14-year-old Will Stanton (played by Alexander Ludwig) is drawn into the battle between the forces of the Light and the Dark in the fantasy film, The Seeker, adapted from the Susan Cooper book. Gregory Smith, who recently starred in the critically acclaimed TV series Everwood, plays Will’s older brother Max. Max is the rebellious child of the large yet close-knit Stanton family and, according to Smith, he was given some pretty strange directions on how to get into character.
“The thing they kept on telling me was ‘bohemian’. They wanted Max to be ‘bohemian’, which I thought was hysterical,” revealed Smith. “I’d be like, ‘Guys, I’ve got this great idea. I want to do this because that’s going to make this happen, and people are going to think that. It’s going to be so cool.’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s good, Greg. Just keep him bohemian.’”
Smith’s never been given that specific instruction before in his career which -- although he’s only in his mid-20s -- has been going strong for a dozen years. “I haven’t, and I don’t think I will again,” laughed Smith.
Gregory Smith Interview
I think it’s really interesting The Seeker was filmed in Romania. What was that experience like?
“It was totally wild. It’s like the great Eastern Frontier or something. It was beautiful but a lot of the crew in the first couple of weeks, they all got pick-pocketed. It’s pretty wild. It was a lot of fun, but it was just very different than most locations that companies will go to.”
Did you get the chance to do a lot of exploring?
“Yeah, yeah. I went up to Transylvania and explored there a couple of times. One weekend I went up to Istanbul, which is about a two hour flight, hour and a half flight. Afterwards when I was finished we went to Prague, Berlin, London, Paris, and Morocco.”
Did being so far away in Romania really help you all bond as a cast?
“Yes, I think so. Locations in general do, but Romania sort of took it to the next level. We all went…it’s actually very sad. The most well-known landmark in Bucharest is a place called The People’s Palace, which was this massive house that was built by Ceauºescu that was never actually finished. It’s the second biggest free-standing structure in the world. We all went and took a field trip there and saw that, which was… That was one of the things you ran into a little bit in Romania was it was really, really impressive but also really sad because they bulldozed 10,000 homes to put it up. Now they’ve got no use for it. It just sits empty.”
What’s the appeal of doing a fantasy film?
“Well, it was a great script first of all, which is always the first part of the puzzle. Then it was a chance to go and do this movie where the character I played had like this cool sequence, this fight where he chases his little brother through time. There were some special effects and other stuff that I hadn’t done in a long, long time. So yeah, that’s the appeal of this genre of film.”
Director David L Cunningham opted to go with more practical effects than CGI. Did that put more of a physical strain on you?
“Actually, I think CGI is probably a little bit more stressful because it’s much more tedious. One thing that was cool about Romania is they built these sets that were massive and really, really impressive, where anywhere else they wouldn’t have been able to build them. To actually have the set, as opposed to being on a green screen, you’d take the set any day as long as it could do what it needs to do for the film. That was actually less of a strain.”
You’ve been quoted as saying you really enjoyed working with David L Cunningham. What was it about his style of directing that you liked?
“It’s totally, totally original in a time in filmmaking when that’s kind of harder and harder to come by. We keep pushing the envelope further and further. This was something I hadn’t experienced before, where you walk on a set and you don’t see any cameras. Sometimes you wouldn’t see any cameras and you’d be like, ‘David, where are the cameras?’ He’d be like, ‘Oh, there’s one over there.’ He’d point and you’d look underneath a coffee table and there’s a camera kind of poking up. There’s one up there and one hanging from the chandelier on the ceiling. There’s one there at the top of the stairs. He’s got them all hidden and he’s got multiple going, so it’s all sort of alive and you can never really let your guard down. And then when he compiles it all together, it’s not arbitrary. It really takes you through the story and keeps it interesting. So that was a style of working that I’d never experience before, but it’s one that was invaluable for me to experience.”
Did you find yourself having to change your style of acting because you didn’t know which camera you were playing to or what was being filmed?
“No. You just had to be totally open and just roll with the punches. I called him Captain Chaos at times because he loved atmosphere, rather than just isolating. He would actually isolate the beats for the scene or the story that were important to get, and then he would kind of like throw obstacles in front of them. So when we did the scene where we’re having this fight on top of the vegetable cart, you read the script and it says, ‘Fight on top of a vegetable cart.’ When you get there and you’ve got the vegetable cart set up and you’re fighting there, then he surrounds you with 30 extras throwing rotten fruit and pieces of bread at you. Then, just off camera he has one of the ADs throwing chickens, live chickens, at you. He’s got smoke going. And then he sits back with these camera operators on long lenses and extracts the action through all the chaos. So it’s actually really cool.”
There was actually someone throwing live chickens at you?
(Laughing). “Yeah, which is not something that I’d recommend.”
Did you read Susan Cooper’s books before you filmed The Seeker?
“I hadn’t ever heard of them before, but once I was there my little brother told me they were one of his favorites. But the movie is such a departure from the novel that they weren’t as helpful as one might think. They are very, very different. It’s a very loose adaptation.”
