Andy Serkis wades into Lord Of The Rings casting controversy, calls The Shire "very white"

Specifically, Serkis was asked by reporters from the BBC about Gollum‘s lack of diversity in its high-level casting, as commentators have noted that, even discounting returning stars Elijah Wood and Ian McKellan, the cast for the film is almost entirely made up of white actors—with Jamie Dornan, Anya Taylor-Joy, Lee Pace, and Leo Woodall making up the rest of the currently announced roster. (Criticisms that were also, it’s worth noting, kicking around as far back as Jackson’s first film, and which live in conversation with nearly a century of discourse around the role of race in J.R.R. Tolkien’s original books.) Serkis, interestingly, not only went the tried-and-test “Don’t blame me, it’s the source material” route in his offered defense, but also suggested that his project might actually dig (albeit probably pretty lightly) into some of the pastoral xenophobia that’s kicking around in the subconscious of some of Tolkien’s beloved hobbits.

“Tolkien himself was influenced a lot by Norse mythology, there’s a lot of that feeling,” Serkis began in response to the questions, laying out a pretty standard line of defense against criticism of abundantly white castings in fantasy projects generally, and LotR specifically. But then the director/star apparently tripped over his words a bit in trying to wrestle with a deeper idea, one that scholars of the books have spent decades coming to terms with themselves: “The Shire feels very, very much like a very, a very white, you know…” he began, before trailing off. Regrouping, Serkis rephrased his previous thought with a bit more of a don’t-give-a-PR-person-a-heart-attack veneer, stating, “They’re not very concerned about what goes on beyond the borders of The Shire, but they know they don’t want people coming in.” 

In answering the question, Serkis acknowledged the criticisms of the casting in the earlier Rings project. (Something Amazon’s Rings Of Power prequel series very deliberately worked against, populating its Middle-earth with actors of numerous racial, ethnic, and national backgrounds, to the ire of certain kinds of online “fan.”) Saying that “This particular film is somewhat acknowledging” those critiques, Serkis nevertheless ended on the bit people are probably going to be quoting most aggressively in their various heavily monetized YouTube videos about all this, saying, “I don’t think we will be doing a politically correct just-casting-for-the sake-of-casting-and-ticking-boxes version of the film. So, it’s where relevant basically.”