Viggo Mortensen needed just the right sword. Then he realized he had the perfect one at home.
Mortensen’s latest film is The Dead Don’t Hurt, a Western set in the 1860s that follows free-spirited Vivienne (Vicky Krieps), a Franco-Canadian who falls in love with Holger (Mortensen), a Danish rancher. When Holger goes off to fight in the American Civil War, Vivienne is left alone to fight in her own war at home.
Mortensen spoke to British GQ to discuss his new film. It was mentioned that in one fantasy sequence, you can see what looks like his sword, Andúril, from Lord of the Rings.
“We had everything for this sequence with a knight. We had found this great, spirited horse, the right kind of saddle, and we made a medieval kind of blanket, and we had the costume for the knight,” Mortensen said. “Everything was right, and then I said, ‘Well, we should have a sword.’
“And I did look and there were some good ones and I thought, ‘Well, it might be kind of good to use this one that I had because it’s really good. But I knew I would have to ask permission because I’m sure somebody would notice it, even if you only see it for a few seconds, it’s not really essential to the scene and certainly not to the movie, it’s just something in passing that you either see or you don’t.”
A quick phone call later, the sword stayed in the picture.
“So I did ask Peter Jackson if he’d be all right with it, and he said, ‘Well, is it very important in the story?’ I said, no, it’s not, actually. You hardly notice it, but somebody will, probably. He said it was okay with him, but that I should ask the movie company. So I contacted them and they were fine with it. They realized it wasn’t essential, it wasn’t going to draw a lot of attention to itself. And they were very nice about it, and they gave us permission. That’s why we did it, just because it seemed right. It was kind of a last-minute accident.”