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 Daniel Radcliffe has been well known for his role in the popular magical series, Harry Potter, as well as the recently acclaimed West End play, Equus. Now he takes on yet another orphaned character in the forthcoming drama, December Boys.
With the movie only weeks away, it is time to start the first round of Q&As with Mr. Radcliffe about the film. I first talked to him about the production exclusively last July. In this Q&A he talks to us about the story behind December Boys, why he chose this film, the cast and crew, the strangeness of romantic scenes, the differences with high and low budget movie-making, and much more!
  You have an upcoming movie this fall...
Yes and I am really excited about it (December Boys). It is obviously incredibly different from Harry. It's just a whole new thing. I saw a rough cut of the film a while ago and it's not finished and it needs work done to it, and hopefully that work is being done (laughs) and I am sure it will actually be very good -- I hope so. I am very excited about seeing the finished product because I had such a great time doing it.
I want it to be really good not just for me, but for all the crew who had a tough time because it was quite a tough shoot at that point. You know, I want it to be good for everyone that worked on it. It's actually those three other boys that were in it who were just the sweetest. I was very fond of them all so hopefully it'll turn out good for them as well. They were all really good little actors. I don't mean to sound patronizing, but they are. I mean they're all twelve and thirteen and the thirteen year-old boy looks about nine and they're incredibly good. I was really impressed.
You have a lot of scripts coming your way, what made you choose this one?
You know, you probably get... say you get 50 scripts, if you get one of them that's good then that's great. If you get one that's brilliant, you've hit the jackpot, and that's what we did. The script for December Boys was absolutely fantastic. I read the script and loved it. And then meeting the director in London, a guy called Rod Hardy, who directs a lot of American TV.
This has been his project of passion for about twelve years now. He's been trying to get it made. After meeting with him, that just confirmed it for me because we had very similar visions of the film as a whole and of my character Maps. From that point on I really wanted to do it. We had always planned to do something between Harry Potter four and five, and December Boys came along at exactly the right time. It was a beautiful piece of writing so, yea, that was the reason.
What is this adaptation about?
It's about four boys in a Catholic orphanage in the Australian outback. It is set in the 1960s, but to many people it will look like it is possibly the 1950s because these boys have been so detached from the mainstream world being in the outback and the orphanage.
The clothes they wear are from the 50s and they are all hand-me-downs. So, it's about these four boys in this orphanage and this donor has given the orphanage some money. At the present all these boys have been allowed to go to the seaside because they all share the same when you are in an orphanage, if they don't know when you are born they assign you a birth month and so all these boys were all born in December, hence the December Boys.
For their birthday they are all sent to the seaside. They'd never seen the sea before, having spent their whole life in the outback, so it's quite an amazing moment for them when they first experience what sea water feels like and tastes like that sort of sensation. So many things we would often take for granted, for them are just incredible.
While they're at the beach they all have their own individual stories which leaves them altered at the end of the film. They each learn something about each other, and learn something about their situation, and learn something about the world learn a lot of things about the world. That is what makes the film very special (for me).
It's a real coming-of-age story. Comparisons could be drawn to Stand By Me. Whether December Boys will be a classic film (like Stand By Me) remains to be seen. I think Stand By Me is a similar vein of story about four boys who are on the threshold of adulthood.
 Specifically, what does your character go through, what is his individual story?
Basically, when you are in this orphanage and you are 16/17, you have this knowledge that at the age of 18 they kick you out of the orphanage and you are left to fend for yourself. So, my character, who's older than the other three boys, is really aware of the fact that soon enough he's going to be kicked out of the orphanage and left to fend for himself. That is constantly on his mind.
There is also the fact that these three boys suddenly develop this adulation for this other man, Fearless. He is this cool guy that lives where they're staying. He's got a motor bike and he's pretty cool. And Maps, who's always looked after them, suddenly feels quite abandoned.
Then, he (Maps) becomes infatuated with this girl he meets, and he gets into a relationship with her. He is quite naive really, Maps, in a way. In some ways he is quite tough, but in other ways he is actually quite naive and innocent. He is pretty useless with girls. He gets into a relationship he is not really ready for. In the end, he pays quite a hefty price. It's quite sad I think. Maps' story, I think, is a very powerful one.
The other thing happening is that the boys discover the couple, Fearless and Teresa, are looking possibly to adopt one of the three kids (younger) kids. It almost becomes a competition between the other three boys to try and get themselves adopted by this family. Maps obviously knows he is not going to be adopted because he is one of the older ones, they never adopt the older ones, and that is the dilemma he's in I suppose.
What was it like, the first romantic sequence?
It was very strange... luckily Teresa Palmer, who's playing opposite me in that, she has actually done kissing scenes before and stuff, and she was sort of quite cool with that and would say "oh, no, no, it's nothing to worry about".
I was quite nervous. It is very strange, but you don't really think about it. It actually becomes like any other scene really. You sort of just go in and you kiss, but it's a weird kind of kiss. It just feels different from when you actually kiss someone because it's just because everyone's watching and it's quite clinical.
You'll stand with your faces like a centimeter apart and then the camera crew will tell you, "Can you move your head a little to the left." They position you, so it is quite clinically done. It's not in the least bit exciting or romantic like it is in real life at all as you might expect it to be. So you just sort of get in there and do itand it was fun in the end. Me and Teresa ended up getting quite hysterical. We just sort of started laughing.
{mosgoogle right}Most difficult part of the role?
The difference between Maps and Harry is marked. They are very different characters. Whereas Harry often wears his heart on his sleeve and is quite open and not very good at always hiding his emotions. Maps is a very, very restrained character.
He doesn't like particularly talking about how he is feeling, he is very much a solo character. He wants to look after these other three boys. In the end it's those three boys he cares about and he is focused on them, and looking after them, and he looks out for them at the orphanage and stops them from getting bullied.
Then this girl comes into this life and he starts to care about her. It's hard doing that transition from being very restrained to suddenly finding someone that he actually wants to open up to. He wants to sort of talk to and care about her. It's a very hard thing to go from restraint to openness.
About working with other actors in the film...
There is an Australian actor in it (December Boys) called Jack Thompson who is absolute Australian royalty. If you said his name to anyone in Australia they'd know who you were talking about. He was in iconic Australian movies and he lived through the 60s, and was friends with Bob Dylan and other amazing people.
I got to work with him in the film and he was an absolutely fantastic, fantastic man. I am desperate for there to be a part in Harry Potter somewhere so he can come over and I can work with him again. It's a real privilege to work with him because he is such a brilliant actor. He's a great guy. He's got some amazing stories about his youth. I think he was about the first male nude centerfold in any magazine. So there is some really iconic stuff he has done during his life. He's an amazing man.
End of Filming...
We finished at about 4 a.m. on Christmas Eve. That was a long, long day, but it was great. That day we worked well over 12/13 hours because there was one storyline that we hadn't finished and we had to get it all done on that last day. It was pretty hectic.
That was the day on which I did the kissing scene and the entire storyline with the girl character, Lucy, played by Teresa Palmer. We had to do this whole storyline mostly that day so it was pretty hectic, but we got it done. We finished then and I had about two weeks off after that. Then I came back and went into rehearsals for Harry Potter. It was pretty busy.
Low budget films vs. block buster productions...
There is a lot less people on set...a lot smaller crew. It's a lot more intense. In Harry Potter if you fall a day behind schedule that's ok, but with December Boys that was not ok. You didn't have anymore time, you had six weeks to do it. We got it done by the skin of our teeth. It was really, really close to actually not getting a couple of things done.
It's a lot more intense, you have to be prepared to do more than one thing. On Harry Potter you do one scene a day if you're lucky, on December Boys you are doing four or five scenes a day and you have to get them all done. On Harry Potter a scene might take three days, so you learn the lines for one thing. On December Boys you'd have to learn the lines for five scenes, and they sometimes change the order in which you do them (the scenes), so you really have to be on your toes.
It was also a different experience as I got a peek at what I was probably like when I was 11 or 12 because a lot of the time when we were filming I was looking after these other boys. Lee is 13 and he can sort of look after himself, but Chris and James, I mean James, I have a real soft spot for him. He is just the most accident prone little boy. I mean, he's not a little boy. They are all incredibly intelligent kids, really bright.
James is so accident prone it's ridiculous. He fractured his toe during one scene. I was like, "James you're running on sand, there's no rocks, how did you do that?" He was really sweet and I looked after him a bit.
It's going to be terrifying when I go back there to publicize it (the film) because I know they're all going to have grown, and will have outgrown me now. Lee probably won't because he's quite little, but the other two guys will be taller than me by the time I get back there. I just hope not. (laughs)
I like the fast-pace shooting. I find it more exciting and it keeps the adrenaline sort of pumping. That's the only thing with Harry Potter sometimes when you have lots of digital effects scenes they take longer to do. But this one (OOTP) is faster paced, which is really, really good.
For more information about December Boys, visit the Official Website .
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