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Dec 4, 2007
Question: How did you enjoy riding that monster?
Alex: It was weird because it was a jet ski with a big neck on the front of
it; I had to sit on that neck and there was a stuntman driver on the back
of it. And that was going over the water in the tank and then they had
the inside one, which made you feel really stupid because you were sitting
on the neck with hydraulics underneath it, holding your breath. It was
weird, but it was a lot of fun to make.
Question: You also had to interact with a lot of special effects, pretending with
things that weren't there.
Alex: Yeah, at the early stages of it, it was a puppet. When it got to the teenage
stage it was like a big puppet – then it got to a tennis ball on a stick,
which got harder and harder to do, but it was alright.
Question: And you had to pretend to care about it.
Alex: Yeah, I put my emotion into it and you’re just thinking, “Why am I doing
this?”
Question: Had you seen drawings of the sea creature beforehand, so you knew what
it was eventually going to look like?
Alex: They didn’t show me that many drawings – they only showed me the baby
version of it. I just had to try and picture it looking old.
Question: Were you surprised when you saw the end results?
Alex: Really surprised. We did the ADR for part of it and we only saw a few
scenes of it and a few clips. You just think, how did they make a tennis
ball look like that. It was just completely different and they hadn’t even
decided the noise that it made when we were in ADR, so it opened its mouth,
but nothing came out. I only saw it in September [for] the first time and
I was just really amazed. By the end of it, I was just thinking, yeah,
I’m really proud of that. It looks really good.
Question: What made you pick this movie as your next project?
Alex: Well before I did the film, I looked on the internet at the local cinema
listings and there was nothing on for my age at all. Absolutely nothing
– and I wanted to go out with my friends and the cinema is the ideal place
when it’s cold and rainy and there was nothing on that we could see. It
made me feel upset that no one had made something like that so I wanted
to make a film that people could go and see with their friends on the weekends,
so it just pushed me to go for it and I got it and I was really proud.
Question: Speaking of cold and rainy, talk about the conditions in New Zealand where
you filmed this movie – how hard was that?
Alex: I can’t deal with the cold anymore. I must have had 4 winters on the go,
because we had English winter, then New Zealand, then we had English again,
then we had summer in England, which was a complete washout. New Zealand
was so windy and when you’re in the water for that long, it just gets freezing
and they had to cool the tank down because it was making steam so they
made that even colder, which didn’t help. So on night shoots, you sat with
loads of towels around you and they’d put you in the shower and you’d warm
up and then they’d put you back in and get cold again. It really wasn’t
fair – you couldn’t win either way.
Question: Why New Zealand – they had the special effects company there, but it’s
a drastic thing to go that far.
Alex: It was, but they had Weta Workshop, which are amazing. They did King Kong – they do really good special effects and I think that’s what Jay [Russell, the director] was looking for because if you make it really rubbish looking, it’s not going to be a good film. I think Jay wanted to get the perfect special effects for it and it did look a lot like Scotland. It was all hills and quite sunny, but Scotland was colder, so I’m quite glad they kept it in New Zealand.
Question: Had you read the book?
Alex: Actually, I did read the book after I went for the audition. I started
reading it and by the second audition when we met Jay and Robert [Bernstein],
the producer, I’d read the book by then and I really wanted to go for it
because the book’s really good so I thought the film was going to be good
from the start.
Question: How did you enjoy your human co-stars?
Alex: They were amazing – all of them. I couldn’t work out David [Morrissey]
at the start, he kept to himself and he didn’t speak a lot, but when he
got together with Ben [Chaplin], you couldn’t stop them, they were just
always laughing and making jokes, but they would be the only two laughing
on set. No one else would laugh at the jokes they were making. Ben kept
me really upbeat about everything – he kept me going quite a while in the
night shoots. Emily [Watson] is an amazing actor - I don’t really need
to say that because you probably know that already. She helped me a lot
going through all the night shoots as well. We were on the beach one time;
they had the rain towers up and it was freezing and they had the wind machines
and she did the same performance over and over again – and it was great
every single time. Me and Ben looked at each other and went, "Wow,
how can she do that all the time?"
Question: With Ben and David cracking each other up the whole time, that must have
been strange because that wouldn’t be anything like their characters.
Alex: I know, two grown men making themselves laugh – it was just completely
weird. You wouldn’t expect them to be like best friends. They competed
against each other in the film to get Emily and the characters are just
completely different, but they played them so well. David fits the role
as Captain, but he’s got a really good sense of humor and he can come out
of the serious stage of it just like that. Ben’s great – I don’t even know
what to say about Ben, he’s completely crazy but he’s great. He’s a great
actor and he did the accent really well and he did help me a lot.
Question: Did you have a coach for the accent?
Alex: Yeah, I had a week’s coaching just before we left and I wasn’t really
that good at the start, which really scared me for the first day. I had
a week just before and a week after we got there, so I was jetlagged, couldn’t
do the accent, and I couldn’t act properly because I hadn’t been on the
set in ages, so it wasn’t a good first day, but the accent worked out well
in the end.
Question: What did you do to get in the mood of the character you played?
Alex: It was hard to get into that kind of depression mode because he wasn’t
really a happy boy. And I’m not exactly the same as Angus – I’ve got a
few more friends and I’m a bit happier. Angus was a really weird character
to play – I’ve always got a parent who died in the films I’ve played –
it’s really depressing to be honest. It’s all about how he lives through
it and how he deals with his dad not coming back. It’s a really sad story
line, but it’s quite happy in the end.
Question: Do you like this fantasy world material because this movie would appeal
to kids your age?
Alex: Yeah, it’s a great film and I hope people go to see it, but there is a
sense that everyone will like it – it’s for all ages.
Question: What do your friends think about you going off to do movies?
Alex: You always get people who don’t treat you the same; you’re always going
to get that somewhere. I’ve always said, even when I was 8, "I’m just
a normal person, so why are you treating me differently." I went into
high school the day I got back from New Zealand, so I was jetlagged and
had no friends there because all my friends had gone to a different school,
so I had to make a whole new set of friends – and everyone calling me "Millions"
at first – no one knew my name. But I’ve got quite a good set of friends
now and people just accept it and they just think, "Oh he’s going
off again – doing crazy stuff, seeing different countries." I think
they’re okay with it.
Question: What have you been doing between Millions and now, have you been doing any projects?
Alex: I’ve just been in school. I’ve been taking a break for a while because after Millions there was a lot of promotion work like coming over here and it did get overwhelming at times because I was only 9. I did go back to school for a while and got good test scores to get into my high school and then it was time for me to go and try to get a film, so when I got The Water Horse, I was just really proud of myself. This is our treat for putting hard work into it. When I’m not doing this, I’m always doing something completely insane - sports or roller-blading.
Question: So what was your favorite scene in the movie?
Alex: I think it was doing the drowning scenes because when I first got there,
they had stuntmen and we went into the swimming pool because I wasn’t that
strong of a swimmer. We stood on this platform in the tank and they had
to put maybe 72 kilograms on me to make me sink, so I was just tied down
with weights and I put my life in someone else’s hands. Fortunately I lived.
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