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I just stumbled upon the story from 2021 that one orc in The Lord of the Rings from director Peter Jackson was modeled after Harvey Weinstein:

One orc among many in the Lord of the Rings movies was designed to resemble Harvey Weinstein as a “sort of fuck you” to the notorious producer, Elijah Wood, who played the hobbit Frodo in the series, told a Hollywood podcast.

From this Guardian article

The orc that apparently was modeled after Harvey Weinstein

I was not able to find any sources not based on the interview with Eljiah Wood to confirm this. Has this ever been confirmed by another person involved in the film trilogy or is Eljiah Wood the only source?

In an interview with The Friendship Onion (Podcast by Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd), Sean Astin mentiones that there was an Uruk-Hai that looked exactly like Harvey Weinstein. However, he mentions with no word that it was intentional:

So, we have three of the main actors of the films and they mention with no word that said similarity was intentional. That's what makes me suspicious.

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    This question might be better on Skeptics.SE. Not because I think there's anything wrong with the question, but they are much better at real world investigations.
    – GeoffAtkins
    Commented Apr 11, 2022 at 7:28
  • the behind the scenes feature on the extended edition relates the story that Peter Jackson just wanted it be more grotesque, so Gino Acevedo (doing this off the top of my head, I think it was Gino) literally just started throwing more plastic onto the model, Peter beside him laughing with glee. No reference was made to Harvey Weinstein.
    – NKCampbell
    Commented Apr 11, 2022 at 12:19
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    @NKCampbell - There's absolutely no indication from the article that this is the particular orc that Elijah Wood is referring to. It just seems to be a picture of an orc that the copy-editor thought would be appropriate for the article.
    – Valorum
    Commented Apr 11, 2022 at 12:52
  • I kinda feel like Elijah Wood already counts as a reliable source, though. I mean, actor with the main role in the movie, idk.
    – Misha R
    Commented Apr 11, 2022 at 13:30
  • I think that it should be explicitly labelled as the Peter Jackson version. I mean, yes, one can infer that the OP isn't asking whether Tolkein modeled an orc after Weinstein, but it would be good to be explicit (and there have been multiple movie versions of LotR).
    – Acccumulation
    Commented Apr 11, 2022 at 19:32

1 Answer 1

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The story has been around since at least 2017 in unsubstantiated form.

Industry insiders said a beheaded orc character in one LoTR movie was made to look like Weinstein - an insider's dig at the difficult relationship between Jackson's crew and him.

Sir Peter Jackson remains silent on Harvey Weinstein - Oct 20 2017

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    Note that the "industry insider" here could also be Elijah Wood, although that seems unlikely given that they're offering a slightly different story.
    – Valorum
    Commented Apr 11, 2022 at 7:52

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