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Hangin' With Archives
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They’re
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 Dyllan Christopher, Quinn Shephard, Gina Mantegna, Tyler J. Williams in Warner Bros. UNACCOMPANIED MINORS |
AGW: This movie talks about forming a family with people who are strangers, did that happen for you on the set while filming?
Tyler: Yeah, I’d have to say that we’d never met each other before, came from different parts of the country, New Jersey –
Quinn: New Jersey, California, Canada. We were all over the place.
Tyler: We came together, we were all there for one thing, to make this a good movie and just to have fun with it; and I think we were able to accomplish that.
AGW: Tyler, you have a really funny dance number. Was the dancing your choreography?
Tyler: There was no real choreography in the original script. The one that I first got said [that the dance should be] ‘a cross between Napoleon Dynamite and ants in your pants’. I’m happy that wasn’t one of the first things we did so I could kind of get more of a feel for the character as to what he would do, him coming from these older times, he would do older dance moves, and that’s basically what I had to pull from.
AGW: Are you a dancer normally? Is that something that you enjoy doing?
Tyler: Yeah, I do dance. I’ve been dancing forever. I’ve never done that kind of dance before. I was more hip-hop, break, all these other kind of dances, but I think that was kind of cool that I had to take some of those new dances that are out now and kind of mold it into an older form and a goofier form.
AGW: Dyllan, did you actually play guitar in that scene?
Dyllan: No, I don’t but I play a mean air guitar. That was a blast, a fun scene to film. Paul, our director is a firm believer in the power of improvisation and so many scenes in there were just thought up on the spot, like we saw the prop, the guitar and Paul was thinking, ‘wouldn’t that be awesome if he takes it out and start air-guitaring. I’m sure we could find a song that would go to it’. And I’m like ‘dude, that would be awesome’.
Gina: And it took off from there. That’s Paul right there.
AGW: Gina, would it be your choice to spend a pamper day at the spa like your character?
Gina: I don’t really like spas that much, or people getting their make-up done and their hair. It’s nice for a little bit but, no, that’s one part of Grace that I can’t really identify with but I’m sure it would be nice. I can definitely identify with her sarcasm, her sense of humor, her confidence. I think we all have a little bit of Grace in us, loving to be pampered.
AGW: Quinn, you seem so sweet but your character was tougher than the others. How did you develop her?
Quinn: I’m really nothing like my character, and I think when I was playing the character I was thinking exactly about where she grew up and what she was like, and I was trying to put that in because It was really hard to get the nerve to act that way, but hopefully I got it.
AGW: You get to drive a luggage cart with everybody on it in a wild chase scene. Was that great?
Quinn: Oh that was very fun. The stunt coordinator gave me driving lessons around the [stage] or wherever we were, because we were never really in an airport except for one scene. They’d have me drive around special areas, so I could get used to it.
AGW:
You also have a crazy, sledding down a hill in a canoe scene. Was that
actually you and were you really outside or was it all special effects
with a green screen?
Quinn: We did a lot of that scene. It was so cold, it was six degrees one night and it was so wet. I remember I was freezing, and I had so many layers of clothing and I was still freezing.
Tyler: There were only certain things that we just couldn’t do, like going off the snow drift. There were certain takes where the canoe just flipped over, and so we just kind of played what was actually happening. It was moving fast, we were scared, it was cold, there was acting involved but there wasn’t much of it.
Quinn: Yeah, we were scared and we were screaming because it was just crazy.
AGW: What about sliding down the airport luggage chutes. Did you both do that? Tyler, you were in a suitcase!
Quinn: I did some of it but my stunt double did some of it too.
Tyler: I didn’t do most of it. It was just the plain suitcase with nothing in it when everything was going down. We shot most of the suitcase scenes away from the whole enclosure. They stuck me in it, tied me in, just turned it with a wheel, and I just read lines.
AGW: If you were stuck with a bunch of kids without adults, would you be a follower or a leader?
Gina: I’m an Aries so I’d probably end up wanting to lead or get things going in the right direction but I pray that I don’t end up in a situation like that with the security guards. Hopefully, they’d be more on their toes than they were in this film. I think that would be the most intense experience to go through.
Dyllan: Personally, I think I would just sit in the corner with a book. As much fun as it looks, I don’t think I’m quite as adventurous as my character.
AGW: Did your director Paul [Feig] tell you guys to watch certain movies before filming?
Gina: No. He didn’t really. It was cool. I was cast for Grace and Dyllan was cast for Spencer and we were going to play those roles but he really wanted us to incorporate ourselves and people that age. He wanted me to play the mindset of a fifteen-year-old and him for fourteen. He really wanted us to be able to identify with the character and just make it real and make it actually come to life.
AGW: Do you think that you all act older because you are around grown-ups so much when you make films?
Dyllan: I think that does help, yeah. Growing up acting myself, I think it does give you a lot of good, useful life experience acting with adults and dealing with directors and AD’s and all the people on set. It really does give you a good life experience.
Gina: It’s not even the sense that we want do be older and act more mature, we kind of have to in that we are working with very important people that need to get their work done and even though Paul loves to have fun, he had his vision at the end of the day that had to be fulfilled so as much as we love to be crazy kids, we all have our serious side.
AGW: Quinn, you’re the youngest of the gang. Is Tyler the first boy you’ve ever kissed?
Quinn: Yes (giggles)
Tyler: Wow, I didn’t know that.
AGW: Was it nerve-wracking that day?
Tyler: I think it was at the end of our shoot, we were almost done, we had like two more weeks to go, and we had progressed as the characters, we were at this time, most of the time, no longer really Tyler or Quinn. Most of the time we were Donna and Charlie doing this thing. And I think that made it easier, it wasn’t one of those things where we had to really concentrate, ‘okay, now when we do this make sure there’s nothing really going on there’, it was just we were having fun with it, and that was our job to go there and we did it.
AGW: Good save, Tyler!
Quinn: Yeah, we were totally into our characters at that point, so we weren’t really concentrating on what we were doing so much as being our characters.
AGW: You guys shot in Utah for two and a half months. When you were not shooting, what did you do to have fun in Utah?
Quinn: We went to arcades and stuff and the mall. Utah’s flat, except for the mountains.
Tyler: We went to some arcades; it is still Utah (everyone laughs). I think we had a lot of fun on the set just creating what we could do there, like playing – I think one of the greatest things a kid can do is play tag on a set. There are so many lights and things that you can just bump into, that you have to dodge a round them, and it’s really fun.
AGW: Who was the best at not getting tagged?
Dyllan: Dominique who played my little sister, had so much energy. She could run for an hour and we couldn’t catch her. I think she won at tag. We had so much fun. They brought us in a week early so we could get to know each other and that really helped the chemistry on and off set and really made for a much more fun experience.
Quinn: And they gave us scooters.
Tyler: Yeah, we didn’t have to do anything outside of work to make it fun, it was like a big playground, and by the time we got home we were exhausted, not only were we shooting but we were playing most of the time.
AGW: Did Wilmer hang out with you at all, because he was with you in a lot of scenes?
Quinn: Totally.
Tyler: Yeah, we hung out a lot, whenever it was a Saturday or whenever we were just off work, we’d all head to The Skybox, it was a place in the mall, a sport’s bar with an arcade in it, a great arcade, really big, we could go eat and then just hang out; we had a good time.
Gina: Oh, Wilmer is our big brother. He’s the one behind it all also. He was right there with us.
Dyllan: He’s funny. He’s a big kid too. The whole set, everybody was just so nice. We had so many great comedians and just nice people and it made for a really fun experience.
AGW: How are you guys going to celebrate the holidays this year?
Gina: Big parties. That’s how we do it.
Dyllan: Yeah, big family parties. That’s how it always seems to work. It’s so much fun that way.
Tyler:
I’m going to head home for about three weeks, go back to New York,
go back to the cold, the snow, get a little bit more of that, hang out
with my family, and then come back to L.A. just to have a good time and
probably work because I love it, I’m just going with the flow of
it.
Quinn: I live in New Jersey, so I’m going to stay in New Jersey, because I’m taking my vacation in California now. I’ll pretty much go to visit my whole family and eat dinner.
AGW: Coming from New York and New Jersey, how did you two make it out to Hollywood?
Quinn: Well, my mom had done some TV and commercials. She knew I had a really big interest in acting because I was always acting in plays with my dolls that involved a lot of singing and dragging them around by their hair. But she saw that and I guess she really wanted to get me started in acting, because she knew that I had the interest that she had so she took me to some agents and I got accepted when I was really young, I was only three, and that’s where I started.
Tyler: I auditioned for the [‘Chris] show in New York, they brought me out to L.A., we shot and that’s where I figured out that this was something that could really be a career. I also realized that this movie was on the table and if I didn’t take it somebody else would, because it’s one of the greatest scripts I think I’ve seen in awhile. And that brought me out to L.A. and then that brought me to Utah, and brought me here, this movie really carried us.
AGW: Gina you grew up with your dad [Joe Mantegna of “Joan of Arcadia”] on sets I assume. Did you always want to act yourself?
Gina: Yeah. Being around it definitely showed me to that world, exposed me to that. A lot of kids don’t really get to experience that. Dyllan and I both had experiences when we were younger. He was a part of it and I was a little bit behind it, we were able to see and figure out for ourselves if this is what we wanted to do. Having my dad be a huge part of showing me that world but definitely not pushing me into it, it helped.
AGW: Did your dad give you advice?
Gina: Yeah. He definitely has shown me the ropes. But, the advice he’s always given me is to always be confident in everything I do, regardless of anything that happens, if I like it, do it.
AGW: Gina, would you work with your dad if you could?
Gina: I don’t know. We’ll see. The resemblance is so hard to ignore. I don’t know if I would be able to stray away from playing his daughter so we’ll see how that goes.
AGW: Gina, you and Dyllan are the oldest, do you want to keep acting or go to college or both?
Gina: We’re both attending private schools so college is very much on our minds and we’re being driven in that direction but I know that I’ll always keep acting as a part of my life.
Dyllan: Yeah. In the long run, I want to stay in the film business in some form or another. If I don’t continue acting, I want to direct or edit; something in the film industry.
AGW: What gifts would you all like to get for the holidays?
Dyllan: I don’t like telling people what I want to get because I want it to be a surprise when I find out or else it’s like ‘oh, you got me what I told you to get me. Thanks’. Rather than, ‘dude, how did you know I wanted this?’
Gina: Exactly.
Quinn: I’d like mostly stuff for design, because I like to design clothing.
Tyler: You know, I’m at a point now where I can truthfully say I don’t really want anything. Everything that I’ve ever really wanted has happened. And I’m content, I’m full, I just want to go back home and hang out with my family, watch them get stuff and be happy. I just love seeing them open it, and seeing it there, the one thing that they’ve been wanting all year, it’s right there. I think that’s one of the best feelings you can have.
AGW: So you’re cool with all socks and underwear?
Tyler: Oh yeah, socks, underwear, bring it on.
AGW: Tyler, was there any problem coordinating the TV show with this film?
Tyler: We finished in January and this started in February. There was no problem coordinating it. I was reading this the same time we were shooting ‘Chris’, and I was looking forward to it so much that it was like, ‘Okay, when is the season going to be done? I love you guys, I really do, but this is going to be fun, I know it.’ It’s like going to sleep the night before something really big happens, when you can’t sleep. I was really looking forward to meeting everybody. I’d gone in with Quinn for the screen test but there were five other girls, I didn’t know who they were going to pick. So it went well.
AGW: Was this shoot just full of jokes and goofing off?
Quinn: Everyone was always joking.
Tyler: We weren’t serious, we weren’t very professional actors – you can’t expect that from five kids together shooting this crazy movie, doing all these things. We were just having fun, messing up lines sometimes. It was free-flowing. We had two and a half months to shoot what, some 125 scenes, it wasn’t that hard.
AGW: What did you like about your character Charlie, Tyler?
Tyler: I think there was something about him. He’s just glowing, he’s a warm person, he’s very optimistic, he can look at a disaster and say, ‘Well, at least I’m not dead.’
AGW: What would you guys do if you were alone and free to just go wild?
Quinn: I’d go on a vacation with all my friends and spend a bunch of money, my parent’s money in L.A. I love L.A.
Tyler: If I was unaccompanied you’d all better watch out! (everyone laughs) I would probably do the same thing, just hang out, just do stuff that I’ve always wanted to do, hurt myself a couple of times doing some stupid stuff. A lot of the stuff that we did in the movie I would probably do, I’d eat everything possible, everything I couldn’t really eat, take a golf cart and just drive recklessly, try out everything in the store.
AGW: Gina, did you have your Sweet 16 birthday on the set? Did they have a party for you?
Dyllan: You had like three parties. I think there were three different cakes too.
Gina: There were several parties and the day we were shooting there were tons of extras there that day so it was crazy, crazy but a lot of fun. We had a birthday in the morning, then on set, then after shooting at base camp and then ..it was crazy but it was good.
AGW: Dyllan, any birthday in your near future?
Dyllan: I turn fifteen next month. We’re planning a little private celebration with my family. We’re going to go out on the 8th when the movie comes out and probably go see it with my family and that’ll be cool, a nice low-key thing.
AGW: Gina, your character thinks she was a dork. Have you ever felt that way?
Gina: I think we all have a little dork in us. Of course I felt like a dork with those glasses on but it was fun. I lived it up and took the chance.
AGW: What is your favorite Christmas movie?
Gina: This one. We’re all hoping that this film will become the new staple for perhaps the younger generation obviously.
Dyllan: “Minors” I’m sure, hopefully will become a huge Christmas favorite, fingers crossed but as far as previous Christmas movies go, I’ve got to hold out for A Christmas Story. It’s the classic.
 
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Do
airports drive you crazy during the holidays? Could you turn chaos into
a blast? Four young tweens and teens flying alone team up at an airport
to turn interrupted trips into a fun adventure in the comedy Unaccompanied
Minors.