Whether you’re a fan of the Lord Of The Rings trilogy or not, this meme dominated your social media platforms in the early ‘10s. Yes, today we’re talking about the ‘One Does Not Simply’ meme because we finally have some detail on the meme’s origins, thanks to Josh Gad and the rest of the LOTR cast.
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Over the weekend, the cast of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring reunited over 18 years after the film debuted in cinemas. The Zoom reunion, hosted by Josh Gad brought together director Peter Jackson, composer Howard Shore, and co-writer Philippa Boyens in addition to the actors, Elijah Wood, Orlando Bloom, Hugo Weaving, Ian McKellen, Sean Astin, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Viggo Mortensen, John Rhys-Davies, Sean Bean, Liv Tyler, Andy Serkis, Miranda Otto, and Karl Urban.
Here, the team behind bringing this J. R. R. Tolkien classic to life spilled all the juicy details on behind the scenes moments, including the infamous “one does not simply…” scene. You can watch the 50-minute chat, which supports No Kid Hungry, a charity geared toward ending childhood hunger, here:
According to Peter Jackson, the scene that brought us the infamous meme was written only a day before filming. How crazy.
As a result, Sean Bean didn’t have his lines down completely and took to great lengths to in order to keep production running smoothly. Peter Jackson said, “What Sean did, which I thought was really clever, is he got a print-out of the speech taped to his knee… If you watch the scene now, you’ll see every time that Sean has to check his script.” You can watch the scene here, and see if you can catch Sean Bean reading his script mid-scene.
And with that, the rest is history. As you know a screenshot from this scene quickly went on to become one of the most popular OG memes that utilised the block-text format. Surely, these memes will take you back.
In 2015, Sean Bean acknowledged the popularity of the meme and compared it to the rest of his career, saying: “For some reason, the parts I play, like Boromir or Ned Stark, have a life online long afterwards… I keep seeing, what do you call them – memes? ‘One does not simply ask for a drink’ instead of ‘One does not simply walk into Mordor’ – that sort of thing… They’ll probably be my unintended legacy.”
Look, he’s not wrong.
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