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Original ‘Lord of the Rings’ star Billy Boyd's ‘joyful’ reaction to 'Rings of Power' on Amazon
Two decades after first wandering Middle-earth, Boyd says The Rings of Power transported him all over again.
Fresh from a season finale drop-in on a horror-verse he knows well, Billy Boyd’s mind isn’t just on Chucky’s world. More than 20 years after first appearing as Peregrin “Pippin” Took in Peter Jackson’s epic The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, the once and always Hobbit has thoughts on Amazon’s small-screen Tolkien revival — and they’re the wistful, joyous kind.
“I have seen it. I liked it very much,” Boyd told SYFY WIRE of his response to The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, not long before the Nov. 23 Season 2 finale of Chucky, which finds him reprising the voice role of G.G. (aka Glen and Glenda) that Boyd first debuted way back in the 2004 slasher Seed of Chucky.
“I, as a fan of Tolkien, I loved seeing all these places again — some of them for the first time,” Boyd confessed. “You know, to see Khazad-dûm and Númenor and all these places. I think that gave me the most joy. I think the way they jump from one place to another made it very watchable for me.”
As one-fourth of the iconic Hobbit quartet who journeyed far from the Shire in Jackson’s movie trilogy, Boyd’s Pippin stayed right beside Frodo (Elijah Wood), Merry (Dominic Monaghan), and Sam (Sean Astin) all the way to the bittersweet end, first in 2001’s The Fellowship of the Ring, followed by The Two Towers in 2002 and The Return of the King in 2003. Though Pip saw plenty of fantastical sights on his own sprawling tour, Boyd said he’s still amazed by the sheer variety of spectacular locations The Rings of Power managed to pack into its recently-concluded debut season.
“I think, ‘Oh, here we are in Númenor’ and then it would jump to the caverns of Khazad-dûm. I loved that,” he said. “And, seeing things like the rings for the first time — all of that is just really joyful for me. I loved it!”
Boyd, Wood, Monaghan, and Astin had been supportive of The Rings of Power even before setting eyes on Amazon’s finished product, joining together just as the series premiered in early September to unite against backlash over the new adaptation’s casting diversity. It’s almost as if the bonds they forged on the big screen have carried forward into the actors’ later lives: More than 20 years after The Fellowship of the Ring first debuted, there’s still no separating the tight-knit foursome when it comes to repping the Tolkien-verse.
Catch Boyd back in his familiar Child’s Play haunts as the voice of G.G. in Season 2 of Chucky (available now on the SYFY app and coming soon to Peacock), and revisit Middle-Earth — with Boyd’s full seal of approval — anytime at Amazon, where Season 1 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is streaming ‘round the clock.
If you're looking to hear more from Boyd, he makes a surprise appearance in the Season 2 finale of Chucky, streaming now on SYFY.
*Tyler McCarthy contributed to this report.
