Dominic Monaghan goes Wild

SINGAPORE — It makes perfect sense for actor Dominic Monaghan to have his own wildlife TV show. After all, he’s got a thing for creepy crawlies: His childhood pets include a leaf mantis named Gizmo, an albino snake named Blink and a black widow spider named Wichita.

Plus, he has had animal nicknames. “Some people also call me ‘monkey’ because my arms are quite long,” joked the Lord Of The Rings and Lost star.

Pets and animal nicknames are only a small part of his connection with the animal kingdom. The erstwhile hobbit/X-Men mutant/Lost soul has an ongoing BBC Knowledge documentary series called Wild Things, where the 37-year-old English actor travels around the world in search of strange animals.

“The major reason I do Wild Things is to make people feel differently about animals that have all these heavy myths associated with them. I’d never tease someone with a worm, bee, wasp or widow spider as a kid, because I wanted them to be as interested in them as I was,” said Monaghan, who added that he likes “an element of danger in my life”. “I’m quite an enthusiastic traveller and like to work in slightly unpredictable places.”

And encounter unpredictable animals, too, like a rogue elephant he met while filming Wild Things. “Elephants are probably the most dangerous and hard to predict. We were told elephants were peaceful creatures and, for the most part, they are. But that elephant, having gone through emergency surgery, was probably in a bad mood. It woke up and decided to try to kill us all!” he said, with a laugh.

Life has been good for Monaghan after The Lord Of The Rings, in which he played the hobbit Merry, with stints on the hit TV show Lost and the movie X-Men Origins: Wolverine, in which he played the mutant Bolt. While he preferred to keep mum about a not-so-recent controversy over former girlfriend Lilly Evangeline (he claimed on Twitter late last year that his Lost co-star had cheated on him), he opened up regarding his latest TV project, a drama titled 100 Code, where he plays a New York detective.

“It’s a very dark piece of material and has basically turned Stockholm into a moody atmospheric town. My character’s a little distracted with the murder of these girls, but still finds time to meet the ladies,” he said.

And perhaps show them some of his “monkey” moves?

Wild Things Season 2 premieres tonight (Sept 11), 9.55pm, on BBC Knowledge, StarHub TV Ch 407.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story referred to Monaghan's ongoing BBC Knowledge documentary series as Wild Life. This is incorrect, the series is titled Wild Things and the series' Season 2 - not Season 3 as reported in an earlier version - premieres Sept 11. We are sorry for the errors.