Now Come the Days of the King: Stephen Colbert Transforms Into The Hobbit’s Legolas, Bilbo, & Gandalf

Ok, this guy really likes Tolkien, I guess.

It’s actually no surprise. Stephen Colbert is a well-known fan of most nerd things but is really, really, really serious when it comes to the world of Middle-earth. Peter Jackson has said “I’ve never met a bigger Tolkien geek in my life” and actually let Colbert have a cameo in the Desolation of Smaug.

Entertainment Weekly asked Colbert to write their Hobbit cover story for them since he clearly knows better. As payment, he got to do this:

“Just me and a few of my friends got together to play dress-
up,” Colbert writes. “Lucky for me, my ‘friends’ are the wardrobe department for The Hobbit. The original costumes and wigs were flown in from New Zealand just for me. They didn’t even fly the costumes out of New Zealand for the actors! They had to wear them there!”

But wait. There’s video.

Colbert goes on to write, “Tolkien’s work has been a lifelong haven for me—truly a light in dark places when all other lights went out… For an awkward teenager, Middle-earth was a world I could escape to. Peter Jackson’s Middle-earth also gave me a world to escape to, but by the time his films came out, I was rich and famous and didn’t really want to escape my life anymore. Still, great movies.” You can pick up the issue this Friday to read more.

I just… love this man so much.

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Jill Pantozzi

Jill Pantozzi is a pop-culture journalist and host who writes about all things nerdy and beyond! She’s Editor in Chief of the geek girl culture site The Mary Sue (Abrams Media Network), and hosts her own blog “Has Boobs, Reads Comics” (TheNerdyBird.com). She co-hosts the Crazy Sexy Geeks podcast along with superhero historian Alan Kistler, contributed to a book of essays titled “Chicks Read Comics,” (Mad Norwegian Press) and had her first comic book story in the IDW anthology, “Womanthology.” In 2012, she was featured on National Geographic’s "Comic Store Heroes," a documentary on the lives of comic book fans and the following year she was one of many Batman fans profiled in the documentary, "Legends of the Knight."

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