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FAMOUS FOUR RETURN TO NARNIA
from The Star Online, May 21, 2008
by S. Indramalar

While it’s been a right royal experience for them, playing the part of kings and queens hasn’t changed the young actors of The Chronicles of Narnia.

As kings and queens of Narnia, the four Pevensie children – Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy – have a mammoth battle on their hands in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. The evil that they face this time makes the White Witch (played expertly by Tilda Swinton in the first Narnia movie) look like duck soup.

This time around, the young royals return to find Narnia, the fairy-tale kingdom they inherited, in the hands of King Miraz, the criminal leader of the Telmarines. The Pevensies find that they have to deal with much more than magic; they have to stare evil in the face and fight!

Though they are only acting the parts of courageous kings and queens (spoiler: there is no Narnia, and no Aslan), the young British actors who play the Pevensie four say that filming the fight scenes in the movie was a truly terrifying experience.

“Do you remember the scene in which we are facing the Telmarine army ... all I remember is feeling seriously scared, drawing my dagger and trying to look confident. And then Damian Alcazar (who played Lord Sopespian, a Telmarine soldier) just screamed, ‘Charge!’ and I remember Andrew (Adamson, the director) shouting at me from the other side, ‘Don’t show it on your face, don’t show it on your face’, because I was really so scared.

“I had to try to look brave when really, I was quivering under the pressure,” a very animated Georgie Henley tells reporters at a recent interview in New York.

Explains Anna Popplewell, 19, who is Susan, “It was scary because there really were about 300 huge, Czech guys (extras) dressed up as Telmarines charging at poor Georgie! You can imagine it was quite terrifying.”

And yet, Henley really enjoyed shooting Prince Caspian chiefly because she had more action scenes that she did in the first movie, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

“I am all for girl power. I was really happy that I got to do some horse riding in this movie. I used to be a tomboy growing up ... I loved Spider-Man and all those things and learning to swashbuckle was a big thing for me,” says Henley, 12, who plays Lucy, the youngest of the siblings.

The girls’ involvement in the action sequences is one of the main areas where director Andrew Adamson chose to depart from C.S. Lewis’s books. In Lewis’s classics, the fights never included the girls.

“It is a slight departure from the books but we have got Douglas Gresham (C.S. Lewis’s stepson) as a producer and he was always around making sure that even with the changes, the film stayed true to the book and what C. S. Lewis would have wanted.

“I was so excited to be a part of the night raid (on King Miraz’s castle) and the battle and learning to do new things this time instead of just drawing an arrow and shooting it. I got to choreograph fights and work in the harness with the gryphons ... lots of more creative things in terms of action,” says Popplewell, who in person seems self-possessed, much like her character, Susan.

The fight scene may have been daunting for Henley but for Popplewell, it was quite something else that gave her the sweats. As a budding young beauty, Susan experiences her first romance with the handsome Prince Caspian and Popplewell got her first on-screen kiss!

“It was a little bit daunting. I mean I’ve never done a screen kiss before and I am not into public displays of affection at all and ... well, this was about as public as it could possibly be, with 300 extras just standing around and the film crew... I had to just get over it and get on with it!”

Adds Popplewell: “We made sure we did not make too much of it. It’s not meant to be a teeny/tweeny trashy romance ... it’s done very subtly ... with a look here and a kiss at the end but it’s not a kind of jaw-dropping, X-rated kiss.”

Parting, such sweet sorrow

As fun as it was, shooting Prince Caspian was a bittersweet experience for Popplewell as well as 21-year-old William Moseley (who plays King Peter) as their characters do not appear in the next book and, as such, will not return for the next movie, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

“It was kind of weird and sad at the end of the shoot because both Will and I knew we wouldn’t be back. It (Narnia) has been a huge chunk of my life ... I first auditioned for the film when I was 13 and I am now 19 and it seems odd to be closing that chapter of my life. But it’s an exciting time for me as well. I’ve nearly completed my first year at university ... I am at Oxford reading English Literature and I feel ready to move on,” says Popplewell.

Moseley adds: “It was hard for me to shoot a scene with Ben (Barnes who plays Prince Caspian) when I hand over the sword. I was actually really sad during that scene and I said to Andrew, ‘Can I be emotional?’ as I really felt that I was letting go of Narnia ... this thing that had been a part of my life for six years. (The golden sword was given to Peter by Father Christmas as a symbol of Peter’s strength and bravery).

“But Andrew told me: ‘No, stay strong and stoic’ and by the end of the film I knew exactly what he meant. Peter actually graduates from Narnia. He has learnt what he can, he has done his work and he is now moving on to the real world and it actually felt like I was doing the same thing at the end of the film.”

The realisation that this would be his last Narnian adventure, however, was not his biggest challenge. Realising the complexities of his character, Peter, was.

“In this film, my character is different. In the first film, Peter did not know what he was doing ... he had no idea what he was stepping into and had to take things as they came.

“In the second one, Peter comes into Narnia with experience which I feel is kind of detrimental to his character.

“This was something I really had to work on ... I actually worked with an acting coach for three and a half months. I worked as hard as I could on the darker, more savage aspects of Peter because I really think he is not a nice person. When he actually makes his big final mistake ... I wanted it to be escalated,” says Moseley.

In Prince Caspian, there were moments of tension between Peter and Caspian: a clash of egos, so to speak. Did any of this translate on set, one wonders?

“Oh yeah we were always fighting; and I mean physically ... it makes for a great on-set relationship,” laughs Moseley.

“Actually it was kind of cool. Ben is a professional actor so for me it was great to work with somebody I could really up my game with and give everything I had. Also, when you are working with an actor you can trust and they can trust you ... you can go to a deeper emotional place.

“Ben and I actually got to laugh a lot on set. We’d make jokes about our favourite shows in England ..., which is The Office, the English version, not the American version. It was actually really cool working with Ben.”

Adds Skandar Keynes (who plays Edmund): “Apart from the clash of egos, that is!”

Life after Narnia

Unlike Moseley, 16-year-old Keynes is set to return for the next movie and his character is developing to become a key figure in the story.

“The character of Edmund does span the whole series. He starts off as a brat, to be honest, and he is sort of tearing apart the family and causing these conflicts. But he goes through these rights of passage and he progresses and matures and by this point in the series (Prince Caspian) he is one of the main, structural figures in the family ... the one that holds it together and he takes on his responsibilities when other characters, like Peter, are sort of jeopardising the family,” says Keynes.

“One of my proudest moments was reading the call sheet one morning and the scene description was ‘Edmund saves the day’. I kept that one ... it was great and I never let anyone forget it,” he laughs.

Though the first Narnia film was a box office hit, the four young actors claim that their lives have not changed dramatically – no screaming fans, no flashy cars, nothing.

Says Keynes: “I feel like I lead two completely different lives. On the one hand we are out here ... staying in great hotels and going to random locations all around the world making this film and publicising it. On the other hand we are like regular schoolchildren ... we go to school like everyone else on the bus and you just slot right back into everyday life and forget that this other world really exists. When I am here, I forget about home life.”

Popplewell agrees. “I started university about three weeks after we finished filming the first movie and I did get a few funny looks at lectures but, you know, just because you’ve been in a film, doesn’t mean you are not a normal person and I think people recognise that and treat you accordingly.

“Also, I think that if you strutted around in huge sunglasses the whole time ... I don’t think you are going to make any friends anyway. It’s important to have balance.”

Of the four, Moseley seems to be the only one certain that he wants a career in acting while both Popplewell and Henley aren’t quite sure what they will do.

Keynes, on the other hand, wants to be a doctor. It is unclear though whether he is influenced by his family or by his favourite TV programmes.

“My guilty pleasure is Grey’s Anatomy .... and Sex and the City and Project Runway. No it’s great ... the medical part of Grey’s Anatomy ... and it’s really fun!” laughs Keynes.

Moseley steps in and points out that Keynes is the great-great-great grandson of biologist Charles Darwin. Keynes is also the great-great nephew of the economist John Maynard Keynes and the nephew of the historian and Cambridge professor Simon Keynes. A family of scholars which, admits the actor, makes for very serious and uninteresting dinner conversations.

“My family... well they are all about Science ... and Darwin. I remember one of our family dinners.... it was my grandfather’s 90th birthday and we were all having dinner. I got my food and as I sat down I heard my uncles all get together and one of them said, ‘So, what are we going to do about these new taps?’ And they had this long conversation about taps! That was literally the story.”

Original Source: Online

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