The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008)
Die Chroniken von Narnia - Prinz Kaspian von Narnia
Interview mit William Moseley and Georgie Henley
William Moseley & Georgie Henley
William Moseley had his first motion-picture starring role in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe for which he earned different nominations. He is the son of English cinematographer Peter Moseley, Moseley is a native of Gloucestershire in the Cotswolds area of England. Georgie Henley made her professional acting debut in Narnia 1. For her work in the first film she collected numerous awards and nominations from organizations around the world. The 12-year-old is from Ilkley West Yorkshire in the north of England.
OutNow.CH (ON): I was told that you make music, so what kind of music do you make?
Georgie Henley (GH): Oh dear, everyone asks that. I just have a little band with some friends, we made a few songs and just finished our album. But it’s just a nice little hobby.
ON: What’s the name of the band?
GH: Black roses
ON: Why?
GH: Because we like roses. And it’s just that there’s a white rose but not a black rose al-though normally there’s a negative to almost everything that exists.
ON: So after having done the second part of Narnia, what’s the best part of these shoot-ings?
GH: I think every day, it’s so much experience and it’s such a fun time. We’re laughing and basically never have days when we’re moody, so it’s lovely.
ON: Well was it good to come back after this intense pause?
William Moseley (WM): Yes absolutely, it was a very good pause because I had to finish my studies and then I worked in New York for three and a half months so it was great to really have a bit of a break. There are so many good memories. The action stuff and the emotional scenes. The thing is, you can’t really appreciate it while you’re doing it only at the end of it, now. Still it really hit me that I’m part of this film, it’s something I can think about when I’m in my 80’s.
ON: Georgie you are the youngest character but you seem to be the wisest as well, that must be a triumph?
GH: Yeah, let’s get the old down low. The thing is that children usually aren’t rewarded and recognized for their huge imagination. But here we see that when it’s put to good use it can change the whole world. So children can be a lot wiser than adults sometimes.
ON: You’re going to be back in the next movie. How do you look forward to the changes, somebody will be there, somebody won’t?
GH: I think it’s ok, because there will still be a lot of familiarity. Skandar is still there, and Ben and a lot of people like the costume designers etc.
ON: How do you look forward to that movie, and being part of this franchise now?
WM: I would have choosen Peter anyway, even if I had had the chance to choose a character. Two films isn’t too many, and the experience I had neither. I feel like I’ve achieved what I can with Peter, going on, I would be repeating myself. So now it’s time to move on, do something new with all the things I’ve learned, try to do it better.
ON: What’s the best gift you took from this movie, for yourself?
WM: An emotional one, also the professional working. Also I’ve grown up enormously in this time, it sort of shaped my life.
GH: His manhood...
ON: How difficult was it to imagine the whole picture during the shooting at the set be-cause of the whole CGI-stuff?
GH: You know how weird it is when you film it, and you have no idea what the film is go-ing to look like. It’s so different from when you’re filming it and when it’s finally cut to-gether, with the voices etc...
ON: So how was it to see the final movie the first time?
GH: It came out that I was feeling exhausted. There are so many memories coming back to you of things that happened while you were shooting. Also there are scenes that you have never seen before because you weren’t there while they were shot, all the fighting scenes for example. So during these parts it was a completely different film to me.
ON: How was going back to school after the first movie?
GH: I didn’t really feel like I was a different person, and I also don’t think that my friends did. There’s just this period of time you need to settle back in. School almost seemed triv-ial to the tight filming schedule we had.
ON: How was the transition for you William, is there a switching between two worlds?
WM: In some ways there are two worlds, you have your personal life and your profession. I think it’s the same for everybody who works and for me even more because it is a film set so it really is a totally different world where everything else gets locked out. You are also always with the same people at these locations. But I don’t discuss that whole thing much with my friends, we talk about other stuff that isn’t just self-centred around me: football, and stuff that 24 year olds do. But I’ll certainly bring them to the premiere in London.
ON: Can you imagine participating in other movies?
GH: Well I’m taking part in the third and apart from that I took part in a BBC project be-tween the first and the second Narnia movie and that was completely different, it was dark because I play a girl that gets beaten up every day, all the people she loves die and she has the worst possible childhood you can have. That was a really hard role to play, but it was good for me because I could learn so much.
WM: I should do have another film soon. I’ve learned so much on Narnia, still I think this new project will be a great challenge and that’s what I always want to be doing. Things have to be new, changing and always faster.
ON: What is your new project?
WM: It is about the Magna Charta and it will be shot in Berlin during three and a half months. It will be like a medieval battle film but unfortunately I won’t have any fighting in it. My character is sort of the intellectual guy, means a lot of acting, but that going to be interesting. Jonathan English is directing, it’s only his second or third project but he wrote a lot of scripts before that.
ON: How about Berlin, it’s not difficult for you anymore to travel between the different places you’re working?
WM: I love travelling and I love being in different countries, meeting new people and the different feelings you get in different places. I think it’s one of the most important things we have to do as humans: travel around!
ON: Would you like to work in foreign movies?
WM: I’d love to do foreign films. I think we are very lucky now, we’ve been to different festivals all over the world and got the opportunity to watch all these foreign productions and it would be great to work with all these people. These films are so artistic and so powerful.
ON: What films do you watch, personally?
WM: I’m into French new wave cinema, Trufeau etc.. I think the reason why I’m doing that is that Hollywood changed a lot through French New wave cinema, like Easy Rider and Francis Ford Coppola, they are all following the directions of the sixties new wave.
ON: Would you have liked being in Funny Games U.S.?
WM: I really would have love to, but I went to the auditioning and unfortunately I didn’t get it because they gave it to Michael Pitt, but I understand why they did it as he is amazing.
ON: You’re mentioning movie makers and actors that are all completely different.
WM: Totally, and I mean I haven’t been in a movie before Narnia and I will have to do more work in order to get better work and play roles that will move people. But those are the films that really interest me, which I would like to get going. Also low budget productions cause I really think that you can’t put a price on talent or good work.
ON: How about you Georgie? What kind of films do you watch?
GH: Nothing compared to William.
ON: We heard that you also like the Nintendo game?
GH: Yes I do, although I’m awful at it, I killed Ben already seven times and I killed you as well (looking at William). It’s funny as well because we spoke the voices of the characters ourselves and it’s so weird as there are all these strange noises and things we had to do. Like pretend that we’re dying and then “dying medium", “dying long", “dying short" and so on.
ON: So what do you think of this job? Isn’t it sometimes very awkward?
GH: No, I don’t mind all these things. It’s lovely ‘cause you’re doing it for other people and then you can find out what they think about it. I think the worst thing for me is meet-ing people because I’m actually very awful at it. I’m not like all these sophisticated actors, I usually don’t know what to say.
WM: I remember when we were at the premiere of the first movie and all so proud and nervous that we were going to meet Prince Charles. And we all dressed in these beautiful clothes but Skandar turned up in red combats and red overcoat and just goes up to Prince Charles and says “Hey how are you doing". So I think that Prince Charles though we were a rowdy bunch.
ON: I read that you already wrote a book Georgie, is that true?
GH: No, I wrote two stories when I was on the set of the first movie but during the second I was too occupied with school. And I wrote about a forty pages story when I got back to primary school about the power of friendship that was really good. But I’m more into music right now.
ON: Do you think you will stick to acting?
GH: I have no idea. There’s so much more I want to do, acting, writing, be involved with the music industry somehow, also fashion. I’m ridiculous actually because I dream too big.
ON: How was your feeling about becoming an action figure?
WM: It’s actually kind of weird, my brother gets more from it than I do as he can throw me out of the window now. But it just shows how much people love these films and the sup-port we’ve got so hopefully we can continue going.
ON: Do you have action figures?
WM: I think I have some of them, I think I have action man but I never really liked these kind of things, I always was my own kind of action figure, exploring and discovering things.
GH: I never liked dolls, hated them because I still find them very scary now. I used to be a teddy bear girl, I still have so many at home and even one that I take along everywhere I go.
