You played the voice of Smaug the Dragon for the Hobbit films, and you know, when I heard the film and I heard your voice, it's obviously not your speaking voice. And I thought, well, this is highly processed. But then I heard you on a talk show, and you did the voice. And it was amazingly like that voice, just plain.
And I don't want to turn you into a parlor trick here, but could you give us a little of Smaug, I don't know, ordering lunch or a cocktail? You're listening to NPR, I'm Smaug, and I just burnt the mic. That's sort of, that's a little bit of him. You can hear me, but you can't smell me or see me.
I mean, that's sort of what I originally did, and I did it for a while, and my voice was going, and Peter said, look, we've got this great thing that Andy used for King Kong, we call it the Congolizer. And it'll just mean you'll be able to get more variation in pitch and your performance, but you will be able to get that effect without any kind of choice to do it. Yeah, I mean, I listen to the normal pitch in my voice. It's not a natural thing to sort of switch to it.
It always leaves its sort of scars. But how often do you get to play the Dragon of all dragons? So it's something you commit to. It's just, it's endlessly dynamic and challenging, both to how you produce the sound and what the sound is.
And going around on your belly, you know, you're stretching, you're over-articulating on neck. So there were all sorts of sort of journeys of discovery with that, which were great, you know. I was in a room much like this recording booth. I mean, now we're kind of uninspiring, great carpet, great walls, a bit of wooden cladding, and these amazing sensors in the corners of the ceiling.
So you did the motion capture to portray the Dragon as well? Yeah, and that's where that's how the voice evolved, absolutely. And they did a lot of facial recognition, motion capture, as well as full body, and you see the DVD extras from the Desolation of Smaug, the Second and the Trilogy. You've got some footage of me doing all of that.
And, yeah, there was quite a parody before, and that was before we used the Congolizer. And you're a child, you're playing again, you're utterly free. There are no restrictions on hair make-up, continuity, you know, marks, camera, length sizes. There's just, there aren't even any other actors, and you can just, you're free-fawning.
It's great, great, great fun. And, you know, you get Peter Jackson, Halti yourself, which is a rarity on a production of that scale, but I'm tough man in the room.