{"id":423066,"date":"2026-05-12T00:30:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T00:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/423066\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T00:30:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T00:30:14","slug":"ian-mckellen-reveals-one-downside-of-returning-to-lord-of-the-rings-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/423066\/","title":{"rendered":"Ian McKellen reveals one downside of returning to Lord of The Rings | Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/topic\/ian-mckellen\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ian McKellen<\/a> has revealed the one reason why is \u201cnot excited\u201d to reprise his role as Gandalf.<\/p>\n<p>The 86-year-old actor is set to return as the Grey Wizard once more in The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/topic\/lord-of-the-rings\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Lord of the Rings<\/a>: The Hunt for Gollum, which is set between the end of The Hobbit trilogy and the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring.<\/p>\n<p>Appearing on The One Show on Monday (11 May), McKellen said that he decided to return to the franchise as he \u201ccouldn\u2019t bear anybody else playing Gandalf\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Despite being excited to don his \u201cpointy hat and long beard\u201d once more, McKellen also admitted that he is not looking forward to returning to New Zealand to film.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m heading back to New Zealand in the middle of their winter. Windy Wellington.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ian McKellen has revealed the one reason why is \u201cnot excited\u201d to reprise his role as Gandalf. The&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":423067,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[212602,212594,212599,212592,16457,212597,156,212596,581,212601,27430,199363,409,111,139,69,5296,37450,65831,212598,5271,212590,2029,2022,212589,16674,212591,212593,212595,212600],"class_list":["post-423066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-antonin-kinsky","tag-atletico-madrid","tag-bestpix","tag-club-soccer","tag-color-image","tag-eight-finals","tag-entertainment","tag-first-leg","tag-horizontal","tag-julian-alvarez","tag-madrid","tag-match-sport","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-photography","tag-sadness","tag-scoring","tag-scoring-a-goal","tag-soccer","tag-soccer-player","tag-spain","tag-sport","tag-sports-team","tag-stadium","tag-tottenham-hotspur-f-c","tag-uefa-champions-league","tag-union-of-european-football-associations","tag-wanda-metropolitano"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}