Charlie Bewley Interview with TwilightersAnonymous.com

Twilighters Anonymous had an exclusive interview with Charlie Bewley, who plays Demetri in New Moon.

TA: Can you give us a little run down of your audition process starting from where you heard about the role of Demetri to when you were cast? We know you also read lines for Marcus too, so we’d love to hear about that.

Charlie: A lot of people get thrown in these auditions in Vancouver but I guess this was a fairly prestigious, high caliber auditions come out of Vancouver for a role, films as well. Every single one of my agent’s clients actually phoned her up and said “Get me an audition for that movie, I want to be in that movie”, which is unprecedented from her point of view. But when I got the audition I got a quick coaching session with my coach, just from in terms of technically speaking in an acting point of view. And then I logged onto your forum and asked some questions and some people replied about Demetri and yada yada; and I got a good idea of what Demetri is like. And I walked into the room after my first audition and I looked not too different from how Demetri looks actually in the movie. I had a beautiful long, gray, dark coat. I was wearing two inch black heels which is definitely something that I adore and these kind of black flares which is kind of cool as well. And the hair was very short at the time, not like in the film, but I managed to get a little spike down the forehead just to sort of insinuate some kind of, I don’t know, Italian. The first audition went very well. The casting director in Vancouver just basically said to me, “Look into my eyes and deliver the lines”, that’s what I did. And I guess they’re looking for a look off the bat, and then when I was brought back in to read in front of Chris Weitz and Wyck Godfrey who is the producer, I did pretty much exactly the same. I had obviously brought a lot more to the character and the beats and everything. The scene was the scene was the bell tower scene, just after where Edward and Bella come together. It went from there, yeah I felt really good actually off the bat. I could tell it went really well. Chris was laughing and Wyck enjoyed it and I said to him “Should I do it again?” and he said “Why not?”, so I did and I walked out of the room feeling very good, but then threw it all away like you do when you’re auditioning. You know, you don’t spend too much on it; you just throw it away and hope for the best. And sure enough three or four days later I got a very, very promising call which is when they said, well we want you to read for Marcus as well. So I went back in and got some coaching for Marcus, but I’ve got to tell you, my heart wasn’t in it. I wanted to play Demetri from the word go. I did buy Breaking Dawn and I read that, what I gained from Marcus’ character is he is very apathetic and not much fun, and totally against who I am as a person or as Demetri is – someone who is very close to who I am, I find anyway. I went back in and auditioned and it went to Chris Heyerdahl who is an excellent choice. He is brilliantly, brilliantly apathetic in the film, you have to see it. Once scene he did where his voice is just so old, and it’s a three thousand year old voice, it’s just so old; and it was just addictive to listen to the sound that he made when he delivered hi s line, it was something else.

TA: Why did you find it important to come on a Twilight forum to ask fans their opinion on the role rather than just inventing your own back-story for Demetri from the start?

Charlie: They’re going to be looking for people who play fairly close to what is in the book because you don’t really have anything more than what Stephenie has written and Melissa has translated into the screenplay. You don’t have anything more than that, so it’s wrong to, especially in an auditioning sense to make too many brave choices off the bat because you’re just going to take yourself out of the market essentially. Now I made enough choices in the audition to actually, bearing in mind what I heard from the guys on Twilighters Anonymous and what I read in the book, I made brave enough choices to stand out but not be untrue to what Stephenie wrote. When you get the role, that’s when you can really start playing with your character because you know that you are the person to play this and therefore you have to be as deep as possible, and that’s why I decided to create this huge back-story for Demetri so he had some kind of true journey through this whole thing.