Viggo Mortensen, who played Aragorn in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, has revealed an unseen deleted scene featuring his character and Liv Tyler’s Arwen. Talking to NME, the actor discussed the moment – and the upcoming Amazon Prime Video Lord of the Rings TV show.
"There was a scene that we shot as a sort of memory flashback,” Mortensen said. “It was from the courtship days when he first met Arwen – and we shot it just before we were taking a break so I was clean-shaven and prettied up. They’d tried to make me look as young as possible. I had different hair and I was dressed like an elf."
He added: "It was a scene from the book where they’re walking in this flowery meadow. It was a beautiful sequence but obviously it wasn’t needed for the movie. I’ve never seen it but I enjoyed shooting that scene. It’d be nice to see it actually, it’s not in the Extended Editions either."
As for the Prime Video series, Mortensen responded to some fans fearing the show could be "too adult" with: "That they would try to be like Game Of Thrones and have a certain level of arbitrary violence and stuff like that? I dunno. I know it’s J.A. Bayona, who is a Spanish director who’s very talented. They are doing it in New Zealand, so I would imagine they would have the benefit of Peter Jackson’s advice and maybe some of the crew members. I would think that they have every opportunity to do it right. They have a good example to follow."
Mortensen also spoke about buying two of Aragorn’s horses, as well as Arwen’s The Fellowship of the Ring horse, which he purchased for the stuntwoman who performed the scene with the Black Riders and Frodo: "The person who did that spectacular bit of riding was a stuntwoman who I ended up becoming friends with. I knew how much she liked that horse, so I bought it for her. That one is still around, but the other two have passed away. They were of a certain age already when we [were] shooting and that’s 20 years ago now."
With The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit’s new 4K editions only just being released, we probably won’t be seeing the Aragorn and Arwen deleted scene anytime soon. Still, there’s no telling if Jackson will start making some George Lucas-style tweaks to his trilogies as time goes on.
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