A 16-year-old actor, Lyon Daniels, is starring as Jared in a new series based on children’s fantasy books by Tony DiTerlizzi. Daniels turned to a string of classic films to prepare for the role, and wanted to base his portrayal on Darth Vader’s alter-ego from the classic sci-fi franchise.
He told ScreenRant: “Well, my character delves deep into mental health. He has mental health issues, and that’s something that’s very personal and important to me. I really wanted to respect that in my performance. So I tried to be as authentic about it as possible.
“I talked with the showrunner, Aaron, and the writer as well. We avoided certain words and just tried to figure out how to do it in a very natural and coherent way as possible.
“I prepared for it by just watching movies. I watched ‘Donny Darko’ and ‘Good Will Hunting.’ I pulled from Anakin Skywalker, just kind of trying to get a variety of things to emulate in my performance. I’m so grateful to play a character as complex as Jared, and it was a great learning experience.”
The story was initially adapted into a movie with “The Good Doctor” star Freddie Highmore in 2008 but Lyon – who is appearing opposite Christian Slater in this new version – explained that the series has been “attuned” for the current generation.
” I think ‘Spiderwick’ is kind of attuned for this generation. We touched on mental health and just all these relevant topics that are prevalent today, and I think it definitely taught me so much about mental health and how to grasp with it,” he explained.
“And I think, honestly, this might sound frivolous, but I think [of] the folklore aspect of the story as well. I mean, we take things like … fairies don’t like iron, and fairies can’t lie, and all of these awesome cool little facts and putting them into one world. It’s so awesome.”
