Can every week be Hobbit Week on The Colbert Report?
Last night, Stephen Colbert launched a full week of episodes dedicated to dissecting Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey — complete with a set elaborately decorated to look like The Shire, where Middle-earth’s most fuzzy-footed creatures make their home. The fake pundit — and real Tolkien superfan — welcomed as his first guest Sir Ian McKellen, a celebrated actor who’s best known in geek circles for playing Magneto in the X-Men movies and Gandalf in Jackson’s Tolkien adaptations.
Though he never broke character, Colbert was obviously psyched to share his second breakfast table with McKellen. After showing a clip from the new movie, the actor and the host chatted about everything from why Gandalf the Grey is more fun than Gandalf the White, whether Colbert or McKellen knows more about the character’s mythology, and McKellen’s work as a gay rights advocate. The highlight: McKellen quipped that a new Jackson sequel will star “Gandalf the Gay”: “And you get to find out who is his favorite dwarf.”
For all this, plus McKellen’s assessment of who would win in a fight between Magneto and the White Wizard, click below. READ FULL STORY »
