From playing TV detective Hetty Wainthrop’s sidekick to being one of the saviours of Middle-earth, the last few years have been a wild ride for Manchester’s Dominic Monaghan. Now based in LA, the man who plays Merry in “Lord of the Rings” hopes the best is still yet to come…

Did you have any doubts about committing so much time to “The Lord of the Rings”?

To be honest, it didn’t cross my mind, I was just so happy when I was offered the role. I’d be really nervous going to auditions, convinced that I wouldn’t get it, so when I was offered the chance to play Merry I was delighted. It’s a dream, I can’t even begin to tell you how my life has changed since doing this job. It changed at that moment when I said “Yes” to Peter Jackson. It’s incredible.
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They were the comic relief of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring . Hobbits Meriadoc “Merry” Brandybuck and Peregrin “Pippin” Took drew snickers from audiences at the theaters, but the actors who portray them, Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd , have since probably drawn more on press tours and in the DVD extras. As you read, you might hear in your mind’s ear Monaghan’s deadpan English accent and Boyd’s twinkling Scottish lilt. We find them in the land of the Ents, taking tea with Treebeard. Take it away, boys…

Billy Boyd : Treebeard gets incredibly sore for your bum. We were up that tree for about twelve hours a day. The strange thing was, they built this tree. It was 20 feet tall. It made the acting easier because his face was there; it was animatronic. There was an actor there reading the lines. Really beautifully, which helped. And as Treebeard swept us up to look at us, we were actually being lifted 20 feet, so it all felt quite real.
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Benji and Joel from Good Charlotte sit down with Hobbits Dominic Monaghan (Merry) and Billy Boyd (Pippin) and talk about puberty, P. Diddy, tattoos, religion and ? oh yes, “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.”

Joel: I love “The Lord of the Rings,” all the lords and all the rings. In the first movie, you guys were comical kind of sidekicks. In ["The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers"], I felt you had really important ? it was like there was another movie inside the movie. I’m sure there is a word for that in movie terms.

Boyd: Let’s call it a sub movie.

Joel: For the whole movie, my mind was in two different places. I was watching Frodo, then I was watching you guys with the trees. I was excited, because I liked you guys in ["The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring"] ? I can’t believe I’m sitting here and you guys are Hobbits. In “The Two Towers,” it was so cool that you had such an important, big, other part of the movie, like a whole different movie. How’d you feel about that?
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There’ve been plenty of amazing transformations during the making of Lord of the Rings . Rural landscapes have turned into bustling villages. Mild-mannered extras have been done over as snarling Orcs. Oscar-nominated actors have gone toe-to-toe with dazzling special effects.

But perhaps nothing connected with director Peter Jackson’s trilogy has undergone a more dramatic reworking than the lives of Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd.

Monaghan, a 23-year-old Brit, and Boyd, a 32-year-old Scot, were plucked from near obscurity to play happy-go-lucky Hobbits and Fellowship of the Ring members Meriadoc Brandybuck (Merry) and Peregrin Took (Pippin), respectively.
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