From CBBC Newsround. Interview with Dominic Monaghan and Bily Boyd. December 2002 : Q : "There's a rumour that Orlando Bloom is the most popular sexy lead character. What do you think ?"
Billy Boyd : "That's actually untrue. I don't know where you get that. That's a statistic you've made up."

Q : "So you're saying the hobbits are sexier ?"
Dominic Monaghan : "The hobbits are the heart of the movie - they're the emotional core for goodness sake !"

Billy Boyd : "And we're handsome for God's sake. [points to Dominic] Look how pretty this man is !"

Dominic Monaghan : "I mean Orlando Bloom - what are you talking about? They [the hobbits] are what the audience love, they're what the people really, really hang onto. They're the last character the audience want to die ! This Legolas guy - I hope he gets killed by an arrow in the next movie. Vroom... right through this eye !"

Billy Boyd : "It's all make up anyway."

Dominic Monaghan : "Yeah you should see him when he's got his wig off. It's disgusting. Big open weeping warts on the top of his head."

Bily Boyd : "Covered in warts."

Dominic Monaghan : "Smells of elderberries."

Billy Boyd : "Oh, he smells!"

Dominic Monaghan : "He can't defend himself [laughs] Hi Orly !"

Billy Boyd : "Hi Orlando !"

Dominic Monaghan : "How you doing mate ?"

E-online, March 2002 : Q : "Which scenes were the most challenging ?"
Dominic Monaghan : "The Moria scenes were physically demanding. But some were easy, because they really happened. Like when the Hobbits were running away from the Black Rider, we were literally running from a guy on an eight-foot horse. You really are scared, and you really do run fast !"

UK Telegraph, 16 October 2001 : Q : "How did you get the part of Merry ?"
Dominic Monaghan : "I was in a play in London and the casting directors came to see it. They asked me if I knew the book and I did. Anyway I went off to do this job in France. Five months later and my agent called to say, 'I don't want to excite you but they're quite interested in you for Lord of the Rings'. I was like, 'Omigod !'. Before I knew it I'd got the part and was packed and off to New Zealand. I was working on Monsignor Renard at the time so I had a week to come home, celebrate with my family and friends, move out of my house and pack for a year and a half. And itwas hell. It was one of the hardest weeks of my life."

Q : "Did you make any good friends on set ?"
Dominic Monaghan : "Yes, I made some incredible friends. We are so close and connected, especially the four Hobbits. We still meet up when we can. We all went through this weird experience together that I think will always tie us together. There are only eight other people in the world that know what I got up to in those 18 months."

Other source, not dated : "I am a young lad so I have always been relatively fit. There was a slight lifestyle change when we got over to New Zealand. For the first couple of months I would go to the gym every day and then we had to learn kayaking, archery, sword fighting and horseback riding. We were also eating really well. The New Zealand lifestyle is very outdoorsy and healthy. We all learned how to surf and did a bit more every day. The producers came to us, especially the young lads, and said 'this is going to be a very long shoot and you are going to need a lot of stamina and we are going to be relying on you more than the other actors to keep the energy levels up on set.' He told us that there was a gym there for us to use whenever we wanted and we had a personal trainer. That was something that I really got into. It was a great thing. Its strange because when I was tired at the end of the day, instead of going home to bed I would go to the gym because it gave me more energy for the next day. As a young boy it's a great opportunity to be told, 'here's two years of your life where you can just be healthy, get fit and get strong.'"

"I think that reading the book I would write down the main characteristics that would go through Merry's character arc and the things that Merry takes with him all the time is a real level of tenacity. He is very sharp-witted and he is very funny and clever. With Pippin being his partner in crime Merry tends to be the person who suggests things and gets Pippin into trouble then has to pull him out at the last minute. These are the things that he takes with him and also as he goes through these incredible situations of war and tragedy he grows as a person and becomes more responsible and gets older. I think what I tried as hard as I could to do was give him a real sense of being a Hobbit which is different than a human. Hobbits show their emotions very easily. There is a kind of a risk in playing a Hobbit that it would seem that you are over-acting because when they are happy they are incredibly happy and when they are sad they cry their eyes out, so that was something that Pete always said to the four Hobbits. 'I want you to play it as much as a Hobbit as you can, but you have to keep a level of realism to it.' So that was my main task really."

Waikato Times, December 2001 : Talking about Liv Tyler, "I saw her boobs once." [...] "She had like a push-up bra on, man. I said, 'Liv, your boobs look huge' and she said, 'No baby, it's just a push-up bra' and pulled her top up."