For years, a rumor has spread that “Lord of the Rings” actor Elijah Wood claimed the movie’s director, Peter Jackson, had modeled the face of an orc (a fictional race of monsters in the story) after disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein. For example, the claim appeared on Instagram on Nov. 21, 2024 (archived):
The post had gained more than 19,000 likes as of this writing. The rumor also circulated on X.
Woods did, in fact, make this claim. Interviewed in the summer of 2021 on the podcast Armchair Expert, hosted by Dax Shepard and Monica Padman, Woods recounted a tug of war between Jackson and Weinstein, who then led the studio Miramax, about funding for the Lord of the Rings series. Weinstein said he’d agreed to two movies for $75 million. Later, Jackson went to Robert Shaye, of New Line Cinema studios, who asked him to make three movies, which ended up costing $400 million, NPR reported in 2003:
But in an act of revenge, Jackson decided to have one orc mask modeled upon Weinstein’s features, according to Wood’s expletive-laced recounting of the story (at the 1 hour 25 minutes mark):
Wood: Dom and Bill have a podcast the Friendship onion Dom [Monaghan] and Billy [Boyd] were two of the Hobbits in the film, Merry and Pippin, and they were just talking about they were talking with Sean Astin [who played Samwise Gangee] about how his first memory of getting to New Zealand for the first time, and he had seen these orc masks and one of the orc masks — I remember this vividly — was designed to look like Harvey Weinstein.
Shepard: No way!
Padman: No…
Wood: As a sort of f**k you, yeah.
Shepard: Oh wow, that’s great!
Wood: I think it’s okay to talk about that now, the guy’s f**king incarcerated, f**k him.
The movies later grossed $2.9 billion worldwide, one of the highest-grossing film series.
While Snopes was able to confirm Wood told this story, we have contacted Jackson to verify whether it is true. We will update this report should he respond.
Masters, Kim. ‘”The Lord of the Rings” Gamble Pays Off’. NPR, 12 Dec. 2003. NPR, https://www.npr.org/2003/12/12/1544470/the-lord-of-the-rings-gamble-pays-off.
Rudoy, Matthew. ‘Lord Of The Rings’ Most Ambitious Trick That Led To $2.9 Billion Success Will Likely Never Be Repeated’. ScreenRant, 9 Aug. 2024, https://screenrant.com/lord-of-the-rings-filming-back-to-back-never-repeated/.
Anna Rascouët-Paz is based in Brooklyn, fluent in numerous languages and specializes in science and economic topics.