Interview: Wes Bentley on Pete’s Dragon

Wes Bentley on Pete’s Dragon

Disney’s Pete’s Dragon opens this Friday and it’s very different from the 1977 film. This time around, Pete (Oakes Fegley) is orphaned and taken in by the very fuzzy dragon Elliott. When kindly forest ranger Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard) finds him in the woods, she takes him back to her home with Jack (Wes Bentley) and his daughter Natalie (Oona Laurence). Things do not, of course, go as planned, when Jack’s brother Gavin (Karl Urban) takes matters with the dragon into his own hands.

We recently got a chance to sit down with Bentley to talk about the experience of shooting the film, working in New Zealand, children’s movies and working with this cast and crew. Check out what he has to say below, including what the kids did for them on set.

ComingSoon.net: So, I needed a lot of tissues for this movie…

Wes Bentley: Oh yeah. Oh my gosh, the first five minutes – I just had so many emotions in that first part of the movie. The first time I saw it, I was weeping a little bit. My wife could hear me, audibly, next to me. [laughs]

CS: Were you a fan of the original?

Bentley: I was, yeah. It’s so different, this one, but yeah, my brothers and I were big fans of the first one.

CS: Yeah, this one was really, really different. When you signed on, had you seen how different it was actually going to be?

Bentley: Yeah, I knew. They had mentioned that it wasn’t going to be a musical. [laughs] Which was good! That was a relief. But yeah, I knew it was going to be different.

CS: Tell me about the audition process for something like this. It’s Disney…

Bentley: I was lucky enough on this one to not have to go in and read. I say it, because every actor, no matter how good, dreads going in and doing that. I was very lucky to have been asked to do this film. I have auditioned for other Disney films. It’s tricky, because sometimes you might not get all the material that you would on other pieces. And you’re not quite sure what the visuals might be like. I went in and read for “Maleficent,” and it was hard to get a concept of what the imagery would be like. So you have a hard time seeing how you’ll fit in to the movie through the visuals.

CS: Speaking of visuals, the dragon in this is ridiculously cute. Were you given a visual of that early on?

Bentley: He is! No, not really. They had been toying with it the whole time. It was really well-written in the script, the personality that Elliott was going to have, so you just kind of go off of that, what was the relationship like between he and Pete. But as far as my character went, the behavior of Elliott was well-noted in the script, so it was easy to play off that.

CS: Your character has a really interesting relationship with Bryce’s character Grace. They have opposing views in terms of the environment. How was that to work on?

Bentley: It was great. It was cool to have something like that in a film that’s really focused on the dragon and the children. When you’re playing a role like this, sometimes details like that can be lost so you don’t have details for your character, so you’re left to make up stuff on your own. But it was great to have a focus, especially within the relationship with Grace and Jack and have a bit of a conflict of interest there, but also, you can sense that there was common ground to be had.

CS: There are some crazy stunts and intense scenes in this film, and you’re working with kids. How was that experience?

Bentley: These kids were great. All of them. The stars of the film, but also the doubles, the stand-ins, they were all really, really great kids and they all got along with each other for four months of shooting and they were all the best of friends. They did dance routines together.

CS: Really?

Bentley: Yeah, yeah! They all had little shows at lunch and stuff. They were very professional and Oona and Oakes are amazing actors. I actually learned a lot watching both of them. As an actor, you always want to reach back to being a child. And having the spontaneity and the imagination of a child. And these two had that in spades. Because it is hard to carry that onto the screen, and they both do that, beautifully.

CS: What dance routines did they do?

Bentley: The girls did a dance to the Bruno Mars song “Uptown Funk.” [laughs] Yeah, and they did one to “Thriller,” and they had these creepy masks they brought out. Yeah, it was mostly the girls who were doing it.

CS: How was it working with Robert Redford?

Bentley: Oh, he’s amazing. He’s the kind of actor I always wanted to emulate. As far as being natural in your delivery and being present in the reality of the moment; I’ve always been a fan of his for all of those reasons. And he knows film like the back of his hand. He’s a director and an actor, and being in the presence of that on set; I was just observing him as much as I could on set without staring. [laughs] But he’s bringing it every time in a relaxed way. That’s something to learn from. A lot of actors like to get themselves worked up and I think from what I saw from Mr. Redford, he goes the other way. He relaxes into it.

CS: I spoke to him earlier this month and he was talking about kids films and how “Bambi” was rough. What early Disney films were impactful for you?

Bentley: Yeah, “Bambi” for sure, but the only part of “Bambi” I remember is the beginning! The horrible part I remember! But other films would have been—”Alice in Wonderland” was huge for my family. And funny enough, “Pete’s Dragon,” even though I didn’t know it was a Disney film at the time. But, gosh, there are so many, I’m going blank, but I know “Alice in Wonderland” was the first to impact me. To this day it informs a lot about me with anything creative.

CS: So there is definitely an environmental message in this film. Was that something you guys talked about on set?

Bentley: A little bit. Being in New Zealand, which is incredibly beautiful—I think it’s paradise—it’s just the perfect place. Everything about it I love, and I would love to live there. I wish it was closer so I could just live there and fly here when I need to. But they’re very environmentally conscious, to the point when you’re eating lunch on a New Zealand set, there are seven bins to put your various items in, including composting. I was already aware of recycling and being aware of my impact [on the environment], but my being there doubles it, triples it. So being there and shooting this and my character and Dallas’ character sort of battling it out about the tear between making money and making a living, but also being responsible about doing so, we were already in that environment, in the country that we were in. That sort of helped that along a little bit. And also (director) David Lowery—it’s a part of who he is; being conscious of what he eats and his impact on the environment as well. It was just sort of in us all. We didn’t have to make an effort to bring anything. It was in the writing, in the environment.

Are you guys excited to see Pete’s Dragon? Make sure to check out our video interviews with Fegley, Howard, Laurence and Robert Redford who plays Grace’s father. Pete’s Dragon opens in theaters on August 12, 2016.