Fantasy Worlds No. 2; February 2003
-Ian Spelling
~Typed by Sigrdrífa Ullrsdóttir

Tolkienologists breathed a collective sigh of relief when Brad Dourif signed on to portray Gríma Wormtongue in The Two Towers and The Return of the King, the final installments in Director Peter Jackson´s epic film trilogy of J.R.R. Tolkien´s Lord of the Rings. Dourif is a fine actor too often trapped in B-movie hell- a place in which he reigns as a villain without equal. For every One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Mississippi Burning, Child’s Play and ALIEN: The Resurrection, there have been such forgettable flicks as Spontaneous Combustion, Prophecy 3, Critters 4 and Soulkeeper.

Though he portrays another baddie in the Rings sequels, at least the material and the character are worthy of Dourif’s time and talents. Wormtongue is the crème de la crème of sinister sorts ; a man-not an Elf, Hobbit or wizard-who betrays his king (Bernard Hill as Théoden, ruler of Rohan) and now answers to Saruman (Christopher Lee), a once great wizard in league with Sauron, the greatest evil of them all.

Dourif considered it his task to make Wormtongue fearsome, but wanted to stop short of going over the top, as can easily happen when playing so squirrely a character. “First of all, if I think about a ham sandwich, it looks really strong,” he jokes. “I just try to trust myself as far as not going over the top. I have a thing inside that knows when whatever I do is enough. The focus for me is always trying to get a person, a character, to be real. If people believe that Wormtongue is a real guy, then it’s scary. So I sat down with (screenwriters) Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens at the beginning of the shoot, and we tried to figure out what this guy’s backstory was and we came up with no one. They consequently did some rewriting. There’s a scene between Wormtongue and Éowyn (Miranda Otto as Théoden’s niece) that we did, (in which Wormtongue makes his romantic designs clear to her), and that’s not in the book. That was an effort to make this guy much more of a human being.”

Human, but bad. And from the sound of it, Dourif didn’t mind adding Wormtongue to his gallery og mean-spirited film figures. “The thing about bad guys is that bad guys do things to people,” Dourif says, who didn’t persue Tolkien’s Rings novels before he accepted the role. “If you’re a good guy, then things are done to you. In a sense, that’s the central difference in the acting process. It’s kind of tough to have things happen to you when you’re not acting. It requires much more trust and much more luck. You either feel it or you don’t. You either get into it or you don’t. Our unconscious is much more of a mystery then we wish it was. You have to tease yourself to get into it. It kind of has to happen indirectly. A bad guy goes in there and does whatever he has to do.”

So what then, specifically intrigued Dourif about Wormtongue? “The Lord of the Rings is really a mythology,: he notes. “It’s about a primordial time, a time before man, before reality. It’s like being a teenager when anything is possible. It’s a different life than the real one that we lead when we’re adults and reality is hard and cold and we’re suddenly limited. And Wormtongue is a guy who is turned by a force of evil, which doesn’t exist in that way in the real world, there are just human beings who do horrible things. There is no evil, and it’s never simple. It’s grey. So he’s a human who has turned, and there needs to be a real feeling about that. That was what was most intruiging for me, the function that Wormtongue really has. When Tolkien writes about Wormtongue, the character comes in, has a confrontation and, really, the character is over with. His power is taken away and he’s over with. Yet, Tolkien says little things about him all throughout the book, to the story’s end.

“I think Wormtongue’s interesting because he’s a human being,” Brad Dourif comments. We need to feel that tragedy of somebody who has turned evil. What was once fiece becomes pathetic and just human, and we sadly identify with him in a way. The was the trick of it for me. That was the trick of the whole thing. That what was intriguing.” (Comment by the picture of the article) Whispering evil, Wormtongue (Brad Dourif) insinuates himself into Rohan’s leadership. I reality, he serves Saruman.