Dakota Blue Richards Interview
Picked from an open casting call to play lead character Maria Merryweather in The Secret of Moonacre, teenager Dakota Blue Richards completes a remarkable double with this feat having been similarly selected to play Lyra in The Golden Compass in 2007.
The Secret of Moonacre is directed by Gabor Csupo and adapted from the Elizabeth Goudge’s much loved book The Little White Horse. In it orphaned 13 year old Maria is sent to live with her fearsome uncle (Ioan Gruffudd). But when she explores Moonacre Manor and the valley around it she learns of a curse hanging over this place, and the desperate race against time to lift it.
Did you know the book The Little White Horse, which The Secret of Moonacre is based on?
“Not when I auditioned, but I read it before we started shooting.”
The Hungarian locations look stunning, how magical was that experience for you?
“It was great because there’s a whole old part of Hungary which is so nice, it was the Buda side of Budapest. It’s all cobbled streets and big stone buildings and it’s just really pretty. It’s an old fashioned, fairy tale land.”
How were the costumes you got to wear in The Secret of Moonacre?
“They looked great, but they felt horrible. Every dress that I wore I was laced into, and there were loads of different layers, and lots of bustles. The way that bustles do up is they have one tight around the waist, one around your hips and one just above your knees. So you can’t really move your legs very well. That’s why all the old fashioned people used to walk like penguins. And then I had to get on horses and stuff, and to do that you have to be able to swing your legs around, and I just couldn’t do that.”
The restrictive costumes must have made it difficult to breathe too, didn’t it?
“It was hard because they always had to loosen it after lunch. They always wanted it to look like it was done up completely, so that there wasn’t a gap in the lacing, so they always pulled it really tightly. It was like having hyperventilating sometimes, you’d be sitting there breathing really hard but you couldn’t move your stomach at all.”
How good are you around horses?
“I’m okay around them, I’m not that great on them. I’m not bad. If I have a good horse I think I’m okay, but Periwinkle who’s the little grey one, didn’t like me. They also had her foal on the set as well, but they kept taking it away because it couldn’t be in the shot. So the horse would be standing there talking to the baby, and I’d be on it. It would turn round and start walking one way and I’d try to make it come back but it wouldn’t listen to me. I hate whips and things, people would say if it wasn’t paying attention I should pull it really hard, but I said I couldn’t do that. That’s horrible.”
Did you have to speak to it in another language, or was English okay?
“To be honest, when I was practicing, they just did it in English. Or there was the Hungarian guy there so he could talk to the horse in his language. But on the set you couldn’t really talk to it that well because it would be in the middle of a shot and it wouldn’t really make sense.”
Do you have to fit films in around the schoolwork?
“I have a tutor on set because it’s quite hard to always fit it around the school holidays, so what they sometimes do is start it in the school holidays and have the rest of it in the time just after.”
Is it good having that one-to-one teaching?
“Yeah, there’s no time to sleep or mess around. I find that when I go back to school, you’ll be sitting in a class where you’re meant to be reading, and funny line will come up and somebody will make some silly comment, then the class has gone and you’re sitting there for 10 minutes and everyone’s laughing at something somebody has said. My friends laugh at me because I turn around in lessons if it’s really annoying me and go ‘shut up, we’re meant to be reading!’. Everyone else is like ‘oh look at you,’.”
But you presumably have quite a strong work ethic, working around adults as you do?
“Yeah, you can make jokes on set but you can’t do anything too disruptive because if you disrupt things time is money and people get really angry.”
Were you a fan of your director Gabor Csupo’s work on Rugrats and The Wild Thornberrys?
“I remember watching Rugrats when I was little, and The Wild Thornberrys. I didn’t realise that it was him that had made them until afterwards. I thought it was really cool.”
Your co-star Tim Curry worked with Gabor before, was he good fun to be with?
“Yeah, he was. He’s one of those people who has perfect timing, he says the right things at the right time and makes things funny. So like some woman walked past him in the street one day when he was in Budapest and she looked at him, then looked at him again and walked over to him. She said ‘I’m sorry, do I recognise you?’, and he said ‘well it’s entirely possible,’ and left it at that. Everyone else was laughing but she didn’t get it.”
You must get recognised too though, have you got used to all that yet?
“Kind of, I’m not surprised when I see myself any more. I still point it out, I’m like ‘oh look Mum, it’s me,’. It’s funny because I was on the Sky magazine that my friend has at her house, so she says to me ‘oh yeah, every time I pick it up and look through it I always think of you and start laughing,’. It’s little things like that. I don’t get noticed much though, people don’t recognise me.”
Can you separate yourself from that person on their magazine cover, to maintain a real life amidst the film business?
“Yeah, say if for example if I have to take a day of school and people ask what I’m doing, I just say I’m going to work and that’s cool. And leave it at that. Or they might say ‘what are you doing?’ and I’ll say ‘ADR’ and that’s it. For me and all my friends it’s just something I do, they’ve got over the ‘wow’ bit of it, and they just think of me as anyone else.”
Do you get starstruck?
“I saw Gok Wan in a shop the other day and I followed him, I nearly cried. I called my Mum on the phone and said ‘I’m in a shop and Gok Wan is standing there!’.”
Are there any film stars that have that effect?
“If I see people in the street or something, that I recognise, I turn around and say ‘oh my God, did you see that person?’. I saw James McAvoy walking around Soho once, and I said ‘Mum he’s in a film, I know who he is,’. I met him at the Empire Awards, I think, he just walked over to me and said ‘by the way, I thought you were really amazing,’. I thought ‘thank you!’, then he walked off. He was really nice.”
Did you find that having such an unusual name helps in this business?
“That’s what my Mum said when I was little, because people always said my name was really weird and unusual. She said that ‘if she ever gets famous she won’t have to change it!’.”
You presumably have a well honed imagination as an actress, given your film work to date?
“I did a thing for tv recently, called Dustbin Baby, and there was no CGI in that at all because it was set in the present day.”
How was that for you?
“I found it quite easy, but because it was tv it moved so fast. I didn’t have time to think that there was no CGI or anything.”
Presumably when there is CGI you’re quite used to filling in the gaps?
“Yeah. I think it was probably quite good that I did something with so much CGI to start off with, because it means that I don’t get to a point where there’s suddenly quite a lot of it and I have no idea what to do. If it had gone wrong, a little bit, with the CGI and I didn’t really get it in The Golden Compass it might have been forgiven I think. But if I hadn’t done any, and then when I was 20 or something I did a film where there was a lot and I didn’t know what to do then, it would be a bit weird.”
THE SECRET OF MOONACRE: Out on Blu-ray and DVD on 20th July 2009
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