Hi Isaac. Lovely to meet you. So you voice the character of Eggs in new film Boxtrolls.
Can you tell us a bit about it?
So Boxtrolls is the story of the very cute, shy and timid creatures called the boxtrolls,
and they're inventors really. They live underground in this cabin with all these machines that
they've made from salvaged junk because at night, they go up to the town above them and
they go gathering and they take all this garbage and junk from various trash cans and bring
it all the way down and turn it into these wonderful pieces of engineering. But above
ground, there's a man with a serious inferiority complex called Archibald Snatcher who's completely
insane and is hell bent on getting himself something called a white hat, which means
that he eats cheese with high society, and it's really about my character Eggs, who's
been raised by the boxtrolls and he thinks he's a boxtroll, but really he's a boy, and
it's about him trying to lead the boxtrolls to get them to break away from their boxes
and their shy timidness and fight against this lunatic who's trying to kill them all.
Now, it is an animation and a 3D one, but it's also quite scary. There are parts when Archibald
Snatcher really did freak me out a little bit.
Yeah.
Especially because it's 3D, he's always coming right at me.
It's great. He's got this kind of very kind of typical villain. He's got that great, the
perfect kind of characteristics with the greasy hair, the big belly and kind of thrown away
sort of clothes and fur, which looks like it's been at the bottom of a garbage can for years.
So he's... And a really long nose and a really ugly kind of face with the puffed up bit.
Not to mention he's lactose intolerant, which just adds to the hilarity.
The film did make me want to eat a lot of cheese afterwards. Did you find that you wanted
to eat a lot of cheese?
Yeah, whenever we were shooting, I had to have my cheese platter before to get me into character.
A bit of Brie. A bit of Cheddar. And you worked with some big names in this, so Ben Kingsley
and Simon Pegg, who voiced your dad, and Elle Fanning. So did you get to work with those
people then in the studio?
Yeah, I did. I got to work with those three people in fact, and that was really good fun
when you find you're doing it with the other person. Because you do always have a reader
reading the other lines for you, but when you finally have it, when you finally read
with the person who you're going to be conversing with on screen, you get that true kind of
dynamic, and it really comes alive.
This is obviously your first film, which I'm sure must be amazing seeing your name at the
end. That must have been pretty exciting.
That was really special.
But you're also known and what most people probably know you for is Game of Thrones.
You play Bran Stark, and he's one of the pivotal characters in especially the last seasons
- season four. At the end of it, you played a big part and you finally met the Three Eyed
Raven. Finally got there. And so we were left feeling that there's still a lot to come,
and that you're maybe going to get even more powerful. So is that something you'd like
to see Bran have - a lot more power?
Absolutely, and what's going to happen now really is we're going to finally see him find
out exactly what this power is and what it's supposed to do and who this strange tree man
is because the storyline's been kind of building up to this. It's been slow in places prior
to it and finally now, he's reaching sort of the culmination of all these strange visions
he's had and all this confusion and all his brother, who's gone on the way home, and now
his guide has just been killed. So finally, now he's there and he's ready to find out
kind of who he is.
And one of his powers that we know about already is that he can get into the mind of animals
and creatures. So if you could get into the mind of someone, anyone. Who would it be?
Ooh gosh.
I think I would go into the mind of maybe the Queen and just...
Would you like to be royal?
No, I think I'd just ridicule it all and maybe getting a bit political here, but I just saw
recently there was a video on YouTube, where the Queen's guard is doing sort of a strange
dance. Maybe that was me. Maybe I went to him and did the strange dance.
You'd like to get the guards to do some weird ballet moves and stuff. That could be lots
of fun. But with Game of Thrones obviously, that's become huge. Did you ever have any
idea just how big it was going to become?
No. Not at all. When we first did the pilot, it was just exciting to be in a pilot, rather
than think oh we really hope this will be really successful and we can do this and that.
But the fact that it has become so successful is really exciting and really cool.
You get to travel the world with it. So where have your favourite places been, and also
do you get much time to come back home? You're from Kent. Do you get much time back home in Kent?
Oh, I have plenty of time. Yeah. In fact, most of my time is really spent there because
we do film it sort of six months between June/July all the way to November or December-ish. But
it's only sort of weeks at a time or days at a time, so I still have plenty of time
there. And the only place I've ever filmed for Thrones is Northern Ireland.
Wonderful place.
It really is, though. And the city of Belfast is really up and coming, and it's got great
restaurants, which is where we go most of the time.
Well, it's lovely to meet you, and up next for you then quickly... What can we see from you next?
The next season of Game of Thrones really and school is my biggest project at the moment.
Well good luck, and enjoy Northern Ireland when you're back there.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.