know how I feel about Dwarves. So, yeah, it is different for sure, but it could never be what it was. Obviously you can’t really go back and re-do it. But I guess the structure is still the same. Yeah, it feels very familiar and a family sort of terrain, which is always nice.
MEDIA: Were you able to quickly get where you needed to be as an actor, or did that coming back to high school feeling have to be shaken off a little bit before you really got comfortable?
ORLANDO BLOOM: Yeah, it’s a little bit of a– That’s a good way of putting it, “coming back to high school.” It was a little bit of that, for sure. Yeah, it was good to work with Terry Notary on movement, get back into some Elvish movement and to do some archery and stunt stuff and all that sort of things.
Legolas is a very physical character, which is true of Rings and certainly true in The Hobbit sequence. So it was good to find my way back in. And yeah, it took a little while to get back into that, shake off the cobwebs.
MEDIA: But how much rust is there actually? I mean, there are lots of things I can’t do now that I could do ten years ago probably. Can you do everything that you could ten years ago?
ORLANDO BLOOM: Yeah. Surprisingly, I can. I think I’m probably in better shape now than I was ten years ago, actually, funny enough. Because I probably take better care of myself as I’m getting older. You start thinking, “I want to do this a bit longer. I got to take care of myself.” So actually, yeah, I’ve done it, pretty much all of it, which has been great.
It was funny, I was on set the other day, Saturday. We worked a Saturday because Pete wanted to shoot– He loves shooting the action stuff. I think he loves shooting all the action stuff, but I think he’s quite fond of shooting Legolas’ action stuff. I think he lives vicariously through all of his characters, and one of the ones he enjoys is Legolas because it’s so different from him.
So we were shooting that, and he didn’t call my stunt double, which was weird. It was a full day of action and shooting stunts. And I was like– So my makeup artist called in and said, called production and said, “We haven’t called the stunt double, and we should– We need to call somebody else in.” “No, Pete doesn’t feel we need him. Orlando will be able to handle it.” So that was quite a nice pat on the back.
And I was exhausted by the end of the day and managed to get through most of it, which was good. But we actually didn’t complete the day. Maybe if the stunt double was there we’d have got it done in double time. Unfortunately, we’re going to go back and do it again. So I have to stay an extra day and shoot another Saturday. So I suppose I can still do it, it just takes a little longer.
MEDIA: That started off as a happy story and then became a little more bittersweet as it went along.
ORLANDO BLOOM: Well, no, I think it’s good, it’s good. No, I think, actually, probably shots were added too. That’s what I like to tell myself.
MEDIA: So every film features the big Legolas moment, the big action sequence. Do you have a good grasp of what that’s going to be like before you see it on film?
