Two of the young stars of Unaccompanied Minors – Tyler James Williams (Everybody Hates Chris) and Quinn Shephard (Harrison’s Flowers) – teamed up to talk about the holiday comedy. Directed by Paul Feig and co-starring Lewis Black and Wilmer Valderrama, Unaccompanied Minors follows the adventures of a group of kids stuck in an airport on Christmas Eve. On their own with no parents in sight, the rowdy gang of youngsters leads security officers on a wild chase throughout the airport.
Bonding on the Set of Unaccompanied Minors: Shephard says the kids playing the stranded travelers came from all over the place (including California, New Jersey and Canada) but had no problem bonding as a family during the shoot. Said Williams, “We were all here for one thing: to make this a good movie and just to have fun with it. I think we were able to accomplish that.”
Tyler James Williams Shows Off His Dance Skills: “There was no real choreography in the original script,” recalled Williams. “The one [script] that I first got said a cross between Napoleon Dynamite and ants in your pants. I’m happy that wasn’t one of the first things we did. We started off and we kind of led into it, so I could kind of get more of a feel for the character as to what he would do. Him coming from these older times, he would do older dance moves, and that’s basically what I had to pull from.”
Williams added, “I’ve been dancing forever. Since I remember, that’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve never done that kind of dance before, I’ve never really kind of got into it. I was more hip-hop, break, all these other kind of dances, but I think that was kind of cool that I had to take some of those new dances that are out now and kind of mold it into an older form - and a goofier form.”
Don’t Mistake Quinn Shephard for Her Tomboy Character: Shephard said, “I’m really nothing like my character. I think when I was playing the character I was sort of just thinking exactly about where she grew up and what she was like. I was trying to put that in because it’s really hard for me to act that way, because I’m totally different than that in real life. It was really hard to get the nerve to act that way, but hopefully I got it.”
Tackling the Stunts Involved in Unaccompanied Minors: According to Williams it was freezing cold (it got down to 6 degrees one night) while they were filming. “A lot of it we did,” said Williams explaining how much of the stunts in the film were done by the cast and how much had to be accomplished by stunt people. “There were only certain things that we just couldn’t do. Like going off the snow drift, that we just couldn’t do. There were certain takes where the canoe just flipped over, and so we just kind of played what was actually happening. It was moving fast, we were scared, it was cold, there was acting involved, but there wasn’t much of it.”
Working with Lewis Black: The youngsters in the film torment Lewis Black’s character but Shephard had to overcome her anxiousness about hanging around with the actor/comedian. “When I first met him I had no idea who he was or what character he was playing. He was there on set but I didn’t know who he was. I remember just thinking that he seemed a little bit scary. Just the whole way he talked and everything is like a little bit intimidating.”
First Kisses: Shephard admitted with a giggle that Tyler James Williams is the first boy she’s ever kissed. Although Shephard can’t recall the atmosphere on the set on that particular day, Williams remembers it as being pretty much the same as any other day toward the end of filming. “It was at the end of our shoot. We were almost done, we had like two more weeks to go, and we had progressed as the characters. We were at this time, most of the time, no longer really Tyler or Quinn. Most of the time, even when we were outside, we were Donna and Charlie doing this thing. I think that made it easier. It wasn’t one of those things where we had to really concentrate, ‘Okay, now when we do this make sure there’s nothing really going on there.’ It was just we were having fun with it. That was our job to do there and we did it.”
Shephard added, “We were totally into our characters at that point, so we weren’t really concentrating on what we were doing so much as being our characters.”
Having Fun While Making Unaccompanied Minors: Shephard can’t point to any one cast member as the jokester on the set and Williams confirmed everyone in the cast got in on the fun. “We weren’t serious. We weren’t very professional actors – you can’t expect that from five kids together shooting this crazy movie, doing all these things. We were just having fun, messing up lines sometimes…just having fun. It was free-flowing because it wasn’t a certain amount of time. Like a series, we have a week to get it done and it needs to be done now. We had two and a half months to shoot what, some 125 scenes? It wasn’t that hard.”
Tyler James Williams on the Appeal of Playing Charlie in Unaccompanied Minors: “You know at first when I read the script there was a mix up of the names, so they told me I was reading for Spencer. But I was like, ‘Wait a minute, I kind of like the Charlie character.’ But they were like, ‘No, no, no… Wait, wait, wait, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, you’re supposed to be Charlie.’ I think there was something about him that just – he’s just glowing, he’s a warm person, he’s very optimistic. He can look at a disaster and say, ‘Well, at least I’m not dead.’”
Be on the Lookout for Williams: What would Williams do if he was left unaccompanied? “If I was unaccompanied you’d all better watch out! I would probably do the same thing, just hang out, just do stuff that I’ve always wanted to do, be sick half the time. Hurt myself a couple of times doing some stupid stuff, but I’d hang out. A lot of the stuff that we did in the movie I would probably do.”
