Robyn Malcolm responds to death threat over saying Gandalf should be played by a woman

Robyn Malcolm thinks Gandalf should played by a woman in Amazon Prime Video's Lord of The Rings series. Photo / NZ Herald

Robyn Malcolm has hit back at a troll who sent her a death threat after she said the next actor to play Gandalf in The Lord of The Rings franchise should be a woman.

Malcolm said in an Instagram post her opinion attracted a death threat, with a person responding: "If you play Gandalf I will hunt you down and kill you".

It was announced last month Amazon Prime will spend at least 1.5 billion producing the series in New Zealand.

The New Zealand actress told Heather Du Plessis-Allan on Newstalk ZB's drive show "we don't need another old dude" to play the wizard Gandalf.

The actress refused to put up with the hateful comment.

"I have blocked and reported you," she wrote about the troll.

View this post on Instagram

To the person who responded online to my original post ““Gandalf?!”...... with .. “If you play Gandalf I will hunt you down and kill you” I have blocked and reported you. And to the posts on here and twitter peppered with verbal abuse and insult .... JESUS GUYS CALM THE HELL DOWN! It was a light-hearted post which came from an unsolicited question from the NZ media. The books are what they are, no matter what, and clearly are very precious to many of you. But they are fiction, fantasy and it’s always important to have an open mind when you spend 5 Billion to, once again, reimagine these stories. It’s dangerous to protect rigid thinking on any artful endeavour, especially the screen arts. I totally enjoyed the intelligent, passionate and less abusive responses. I do understand that to some people mucking about with gender is an insult to the original work. LOTR devotees are incredibly passionate about the books. But when film reinterprets literature there should be room to crack everything open and examine all possibilities, either seriously or not. Smart discussion guys, passionate response or just have a laugh but not reactive abuse, bigotry, dumb insults and silly death threats. And always take heart that I have nothing to do with the show 😊 #lordoftheringstvseries #amazon #wizards #witches

A post shared by RobynMalcolm (@robynjmalcolm) on Oct 8, 2019 at 3:09am PDT

She continued: "The [Lord of the Rings] books are what they are, no matter what, and clearly are very precious to many of you. But they are fiction, fantasy, and it's always important to have an open mind when you spend 5 billion to, once again, reimagine these stories."

She said people should keep an open mind and "examine all possibilities" for new adaptations of novels.

"I do understand that to some people mucking about with gender is an insult to the original work. LOTR devotees are incredibly passionate about the books."

"And always take heart that I have nothing to do with the show."