Interview: Ben Barnes Talks Prince Caspian

By Kellvin Chavez on May 14, 2008

A few weeks ago I had a chance to the new guy on the block, Ben Barnes, who plays the title character Prince Caspian, in the upcoming sequel "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian" which opens up this Friday.

The film opens up one year after the incredible events of “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” the Kings and Queens of Narnia find themselves back in that faraway wondrous realm, only to discover that more than 1300 years have passed in Narnian time. During their absence, the Golden Age of Narnia has become extinct, Narnia has been conquered by the Telmarines and is now under the control of the evil King Miraz, who rules the land without mercy.

The four children will soon meet an intriguing new character: Narnia’s rightful heir to the throne, the young Prince Caspian, who has been forced into hiding as his uncle Miraz plots to kill him in order to place his own newborn son on the throne. With the help of the kindly dwarf, a courageous talking mouse named Reepicheep, a badger named Trufflehunter and a Black Dwarf, Nikabrik, the Narnians, led by the mighty knights Peter and Caspian, embark on a remarkable journey to find Aslan, rescue Narnia from Miraz’s tyrannical hold, and restore magic and glory to the land.

I want to know of any 'Spinal Tap' type moments on the film.

Barnes: Having you been preparing this question. 'Spinal Tap' type moments while we were doing the movie. It's funny that you say that because the one that I remember is a day that probably some of you were there, but the day that they invited some journalists onto the set and you know the bit where we were all flying with the Griffins and they sort of land us on the battlements at the top? Well, we obviously had to film that all individually and then they comp you all in and you're on these wires and I was next to Peter Dinklage hoisted up by my ankles and my shoulders and you're holding your sword. For some reason Andrew [Adamson] likes to use a lot of music to set the theme and so when Skandar [Keynes] and William [Moseley] are walking up to the do the jewel he was playing Kanye West and you can actually see – they're in slow motion – Skandar in that bit kind of going like this. You can see him bopping a little bit. So he likes to use mood music and for some reason Andrew who likes to use the mood music was blaring out this '80's rock while we were hanging on these wires. I don't know what he was thinking, but I was kind of playing a bit of air guitar on my sword as well and then I looked over at Peter Dinklage in full makeup next to me doing the same thing and then all the journalists are kind of lined up watching us just hanging there. I thought, 'This is the least interesting thing for them to see. There are no lines or anything. We're just going to be flown in and landed.' We were supposed to fly in and as you do your feet get released and you sort of land, but the very first time they didn't release my feet and I just went headfirst straight into the thing. The journalists were behind this wall sitting here and I went crashing down and they just heard this thump and then, 'Ouch –' which was the side of my face grazing the side of the stone.

That better be on the DVD.

Barnes: Yeah. I'm sure it won't be. That felt a little bit 'Spinal Tap' and then since then, recently as well, we've been doing this and appearing at Comic Con or whatever and you can't go out into the main hall and so you're running underneath through the kitchens and by the sort of garbage cans and things, running around and going, 'Hello Cleveland! Rock and roll.' There was actually a janitor with a mop and I was thinking, 'Which way to the stage, man?' He goes, 'What?'

Was it the same guy?

Barnes: He didn't know the lines and so it couldn't be.

Do you know your status for movie three?

Barnes: My status? I play Caspian, I think.

You're onboard?

Barnes: Yes. Yes. It's a go. I'm King Caspian though, I think you'll find. So, Your Majesty is fine. Yeah. October I think we start shooting. From what I hear too the last week or so of it is in New Zealand and in Mexico. That's from what I hear, but that's subject to change because I don't know if I'm supposed to say that or not.

Have they discussed you playing your elderly self in movie four?

Barnes: The only conversation that I've had about that was with Howard Berger from K&B and I said, 'Dude, can you make me look seventy?' He was like, 'Yeah.' I said, 'Sweet.' That's the only conversation that I've had about it so far. Whether anyone wants to see me walking with a walking stick I don't know.

You get a death scene though which is always important.

Barnes: Right. Well, he's young at the end. He comes back at the very end. He floats down the river and sort of chases them away at the school and so maybe a cameo. Who knows.

What's the experience like coming onto this set as the new guy, coming into the Narnia family? Was there a standoff-ishness to it?

Barnes: No, not at all. I think if they weren't prepared they were prepared by someone else in that they knew someone else would be joining their family. I've said it before, I was very cynical when I first watched the first movie. When I first got the part I was fascinated by the whole process and wanted to know as much as possible what I was in for and so I went and got the DVD of the first one and watched all the extras and there's Georgie [Hensley] sitting there going, 'Yeah, we're like a family and Will is like my big brother and Andrew is like my dad when my dad's not there.' You just think, 'Get me a bucket, someone! It's not going to be like that!' Then you get there and I walked into the production office and they were playing table tennis with each other and Georgie was sitting on Will's lap and they were sharing ice cream and it was something out of like Disney, a Disney movie. I didn't understand it. I was looking around for someone filming it, thinking, 'It's not really like this –' but it is like that. I did really learn from Will and Anna [Popplewell] how to be around the younger members of the cast. They were very, very welcoming and it was very much a family feel through the whole process and it was great that I got to see it with them, sitting with them and Anna was a little emotional at the end of the film, you could tell, last night. She was sitting next to me and was a bit teary at the end. Will, when we filmed that scene where he hands me over the sword and didn't want to let go of that, he's worked for that. So it was hard for him, I think. They were thirteen years old when they auditioned for this film and now they're like nineteen, twenty, twenty one years old. That's a lot of your childhood to give up to one project. So obviously they're going to want to cling on to it and they kind of had to hand it over, but it kinds of mirrors things. At the end of the movie Caspian says, 'I don't think I'm ready for this.' Everyone is asking me today how I think I'm going to handle what's coming and I don't know. You tell me.

Last night at the movie theater people were swarming you and William after you came out of the bathroom. What goes through your minds when you get that kind of reaction?

Barnes: Yeah. Caspian has to pee too.

Are you worried whether you're pants are zipped up?

Barnes: Right. I was thinking, 'Really, really? Are they going to have Fan, Caspian, Men's Room sign. That's not cool.'

You had to create an accent based on a group that doesn't exist. How did you come up with that? Did you work with someone?

Barnes: Yes, I did. A great dialogue coach. We started off and our brief was to do a light Spanish accent. That was our brief because they said that they were going to cast a lot of Spanish actors who would be speaking in their natural voices and then he cast an Italian, a Mexican, a Spaniard and a Flemish actor and I literally – this was week one that we finalized that cast – went, 'Now what do I do?' I'd been working on this Spanish accent and so we basically just tried to alter it a little bit so that it would kind of fit in and sound a little bit like Miraz and Glozelle and those characters, but a little bit lighter. I felt that it was important to keep the intonation quite English because they're such English books and the dialogue is very English still. I felt that it was important to keep that intonation and so a really think accent would've been annoying, I think, actually, probably. I mean, almost all the parts that I've done have been in different accents, almost everything and to me ear I was actually okay with it.

It's very Pan European.

Barnes: I was okay with watching it yesterday. That's one of the things that I was worried about, and it might sound a bit cod, but I was actually okay with it and I don't like watching myself. So that was a big deal for me.

What do you think about the Prince Caspian action figure and videogame, the whole franchise aspect to this?

Barnes: I know. It's scary, isn't it? I mean, there's one thing when someone says that you're going to act for this and then you think about probably what this entails is some six year old smashing my head against a table because that's what I did with my Transformers and my He-Man. I was like, 'Fight each other!' Chewing on the fingers. That's what I imagine. That's the reality of it, isn't it, and people playing the videogame and going, 'Die! Die Caspian!'

Have you seen any of the videogame footage yet?

Barnes: I have and I think it looks amazing. I'm a technical idiot and to see it, it just looks incredible.

Do you get to cut off Miraz's head in the videogame?

Barnes: I don't know. I haven't got that far. I've only seen the trailers. Kid's can be pretty grim, I guess, pretty morbid. 'Grand Theft Narnia'. Very cool.

How was watching the movie last night for the first time and being around all kinds of people watching yourself with you?

Barnes: To be honest, I might as well have been on my own. I was completely zoning. With the press and the shooting it's like a year of your life and suddenly it's condensed into this two hour object that's tangible and right there and in front of you.

Were there parts that were cut out that you noticed?

Barnes: The bits that were cut out I think really actually helped. I briefly discussed it last night, but I felt that the relationship, what I was most pleased about – well, the things that I was worried about were the accent and the relationship between Peter Pevensie and Susan Pevensie. I was worried that they would be too broad. Actually, I felt that they were quite subtle and felt kind of real. The kiss at the end felt like something that she just kind of went, 'Well, why not? We've been through this together. I'm leaving.' It's real and it's adult and it might happen. The stuff with Peter as well, it doesn't feel like they hate each other. It just feels like they're at each other's throats because they've been through this stuff together. So I was pleased with the way that all fit together. I basically am saying that I understand the story a lot better now than when I first read it. I went up to Andrew and I went, 'Oh, that's what that is.'

There's a lot of spirituality in C.S. Lewis' work. Did you think about that at all while you were shooting this?

Barnes: I think it is something I thought about because when I was at University, Children's Literature was one of my sort of special topics and so I reread a lot of children's literature, these books being a part of that. So it's definitely something that I thought about. I think it's definitely a dangerous thing to think about whilst you're shooting because obviously we're making a contemporary film for a 2008 audience, for people who don't necessarily know the books and aren't necessarily interested in that side of it and you still want it to be exciting for these people and so it's not something that I think you can afford to think about while you're actually shooting. It's more of a kind of moment to moment thing. I have definitely thought about it since though. I'm not a fan of spoon feeding in films. I find myself patronized very easily by those kinds of films, but also, equally, if I watch a film that doesn't have anything like that I go, 'Well, what's the point? What's the message?' I don't think in this instance there has to be one specific and clear message because there are a lot of didactic messages in there about self-belief and belief in the people and the ideas and acceptance of the people around you and having faith in something bigger than yourself. You don't have to necessarily give it a name. Also, the historical context was much more vivid to me watching it than it was while we were shooting it, the kind of facelessness of this race with a dictator that wants his race to go forward at the expense of all the others. It's set during the second world war this film. You see the little remnants of that, but I think all of it is there if you choose to see it and you can sort of judge the film on whatever level you want to.

Source:Latino Review

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