Eragon
Interview: Edward Speleers on Eragon
"I had heard similar things but I’m going to be modest and say no, I haven’t [heard that]," he said. "I’ve seen the audition tape. When we got to Hungary, the acting coach was showing it to me saying ‘This is what you do and what you don’t do.’ He got to my audition tape and ‘This is what you don’t do.’ I saw a couple of other auditions and I was the only one who held a script. Maybe that was the key. No, I just had a couple of scenes to do from the movie in the original audition and for the second audition I had to go and actually learn the lines. There was nothing on there from school productions and I hadn’t done commercials or television. This is the first professional job."
Based on the series of books by Christopher Paolini, Fox clearly hopes to have a long franchise of Eragon films. Speleers already knew the material. " I’d read it already. It was going around my school. I enjoyed the book. It’s got everything the book means. What you feel after reading the book, you’ll feel having seen the movie. Obviously, like any movie and any book, if you were to film every page from the book, we’d be watching the movie for four days so things have got to change slightly but the ethos of the story is there and everything that’s important in the story is there and the characters, it’s all there. I have a good vibe about it. I'm very conscious about when you read and book and translate it to film, the differences. Although I haven’t seen much of the movie, what I have seen, I’m a happy bunny."
Being a fan of the book, Speleers had a clear vision of Eragon. "The whole essence, it’s about the learning curve, the coming of age and portraying this character who is in this stage between manhood and boyhood. He’s in that no man’s land I guess. I had to portray that with the added pressure of becoming a dragon rider which doesn’t happen to many people. I tried to keep him nice and natural and the earthy character that he is and take him from being a vulnerable, wide-eyed character to becoming an heroic figure."
For his first film, Speleers had to work with an invisible costar, the CGI dragon, and all the sword fighting action mixed in. "Some of the toughest stuff was some of the most rewarding stuff. Some of the scenes with the dragon were tricky. There’s a few pieces towards the end of the movie, I don’t know how they are going to come across but they were some of the most difficult and hugely emotional scenes and hugely emotional with nothing is sometimes tricky but they were, in my mind, rewarding."
If Eragon does well, Speleers hopes to reprise his role, but anything can happen in Hollywood. "I am signed up but I can also be kicked off. Signed for the next two, yeah, and then I’m going to try to get Christopher to write some more."
Eragon opens to theatres tomorrow, December 15th.
For the posters, production images, trailers, featurette, more movie info
and a full synopsis, go to the Eragon
Movie Page.
Stay tuned for updates.
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