Just because you’re an actor doesn’t mean that you don’t geek out when cool things happen to your character. And that’s especially true for Daniel Weyman who plays the beloved Gandalf the Grey in Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Because he finally got to wear the hat!
So far he’s gone from a stranger who was helped by benevolent Harfoots to a being that knows their name and is on a journey with his trusty staff and robes. And part of that journey is figuring out his place in the world, how he’s going to fight against the forces of evil, and for fans of the source material, his iconic look.
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In Season 3 of the series Gandalf gets to wear the grey brimmed hat with the crooked crown we know and love. And while it was a special moment for us as viewers, it was an especially geeking out worthy moment for Weyman himself. At least that’s what he told Fangirlish when we sat down with him, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, and Robert Aramayo for an interview about The Rings of Power.
“I suppose there are two parts of me. The one was the Daniel that was just nerding out on how extraordinary this was, and wanting to tell everybody and take a selfie of myself,” Weyman said, “And then there was the other part, the actor part, which was going, “Actually, Gandalf doesn’t know that this hat has the significance that I know it has.”
That second bit of his thought process is what really grounded him when it came to Gandalf’s hat. “I had to just get back into that frame of mind, really commit to the present, what has been going on.” And a huge part of that has to do with Tom Bombadil, who has been guiding Gandalf in this journey, and who Gandalf took the hat from.
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“He’s come off this argument with Tom. They’ve had little moments before, but this was a serious thing. And as Gandalf comes back in after having this argument, Tom’s gone. And the last thing he has to remind him of Tom is the hat,” Weyman said, “And so I think he takes it, you know, he could have left it there, but he takes it because it’s got this association with Tom. And it’s going to be important on Gandalf’s journey.”
For Weyman, it almost feels like this iconic look was always meant to be. But it’s also his armor as he faces great darkness. “He’s got a great staff, that unbeknownst to him, Nori had accidentally put in his path. You know, he’s got robes that the Harfoots had given him, unbeknownst to them. And so it’s another sort of layer of that kind of armoury.”
As he faces Saruman, his armies, and later on Sauron himself, he’ll have these pieces of the his journey he’s been on and the people who made it possible right alongside with him. “When he goes out and he puts it on, for me in this moment, the putting on of the hat was that he was standing out in the desert again. And he knows it nearly killed him last time he made a journey across the desert, and this hat is going to help him. And so really trying to keying into that I think will hopefully allow an audience to get the feeling that they have about who Gandalf is going to become.”
The first four episodes of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 3 are now available on Prime Video.
