The Making of…
Chapter 28
Moving Swiftly On…
The next few weeks consisted primarily of filming touch-up shots and things like that, and before we knew it, we had officially finished filming The Fellowship of the Ring! It was a huge relief to have pretty much over a third of all filming finished, as the release date was creeping closer. To celebrate, we all decided to go out to dinner – courtesy of John! The restaurant he took us to was ridiculously fancy, there was champagne and lobsters everywhere! Although not literally of course… That would be messy. He’d invited pretty much every cast member, and all the producers, writers, heads of departments… You get the picture. We packed the place out.
I was nestled quite happily between Viggo and Liv throughout the meal and in the gap between dinner and desert, Liv dragged me off to the bathrooms – just to see if they were as fancy as the rest of the place! To put it simply, I’d never seen armchairs and carpet in a bathroom, until now.
“Wow.” I breathed, slumping down in one of the comfy chairs whilst Liv re-applied her makeup.
“I know right?” She grinned, after a moment she stared at me intently via the mirror. “So what’s going on with you and Viggo then?”
“Huh?” I looked up, startled by her question, “N-nothings going on!” I quickly stammered.
“Oh come on! I go away for what, a month? And I come back and you two are like the closest people on set! I don’t think I’ve ever seen you more than, like 5 metres apart from each other – do you think I’ve overdone it with the eyeliner?”
“Erm, no you’re fine.” I replied, “And that’s ridiculous, we’re just friends, that’s all – you’ve smudged your mascara.”
“Oh shoot, I have…” She muttered, rubbing at the smudge, “So just friends then?”
“Just friends.” I insisted as she pouted a little.
“I was hoping for something more interesting.”
“Well sorry to disappoint.” I sighed, standing up, “Are you ready to go back?”
“Yeah, do I look ok?”
“Gorgeous.” I smiled as we left the bathrooms.
*
For around a month after that, we continued working on The Two Towers, only we were without Peter, as he was busy editing the Fellowship. I spent most of my time in the blue-screen studios, as we were trying to get as many of the studio scenes finished before we started going out on location again. And one of the main scenes that Viggo and I were doing that didn’t involve going out on location, was Rana’s dream, where Aragorn kisses her. It was never set in any particular location, so it was decided that we’d just do it in front of the blue-screen and have a fog machine going in the background, to make it more ‘dreamy’. I wasn’t so terrified of the scene this time, because for one thing, we’d already done one before. I also knew Viggo a lot more now, and according to the script, it only had to be a quick kiss, nothing like the Rivendell one. I was sitting in my chair reading the script whilst the tech guys got the fog machine to splutter to life. I wrinkled my nose as it coughed dry ice everywhere and made a loud roaring sound. There was a cheer, which faded to an ‘aw’ as the machine stopped.
“Any luck?” Viggo asked, sitting down beside me.
“They should hit it.” I commented, “With a bat.” Viggo smirked at me and went over to help – because all manly men have to help with everything technical. Always. I watched in amusement as the crowd of grumpy-looking technicians plus Viggo tried to think of a way to get the machine working. “Men…” I muttered to myself as Viggo gave the grumbling little box a well-placed kick, and it started spitting mist again. And so Viggo was a hero for the rest of the day.
