“There were cer­tain dance moves that were all me” – Jared Gilman on Moon­rise King­dom at 10

What kind of bird are you? If you’re still unsure, you shouldn’t be. You’ve had a full decade to answer this unas­sum­ing­ly deep ques­tion posed by Jared Gilman’s super con­fi­dent cub scout Sam in Wes Anderson’s 2012 film, Moon­rise King­dom.

We’ll give you a pass if you don’t have an answer though because per­haps it’s an evolv­ing thing. In fact, as time goes on, even the guy who asked it isn’t so sure. ​“It feels like a dif­fer­ent life or some­thing,” the now 23-year-old Gilman laughs. ​“We shot it almost 11 years ago – that’s almost half my life­time. It’s very sur­re­al to watch it now,” he admits. ​“I get flood­ed with flashbacks.”

Gilman was just 12 and being chauf­feured around from audi­tion to audi­tion by his mum when he land­ed on Anderson’s radar. Unbe­knownst to him, the direc­tor of Bot­tle Rock­et, Rush­more and The Roy­al Tenen­baums had lined-up anoth­er per­son­al tale for his next fea­ture. This time, it was a gen­tle com­ing-of-age adven­ture about a young orphan boy who falls in love with a New Pen­zance islander named Suzy (Kara Hayward).

Fol­low­ing an intense pen-pal romance, they decide to make it offi­cial and elope, anger­ing Suzy’s dowdy par­ents (Bill Mur­ray and Frances McDor­mand) and attract­ing the unwant­ed atten­tion of Til­da Swinton’s sin­is­ter Social Ser­vices. As they try to live out their François Truf­faut-esque fan­ta­sy, the island’s inhab­i­tants ral­ly to hunt them down, led by Bruce Willis’ kind­ly Cap­tain Sharp, Edward Norton’s nice-yet-clue­less Scout Mas­ter Ward and a troop of fel­low scouts.

“The first time I met Wes was my first call­back for the part,” recalls Gilman. ​“I obvi­ous­ly had no point of ref­er­ence for direc­tors, I just remem­ber it was very sur­re­al and excit­ing. I had no idea if I’d ever get the part but just get­ting a chance to meet an actu­al direc­tor was incred­i­ble enough. I wouldn’t say I was con­fi­dent, it was more assur­ance. I was ner­vous to an extent, but it was a fun ner­vous­ness. It was like, ​‘This is what I want to be doing in my life and I’m get­ting an oppor­tu­ni­ty to do it real­ly soon.’”

After bag­ging the part (accord­ing to Gilman’s mum, who saw an inter­view with Ander­son after the film debuted, it may have had some­thing to do with his look: ​“Wes point­ed out the glass­es and the hair as some­thing that stuck out to him,”) Gilman’s next task was to become acquaint­ed with his on-screen girl­friend. ​“We got along pret­ty well,” he says of his first meet­ing with Kara Hay­ward. ​“The real­i­ty of shoot­ing a movie when you’re a kid is that you’re also in school a lot so when we weren’t doing scenes, for the most part we were doing classwork.”

How­ev­er, when they weren’t study­ing, the pair had a fair amount of roman­tic moments to film – no doubt a chal­lenge for any actor, let alone those who are yet to hit adult­hood. ​“The dance scene on the beach, that was the last thing Kara and I filmed,” says Gilman, ​“and that was inten­tion­al because Wes want­ed the two of us to feel very com­fort­able with each oth­er. It was a closed set. In the script, it said, ​‘Sam does some­thing vague­ly like the twist’. I remem­ber we went into this lit­tle house the pro­duc­tion was using and did a rehearsal. Wes direct­ed me a lit­tle bit, but there are cer­tain dance moves that were all me.”

As for walk­ing the del­i­cate tightrope of show­ing phys­i­cal inti­ma­cy between sam and Suzie, Gilman explains: ​“Wes was aware we were kids hav­ing to do those scenes. There was a moment mid­way through pro­duc­tion – I think it was when Sam and Suzie are get­ting mar­ried – where Wes took us into the church tent and was like, ​‘How about you guys try hug­ging to break the ice a lit­tle bit?’. We hugged and were like, ​‘Alright, that was okay.’”

How does it feel revis­it­ing those ten­der sequences as a young adult? ​“I guess when I’m watch­ing those scenes, I’m just in the moment for the most part,” rea­sons Gilman, before reveal­ing that he ​“did get ribbed a lit­tle bit by friends and stuff after, but that’s just what hap­pens when you’re a kid.”

When the pair weren’t shar­ing scenes togeth­er, they were learn­ing first-hand from some of the best actors in the busi­ness. ​“Work­ing with the cast was extreme­ly sur­re­al,” says Gilman. ​“I’d grown up watch­ing a bunch of Bill Mur­ray movies, and when I got cast my par­ents made sure I watched Die Hard. Bill taught me how to tie a tie at one point and Jason Schwartz­man was just super nice. Work­ing with Til­da was fun because I had gone to see her in the Nar­nia film for my sev­enth birth­day. I didn’t tell her that though.”

Moon­rise King­dom remains one of Anderson’s sweet­est films, and for Gilman, the expe­ri­ence of mak­ing it evokes a spe­cial kind of nos­tal­gia. ​“It’s impact real­ly hit me when Hal­loween rolled around and there were lots of peo­ple dress­ing up as Sam and Suzy; it became a minor cliché,” he laughs. ​“But ulti­mate­ly, it’s because it was a movie that, for lots of peo­ple, was instru­men­tal in one way or anoth­er. It’s some­thing I can look back on and say, ​‘Yeah, that was an instru­men­tal movie for me, too.’”