One chat to rule them all.
Dominic Monaghan has offered a rare peek inside the private group chat he shares with his “Lord of the Rings” co-stars, and what the four Hobbits are actually texting about more than two decades after saving Middle-earth.
Monaghan, who played the ever-loyal Merry Brandybuck in Peter Jackson’s Oscar-winning trilogy, revealed that the actors still keep multiple threads going, including one exclusively for the Shire’s finest.
The other three members of the tight-knit Hobbit fellowship include Elijah Wood (Frodo Baggins), Sean Astin (Samwise Gamgee) and Billy Boyd (Pippin Took), all of whom have remained famously close since filming wrapped on the early-2000s fantasy epic.
“We have different text chains. That one is just called Shire Folk, and that’s just full of Hobbits,” Monaghan, who stars in the newly-released Western flick “Long Shadows,” told The Post. “Who’s the most talkative? It depends on what we’re talking about.”
“If we’re talking about SAG-related politics and issues? Sean Astin,” he continued. “If we’re talking about food and travel and cinema? Probably me or Elijah. If we’re talking about dogs and funny dog photos? Then probably Billy.” (The “Rudy” actor” was just elected the next SAG-AFTRA president.)
But the conversations also shift depending on who starts the chatter, and what obsession is currently sweeping the Shire.
“So it just depends on what we’re talking about,” Monaghan, 48, shared. “Generally, we’ll all do the mini New York Times crossword and Wordle every day. So we try and get all four Hobbits to do a sub-minute crossword. Elijah and I are usually sub-minute. Sean Astin tends to struggle, but every so often does. But it’s usually Elijah and me.”
Their constant travel for fan conventions, which have surged in demand as Jackson’s trilogy cements its legacy as one of the most beloved film series ever made, has also become part of the routine – along with a pact that Monaghan says keeps them sane.
“And then wherever we go, Elijah and I made it very clear that on these trips, they can all become a bit of a blur, where you’re not aware of what city you’re in because you’re signing stuff and that’s about it,” he explained.
“Elijah and I said to the other two boys, we have to go for dinner at least once just to make a difference to the convention, because you could be in Denver, you could be in Los Angeles, you could be in Maine, or wherever,” he added. “So we go for dinner.”
Food, naturally, has its own dedicated side-channel, like a modern extension of the same bond the four built while shooting on location in New Zealand for years.
“Elijah and I are quite obsessive about researching restaurants,” Monaghan revealed. “So once we know the city that we’re in, then Elijah and I – very often on a separate feed – will start sending each other little things like this review in Reddit, and these guys in Yelp, and this got a good review on Facebook. Then we’ll cross-reference, and then we’ll decide.”
As for Samwise and Pippin?
“Sean and Billy will go wherever we go,” Monaghan joked. “So it tends to be restaurant chatter, and then photos of kids and photos of dogs and any film that we might have seen. We were all talking about the recent Paul Thomas Anderson film.”
“So yeah, it’s a bit of everything, really,” he added. “Hobbits chatting.”
Elsewhere during his chat about “Long Shadows,” Monaghan revealed whether he might appear in the next “Lord of the Rings” flick.
“I’m still super tight with Pete Jackson and his team, and I think I will probably go to New Zealand next year when they are filming ‘The Hunt for Gollum,’ which obviously my great friend Andy Serkis is going to star in and direct,” he told The Post.
“I think some other people from ‘Lord of the Rings’ are going down there too,” Monaghan continued. “I would like to be on set just to lend support to Andy and say hello to people.”
But while the “Lost” alum is excited to visit the set when “The Hunt for Gollum” begins filming next year, he doesn’t expect to appear in the film as Merry Brandybuck – especially because Merry “isn’t necessarily involved in anything important” at that point in the Middle-earth mythos.
“I think he’s probably still enjoying pints of beer in the local pub and being a young man growing up in The Shire,” Monaghan explained. “So we have talked about stuff, and who knows.”
However, that doesn’t mean Monaghan wouldn’t make a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo as his Hobbit character if Serkis wanted him to.
“If Andy says to me, ‘Put on a floppy hat and a cape and go stand 300 feet over there, and we’ll just see a blurry figure in the distance,’” he shared. “So if Andy’s like, ‘You can do something in the background,’ then of course, maybe.”
“But at this point it’s just an opportunity to go see friends,” the “Moonhaven” alum reiterated.
As for “Long Shadows,” Monaghan was excited to climb up onto the saddle for his first-ever Western movie.
Set in the fading days of the Wild, Wild West, the movie follows a lone drifter named Marcus Dollar (Blaine Maye) as he seeks to avenge the brutal murder of his parents.
Besides Maye as Marcus Dollar and Monaghan as Ned Duxbury, the Western thriller also stars “The Family Stone” star Dermot Mulroney as Dallas Garrett.
“I hadn’t done a Western before, and it felt like something that I was potentially doing as a little tribute to my dad,” Monaghan told The Post. “And the character that I played just seemed to be a little bit of a livewire.”
“He’s clearly struggling with drinking or an overexcess of drinking alcohol,” he continued. “And that makes him someone that’s a little hard to predict. And he’s a bit of a grifter and a bit of a crook at the same time.”
The character of Ned Duxbury, Monaghan explained, was what pulled him to the William Shockley-directed film in the first place.
“So I am always looking for some opportunity to play a new character,” the “Lord of the Rings” star concluded. “And he did seem like an original new character to me.”
“Long Shadows” is now in theaters.
