Sean Bean’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ Meme Has a Secret Backstory

By Greta Bjornson @greatbjornson
Published June 1, 2020, 3:50 p.m. ET

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The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

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The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

Sean Bean‘s Lord of the Rings speech is plastered all over the internet. Even if you haven’t seen a single film in the fantasy franchise, it’s likely that you’ve come across Boromir’s iconic “one does not simply walk into Mordor” monologue at least once. But the famous meme has an unlikely backstory, which director Peter Jackson revealed this weekend on Josh Gad‘s Reunited Apart series, Huffington Post reports.

The story behind Bean’s speech was explained when the Lord of the Rings cast came together again after nearly two decades for One Zoom to Rule Them All, a virtual reunion on May 31. Gad asked Bean to recreate his famous line for the fans and he obliged, but Jackson followed up with some trivia about the scene. The lines that are so ubiquitous on the internet now were whipped up the night before filming, he revealed.

“That entire speech that Sean had to deliver at the Council of Elrond was written the night before. It’s long, and we gave it to Sean in the morning he arrived,” Jackson explained. Thankfully, Bean had a clever workaround for reciting the speech that he hadn’t gotten to memorize.

Sean Bean

“What Sean did, which I thought was very clever, is he got a printout of the speech taped to his knee,” Jackson said. “If you watch the scene now you’ll see every time that Sean has to check his script.” The director then imitated Bean, dipping his head under his hand and pretending to glance at a concealed script, much to the delight of the cast.

Along with Bean and Jackson, Gad also had Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Orlando Bloom, Viggo Mortensen, John Rhys-Davies, Liv Tyler, Andy Serkis, Hugo Weaving, Miranda Otto, Karl Urban and Sir Ian McKellen on for his virtual reunion last weekend. Each of Gad’s Reunited Apart episodes raises money for a different charity, and Sunday’s event raised money for No Kid Hungry.

Watch Bean’s “One does not simply walk into Mordor” scene in the video below.

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