Lord of the Rings’ star said that the Orcs were designed to resemble Harvey Weinstein

Actor Elijah Wood, also known as Frodo Baggins, revealed that the creepy, monster-esque Orcs from The Lord of the Rings were created to resemble disgraced film producer, Harvey Weinstein.

Wood spoke about this on Dax Shepard’s popular Armchair Expert podcast as he noted that the design of the creature was made to resemble Weinstein as a “f*** you.”

Within the podcast, he explained that the producer-director Peter Jackson spent years trying to develop his vision for the fantasy action film series at Weinstein’s Miramax studio, which happened to own the rights to J.R.R. Tolkien’s book series.

However, Weinstein and Jackson’s relationship started to strain as Weinstein urged Jackson to make only one film from Tolkien’s trilogy. It was also alleged that Weinstein had threatened to replace Jackson with Kill Bill director Quentin Tarantino.

As a result of the threat of replacement, Jackson ended up persuading Weinstein to give him the right to pitch the films to other studios, although he was only given a weekend to secure the deal.

New Line Cinema producer Bob Shaye ended up getting his hands on the films.

“I think the lore is that they were coming with two and it was Bob Shaye who said, ‘We have to do three,’ which is insane. An incredible risk. Miramax thought there was no chance in hell,” Wood told Dax Shepard.

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Wood also said that had recently spoken to Dom Monaghan and Bill Boyd who played Hobbits Merry and Pippin in The Lord of the Rings films who have a podcast called The Friendship Onion.

“They [Monaghan and Boyd] were talking to Sean Astin [Samwise] about his first memory of getting to New Zealand,” Wood said. “He had seen these orc masks.”

Wood further said that he remembered “vividly” that the masks were designed to look like Weinstein “as a sort of fuck you.”

He continued to say that he thought it was safe to mention this now because Weinstein is “fucking incarcerated.”

“F*** him,” Wood added.

Later on in the podcast, Wood spoke about the scurry to find new backers for Jackson’s trilogy, and said that “The window of time was insane” after Weinstein proposed the couple days to find something.

“The popular opinion was, ‘No, you have to see how [the initial movie] does and then invest the rest of your money.’”

Jackson ended up filming all three Lord of the Rings films simultaneously and in his native home of New Zealand from October 11, 1999 to December 22, 2000.

The trilogy series became one of the most successful of all time, almost bringing in $3 billion at the box office worldwide.

And in 2014, Jackson wrapped up the Hobbit spin off series.

Harvey Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in prison for two counts of sexual assault in 2020. Just last month, the former producer was sent to a prison in upstate New York to face charges of battery and other sex related crimes. He recently pled not guilting in a hearing.

Check out the podcast here.