Latino Review - Alex Etel on The Waterhorse (2007)
Miami Herald
18th December 2007
By Edward Douglas
You might not find too many Latinos within a hundred miles of Scotland’s Loch Ness, but surely Latino Review readers will have heard of its mythic inhabitant, a giant sea creature lovingly referred to as “Nessie.” Sony’s new family film The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep, directed by Jay (My Dog Skip, Ladder 49) Russell based on the book by Dick King-Smith, takes a look at one possible origin for the creature, featuring an impressive CG version designed by WETA workshops of The Lord of the Rings fame.
It stars Alex Etel--some readers may remember him from his role in Danny Boyle’s family film Millions three years ago--as a Scottish lad named Angus who finds a mysterious egg that hatches into a creature he calls “Crusoe”, but it’s not long before his new pet gets too big for the house and is relocated into the nearby Loch Ness.
Latino Review had a chance to sit down with the clever 13-year-old actor from Manchester who told us more about his new movie and what he’s been up to since “Millions.”
So what have you been doing in the three years since “Millions”?
Alex Etel: Just chilling out a bit, getting wasted with my friends. (Note: that last bit was a joke.)
Have you been doing other things acting-wise since then?
Etel: No, just been going to school. I only had about two years, no maybe about a year, separate from when “Millions” came out and when I started this, so it wasn’t that long of a time. Well, it was from when I filmed it.
Have you been pursuing more acting gigs or doing drama in school?
Etel: No, I don’t really do that much drama. I don’t do drama at all in school because there’s nothing that good. We do drama lessons in my school now because the day after I came back from filming this, I went into my new school, so it was jet-lagged, whole new set of friends and things like that. I have an agent at ICM, and I’ve been going to auditions and things, but nothing had come out of it, and then Jay called me and said, “Would you come and audition for our role?” so I had to go and learn two scenes and perform it like basically the next day and then a week later, he called me up and said, “Would you come and meet with the producer?” so I went and they said, “How would you feel going over to New Zealand and leaving all your friends and your family?” So it was just like “Yeah, yeah, okay.” I didn’t know whether they were offering me the part or not, so I was a bit confused, and then it was about two days later, an agent rang up and said, “You got the part,” but I’d had a film that was going to shoot a week later and I’d already gotten the part for that, so I swapped quickly, which kind of messed up their shoot.
Why did you prefer to do this movie?
Etel: I know more about it, plus I had to do a Spanish accent, which I wasn’t looking forward to in the other one, and I liked the script more on this one than the other one, so I felt this was a better one for me.
How long did it take you to get the Scottish accent down?
Etel: I had a week before I went to New Zealand to try and get the basics of it, and then I had a week when I got to New Zealand to grasp most of it.
What was it like filming in New Zealand?
Etel: New Zealand is very, very nice. It’s opposite side of the world from England and it’s just completely different. We did two weeks in Scotland and about four and a half months in New Zealand. We went to Wellington in the studios and we went to Queenstown, which is on the South Island in the middle somewhere.
So for this movie, you ended up with a bunch of Brits down in New Zealand doing Scottish accents. Was that a little strange with all of the accents including that of the crew?
Etel: Yeah, it was quite strange to have this completely different mix of accents. It was like Scottish and Irish, then Kiwi and there’s a whole different profile of things. It’s kind of the same because the people who came from Scotland and Ireland had lived there for ages, so it’s quite easy to understand Kiwi people.
And Jay’s the only American in the bunch, right?
Etel: Yeah.
Were you able to go off and do any exploring in New Zealand?
Etel: Parts of it. Well, we were working most of the time, so we just went to as many things as we could in our spare time without getting really tired. And plus I had four and a half months over there, so I had a lot of time.
This is your second movie where you had to act opposite a iot of CG stuff that wasn’t there, so what’s the process of figuring out how to play that? Does the director have to show you pictures f the creature or just describe it?
Etel: There was the pre-vis of it on the computer screen, on Jay’s screens, and he would call me and show me the really badly animated type things, like the basics of it, and just say, “If you can do any better than this, than try it” and I’d have to go off that.
How much of the water tank stuff did you have to do while making the movie?
Etel: It was mostly green screen stuff, but they built a massive tank on the car park of the studios, which kind of caused a bit of confusion. They must have filled it up with a million liters of water and I had a big blue screen on the back. It was mostly a jet ski with a big neck on the front of it and I sat on the neck with rain towers, wind machines, wave machines. I was in the water tank whole nights. We came out like every hour or something so altogether it must have been six hours a day. My skin got all dry and everything, and I didn’t know what to do because by the end of it, I looked like an old man by the time I got out.
Didn’t they make a silicone puppet of you for some of those scenes?
Etel: Yeah, just before I went over to New Zealand, we had to go back to London, and they did like scans of me around the head and body, and that was quite strange. Most of that was for the pre-vis of it, because I had to do all the underwater stuff myself. They sent me a few of the pictures and I still have them on my computer.
What was it like working with Emily Watson?
Etel: Emily Watson’s an amazing actor, and she just kept everyone working and trying to do the best in the scenes. She was very mother-like on the film to me, because I’d only been on one film set, so she did teach me a lot of things. She helped me.
What did you enjoy most or what was the most fun thing about the shoot?
Etel: I’ve got loads of great memories of the shoot, and I loved doing all the scuba diving and all the underwater scenes, but one of the things that I loved doing was working with Jay, because he’s really funny in his own weird little way, and he’s a great director, and we always used to play little jokes on each other, like little pranks, and I’m still waiting for him to get me one back because I put talcum powder in his car air vents. That was a good one. I’m waiting for the return of it, I’ve been waiting over a year, so I hope it’s good.
You’ve been somewhat lucky that you’ve made two movies and avoided having to take roles like playing “Adam Sandler’s kid” or “Tim Allen’s kid.” Has that been very deliberate by you to only take roles where you play the lead?
Etel: I’d never really thought about that. If it was a good role, I would go for it, but if it’s all about boosting my career a bit, isn’t it, so I don’t know. I’d just have to think about it if it came along. I’ve read a few scripts which were really boring, so I didn’t like those parts and I didn’t go in for the auditions for them, but the ones I do like, I really try my hardest to go for it.
What do your friends think of all this when you go back home?
Etel: I’ve been asked this quite a lot, and I really don’t know what they think, because they just don’t tell them. They either think, “Oh, he’s going off to a different country doing that weird thing that he does” or they think that I’m completely crazy that I have to go to all these different countries and things. I don’t know what they think. It’s never really sunk in that I’m on the cinema and I’m doing all these red carpets and pictures and things, and I don’t think it’s ever going to, because only five years ago, I was just a normal boy waiting to grow up and work in a shop. It’s changed my life quite a lot.
Do you find yourself getting recognized a lot, maybe not here, but in England after “Millions” came out?
Etel: To be honest, I got noticed more over here, even though I’ve not really been here that many times. I do get noticed over here more.
Have you met any of the other British child actors like Freddie Highmore?
Etel: No, I’ve been in the same place as them, but I’ve never seen any of them. I sat across the table from Dakota Fanning when she was all dressed up in a dress, but I never spoke to her.
What is your take on the Loch Ness monster? Do you really believe in it?
Etel: Um, yeah, I think so. I’ve just been reading a book one of the people in there has given me and the more you read, the more you really believe it, because it’s just all the pictures you see and things, there’s got to be something.
What would you have done if you had found Crusoe, would you have done the same thing your character Angus did?
Etel: Maybe. I think my Mum would have shouted a bit more than Angus’ mom, but I might have done. I think so.
Back - Home - Forward
From Time to Time
The Waterhorse
