When Christopher Lee Corrected Peter Jackson On Lord Of The Rings Set

We all know how talented Peter Jackson and his crew were who worked in Lord of the Rings. However, he is just a human and is prone to mistakes. So, this one time, Sir Christopher Lee, who played Saruman in the trilogy, decided to correct him. And he used his experience from World War II to do so!

Christopher Lee knows the sound you make when you get stabbed in the back

Remember when Saruman was stabbed by Wormtongue on top of Orthanc (Saruman’s tower) in Isengard? Well, Peter Jackson had thought that Christopher Lee would give a scream when he gets stabbed. However, he was about to be proven wrong:

When Wormtongue rises up and comes up behind Saruman to stab him, of course, it was my job as the director to talk to Christopher Lee and explain to him what I wanted. So, I started to go into this long explanation about what sort of sound he should make when he got stabbed.

When Lee heard this, he immediately asked Jackson if he knew the noise a person makes when they’re stabbed in the back?

I seem to recall that I did say to Peter ‘have you any idea what kind of noise happens when somebody is stabbed in the back?’. And I said because I do.

Sir Christopher Lee then goes on to explain to him the exact sound a person makes:

It’s ‘ugh’ because the breath is driven out of your body.

But of course, that raises the question that how did he know about stabbing so much? Well, it has to do with war.

He fought for the British in the Second World War

As it turns out, way before playing Saruman in Lord of the Rings, Sir Christopher Lee served the British Intelligence in World War II. He was a member of the SAS which was a special regiment of the Royal Air Force. What’s really impressive is that he knew several languages and was almost killed twice during the war! And if you thought that wasn’t amazing enough, he once stopped a small mutiny in amongst his own troops. When you’re involved in so much, you must have stabbed someone in the back. Therefore, Peter Jackson simply accepted whatever Sir Christopher Lee told him on the set of Lord of the Rings. Jackson further said in the interview:

He proceeded to sort of talk about some very clandestine part of World War II. He seemed to have expert knowledge of exactly the sort of noise that they make. So, I just sort of didn’t push the subject any further. I just said ‘well, you obviously know what to do Christopher, so I’m sure you’ll do it great’, and he did.

This shows how little pieces of information play a part in the making of such a fantastic trilogy. A small detail like the stabbing of Saruman is given so much importance. This is what makes Lord of the Rings special, and we can only hope that the Amazon TV Show is just as fantastic.