If he was provided a component as Gandalf in “The Hunt for Gollum,” it would not be Ian McKellen’s first return to Center-earth. The actor donned the sharp hat and weathered robes over a decade in the past when Peter Jackson and firm introduced the band again collectively to create the “Hobbit” trilogy. McKellen’s character options closely in that story as he prods Martin Freeman’s Bilbo Baggins out of Bag Finish and throughout Northern Center-earth searching for journey.
It is attention-grabbing to notice that McKellen’s counterpart in that story, Saruman, was additionally performed by the returning (and equally ageing) Sir Christopher Lee. Lee died in 2015, one in all only a handful of “The Lord of the Rings” actors who had handed away by that point. However McKellen? He simply stored on going.
Together with an in any other case busy profession, he even discovered time to specific curiosity in one other return to Center-earth in Amazon Studios’ “The Rings of Energy” sequence. In an interview earlier than Season 1 got here out, McKellen defined how he felt. “I have never stated sure as a result of I have never been requested,” he stated, echoing his “Hunt for Gollum” feedback.
He added that Gandalf was clearly his position and no different man’s by saying, “However are you suggesting that another person goes to play it?” (For the file, the jury continues to be out if Daniel Weyman’s “The Stranger” character in “The Rings of Energy” is, certainly, Gandalf or not.) Even at the moment, McKellen was already hedging his bets in opposition to criticism that he was too previous for the half. “Gandalf is over 7,000 years previous, so I am not too previous [yet],” he warned.