Peter Jackson discusses the Greatness of Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins
When Peter Jackson announced that Martin Freeman would be playing Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit, I had no idea what to expect. Then I watched the BBC Sherlock series and was blown away by the actors awesomeness. It was at that point that I learned he would be perfect for the role of Bilbo. Jackson has been working with Freeman on The Hobbit for awhile now, and in a recent interview with the LA Times he discussed the actor and how incredibly impressed and excited he is about Freeman playing this legendary character.
He is fantastic and there is simply nobody else for the job. We couldn’t find anyone who was better than him. He is simply fantastic.
I can’t imagine anyone else doing Bilbo, which is one of the reasons, really, we signed him up even with having the ‘Sherlock’ break — normally on a movie you wouldn’t want to do that with the schedule. But we literally couldn’t figure out any other actor and we auditioned, you know. There is no other actor.
He’s Bilbo-esque. You might not always want to say that about you, right? But seriously he has the essential features of this little English gent, this country gent who is slightly old-fashioned and has to go around in the world and try to cope with it. That’s not exactly who Martin is as a person, but as an actor he does that so well. The fish out of water with a sense of courage but also a wonderful sense of humor. The things that happen to him and the way he reacts to them — things he’s never seen in his life before as a stuffy little Hobbit — his response to it all is part of the charm. And he does have a great openness in his face.
It's awesome to see how much Jackson loves Freeman as Bilbo. I never had any doubts about this Hobbit film production, I trust that Jackson is going to give us the best adaptation of The Hobbit that can be done, and I'm happy that they were able to find the perfect actor to play Bilbo Baggins in the film. The director goes on to talk about where they are currently in production on the films.
We’ve been shooting a bit of the second ‘Hobbit’ movie because Martin, who is our Bilbo, is in England doing the next series of ‘Sherlock,’ which was always part of it. He had committed to that show before he signed up for ‘The Hobbit.’ And that’s one of the reasons we took a little break. We haven’t got much we can do without Martin because he is in so much of the film. So we took a hiatus, which let me come over here to do Comic-Con. So he’s been shooting ‘Sherlock’ and he’s got a few weeks to go, so there’s some stuff we can do for the second movie until he gets back. And when he gets back after two or three weeks we can carry on with the first one.
The first film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey will be released on December 14, 2012. The second film The Hobbit: There and Back Again, is set to be released on December 13, 2013. These dates can't get here soon enough! I'm so freakin' excited for these films!
What are your thoughts on what Jackson had to say about Martin Freeman playing Bilbo Baggins?