Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film series is packed with many beloved scenes, but one stands above all for the director, and it's not a scene he directed.

　　Sitting down with The Lord of the Rings super-fan Stephen Colbert, Jackson said one of the scenes that best captures the spirit of the project is one that came in late and was not originally planned. In The Two Towers, Jackson wanted to properly introduce Gollum, but the director remarked that he didn't have a sequence that effectively demonstrated Gollum's two-persons-in-one existence as Gollum and Smeagol. "We knew we needed it, but we had no time to shoot it," Jackson said.

　　Director Peter Jackson tells us his favorite scene from The Lord of The Rings franchise. #LSSC pic.twitter.com/dikYtMK612

　　— A Late Show (@colbertlateshow) December 12, 2020

　　So Jackson turned to his partner in real life and on The Lord of the Rings, screenwriter Fran Walsh, to write and direct a scene that showcased Gollum's identity. The scene from The Two Towers shows Gollum grappling with his pained existence, bouncing back and forth between what he wants and what the seduction of the One Ring is compelling him to do.

　　Jackson remarked that this scene, which you can re-watch below, has since become pretty famous, and it's not hard to see why. "That was a late thought, because we thought we really needed it to sell it to the audience, who this guy is," Jackson said of Gollum. The scene was also reportedly filmed on a budget, as Jackson said it only required a small crew, and they didn't even need Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) for the sequence because the two are shown laying down sleeping far away from the camera. The scene does include a close-up of Wood and Astin, but this was presumably shot on a different day.

　　Walsh was nominated for six Academy awards for the Lord of the Rings series, and won three for The Return of the King.

　　While the Lord of the Rings movie series is over, Amazon is currently filming a big-budget TV show in New Zealand, and the production recently welcomed 20 new cast members. Outside of TV, there are multiple new Lord of the Rings video games in the works, including a game centered around Gollum.