By: Izumi Hasegawa September 23, 2014
Isaac Hempstead-Wright played Bran in Game of Thrones, and his new challenge is the voice over of the leading character, Eggs, in The Boxtrolls. We sat down with him and found he is a very calm, normal kid — except for not reading comic books. What is he interested in? What music is he into? And has he had any fun experiences with Game of Thrones fans? He answered these questions for us.
Q: You’re 15 now and when I was your age I was into fashion, music, movies and boys. How about yourself? What are you into?
I’ve got quite a few interests. I’m very interested in piano. I play the piano and I love classical music, although I have gotten into jazz recently. But classical has been my main thing for the past year or so. And science, I really like physics. I do like my fashion. I like that kind of stuff. I like reading. I like video games. I’m basically just a normal kid, but I come over here every now and then and do this kind of madness.
Q: What video games do you play?
I tend to play PC games and Mindcraft is probably the biggest one and other sort of more indie ones. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Daisy.
Q: What kind of classical music do you play?
My favorite is the Romantic era and that’s what I tend to listen to most. Liszt is my absolute favorite one. I love Liszt and Chopin. I can’t really play Liszt that much. [Laughs] I wish. I play snippets of it and then I give up because it’s too hard. What do I play? At the moment, I’m doing a movement from Pathetique, Beethoven’s Sonata, Mozart’s Fantasia in D Minor. Chopin’s Minute Waltz is fun.
Q: What music is on your iPhone or iPod?
It’s all classical really. Although the last thing I was listening to was Charles Mingus, the jazz musician. So, I’m getting into him. He’s cool.
Q: Are you reading any books or comic books?
No, and not comic books. I tend to listen to music more than I read. I need to get into reading a bit more. But the stuff I tend to read is usually non-fiction books more than fiction, but I’ve been trying to power my way through Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. And I do enjoy it. What I tend to do is I start to read books and then I’ll get a flavor of it and move on, but this one I’m trying to finish it. I quite like the story. It’s fun.
Q: You’ve visited different countries because of your job. What has been the most interesting culture shock?
The most crazy place I’ve probably ever visited on filming would have to be Jordan. I did a small test shoot for a test movie. We arrived in Jordan and we stayed in Amman for a night. Then we drove down for three hours into the middle of the Wadi Rum Desert which is in the absolute middle of nowhere. It was insane. And one of the most terrifying things was this guide didn’t speak a word of English. He was driving us along and there was a level crossing with obviously sheep wandering all over and no fences or anything. And there was a huge 50-carriage train – I’m exaggerating a bit — but a very big train powering through. He was like, “Oh no. We’ll go over. We’ll go over.” And we just drove over as the train went “Vroom!” So that was terrifying.
Q: Have you had any interesting fan encounters?
Oh, so any funny fan experiences? Occasionally, fans will ask me to go on their shoulders and we’ll do a sort of Hodor & Bran thing. That’s always good fun. But one guy did it and he really wasn’t an expert at picking people up and I was kind of sideways on his back holding onto his neck then sort of fell off. But that was fun.
The Boxtrolls opens September 26th.
