Willow's Dempsey Bryk And Ruby Cruz On Playing The Children Of Legends [Exclusive Interview]

You're both playing children of legacy characters. How much studying did you do of the original movies or the performances of Val Kilmer and Joanne Whalley?

Cruz: Genuinely a lot.

Bryk: So much.

Cruz: Having access to such in-depth footage of our parents was really awesome. Watching their performances and learning about their characters and having the freedom to envision them as parents and envision being their child and having Madmartigan raise you was a very interesting thing to play with.

Bryk: Yeah, also the thing that I loved about your question is the other performances and the other things other than "Willow." Because that was a big part of it, just trying to get a sense of these two people's spirit and who they are. And it was really lovely, because we got to kind of artistically fall in love with both of those actors with a lot closer proximity to them than we ever had before. They just have done amazing things. And Joanne obviously we got to know and was a legitimate mom to us — she was so calming and amazing.

Cruz: Yeah, I also read Val Kilmer's book, which was really interesting.

Bryk: I bought his poetry book.

Cruz: You did?

Bryk: Yeah. I'll show it to you. It was great.

Cruz: But his book was really interesting because he talked about filming "Willow" and he talked about playing that character and what set was like...

Bryk: And the "Val" documentary. A lot of Val stuff was going on at the same thing.

Obviously "Willow" was an important pre-established property for a lot of people. Was there any pressure stepping into the world of "Willow" for either of you, especially with that sort of familial touch to the characters you're playing?

Bryk: The beautiful thing about "Willow" fans — I'll speak personally, but I think it's probably true for everyone — is that it never felt like pressure. It just felt like an opportunity. I think that maybe of all fandom — not all the fandoms, but of a lot of fandoms — I've noticed that "Willow" seems to be just very enthusiastic and loving, but a little less strict, which kind of gave us some creative leeway to say, "Okay, well, we're going to honor the original and the original characters to the best of our ability. But also we had this opportunity to add to the world to create our own thing and carve ourselves out." And I think that's what I tried to do as an actor, but also that what we tried to do as a creative team.

Cruz: Totally. I mean, definitely we want to do them justice, because it is such an iconic, beloved film. But yeah, I'm just really excited. I hope people like it.