'Narnia' cast chronicles its tight bond

NEW YORK -- The sales clerk in a Manhattan department store asked Georgie Henley's mother if she wanted to try a new eye cream, and then she looked at the 12-year-old shopper with her."Are you the little girl from 'Narnia'? You have grown so much!"Yes, the child actress who played Lucy Pevensie in "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" has matured, but back home in Yorkshire, England, she's "just Georgie." That's what she told nearly two-dozen reporters lined up as if in a mini-press conference or makeshift classroom, 52 stories high in a luxury hotel."I live in quite a small town and everybody knows each other. I'm just Georgie. I mean, I'm not looked at as the girl in the film or the film star or anything like that. ... I did love switching on the Christmas lights in my town," Georgie said, with disarming enthusiasm.She's the youngest of three Henley girls and loves that the two "Chronicles of Narnia" movies introduced her to actors William Moseley and Skandar Keynes, who play Lucy's brothers, Peter and Edmund."Having Skandar and Will around, it's like I've got two big brothers -- especially Will, who's always there if you want to have a cuddle on set, which is lovely. Whenever you're feeling down, Will's always there, and he's always happy unless you've just done a shouting scene and it's all a bit intense."I think the reason we all have this chemistry and bond is because we've basically grown up together, almost. We've spent years together. It's crazy, isn't it?" said Georgie, paired with Moseley for interviews.Actress Anna Popplewell, who plays Lucy's older sister, Susan, agrees that it's "cheesy" the way everyone talks about the four young cast members being like a real family. But she has a theory about that."I think when people send people on summer camps or bonding trips, they send them to do things like high rope climbing and extraordinary things. And when you do extraordinary things with people like fighting battles or simulating huge wars, you do bond very quickly."As for whether Moseley is recognized by the moviegoing public, he fessed up that sometimes he is, particularly at airports when he buys his tickets and flies economy class."I'm sitting there with the newspaper and a bunch of Italian girls recognize me. Oh no, 'Hi, nice to meet you.' And I still have 20 minutes until my flight's coming, so I have to sit there and just read the newspaper while they're all staring at me."To which Georgie gave the classic little-sister response: "Somebody's got to be recognized by Italian girls, William. I mean, it's a hard life." To which he said with a laugh, "It could be a lot worse. You're right, Georgie."It wasn't exactly the Narnian army, but Disney brought cast members to New York to do interviews along with director Andrew Adamson, writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely and producer Mark Johnson.They were there to talk about "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian," the sequel to 2005's "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe." Here is some of what else they had to say:Popplewell on how the two movies compare: "This one was bigger. ... Suddenly you have Telmarine armies as well as Narnian armies, suddenly there are 300 extras training in one area and a huge prosthetics tent in another and you're catering for a thousand people. Even having experienced the huge scale of the first movie, I was surprised by how big everything was."Moseley on the physical and emotional challenges of the sequel: "In the first one, I really essentially played myself, the older brother trying to do selfless things. Now, Peter's much more angry, much more frustrated, headstrong and self-entitled."I really had to get in touch with all those sort of angry emotions and take it out on my fellow little 'siblings,' which wasn't easy at times. So, on an emotional level it was harder, but on a physical level, I think it was actually better."Moseley, on the picture's scope: "If they wanted to go to a location that was in the middle of nowhere with huge mountains, they wouldn't CG (computer-generate) it. They would take us there, they would fly us in, in helicopters. ..."If they needed a castle, they wouldn't CG the castle, they would build it. For us, as actors, it was actually more of a sensory experience because we were immersed in these locations and sets that were just out of this world."Director Adamson on the PG rating: "I did want it to be intense, and I wanted it to be a relatively hard PG, I wanted it to still be accessible to small children but to have a reality and jeopardy to it, where the life-and-death situations feel real."It's always a hard thing, because I think different people have a different level of acceptance to how exposed they want their kids to be to intense action. I don't think it's violent, I don't think there's anything in it that's graphic, I don't think there's anything in it that's gratuitous, but the action is quite intense and quite tense at times."Adamson, who spent 11 years on overlapped "Shrek" and "Narnia" projects and will produce but not direct the next "Narnia" installment: "I'm taking a long break, I'm taking about a year off and just developing some stuff and looking to do something quite different. ... I had two children on the last film, the oldest of which is 5 years old and about to start school, so we're in the process of moving back to New Zealand."Writer McFeely, on deviating from C.S. Lewis: "To be fair, there's a little more invention in this one amongst Andrew, Chris and myself than in the first one. The first one's an easier three-act structure, it's a more beloved and well-known book so there are certainly fewer liberties that you can take. This one, perhaps as beloved, but as Chris said, structurally tough," which led to changing how Prince Caspian's story unfolds and hastening his meeting of the Pevensies.Writer Markus, on the process: "Part of what's so unique about writing these movies, as opposed to writing some little indie movie about three people in a room, is that while we're writing them there is already a team of guys visualizing these things, storyboarding them, doing them on computers, making models," that will be retained or chucked, depending on the final script.Moseley, who won't be in the third movie, on filming his final shot, a battle scene: "There was this beautiful sunset in the Czech Republic and we were all just running -- the whole cast -- down this hill and it just felt like we were bound for this very, very last moment. It immortalized our experience together and embodied everything we'd been through, and it was sad, but I felt like I was ready to move on at that point."(Pittsburgh Post-Gazette movie editor Barbara Vancheri can be reached at bvancheri(at)post-gazette.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)