The Spiderwick Chronicles has once again returned to the screens to remind fans of the mesmerizing story of the twin brothers Jared and Simon Grace and the magical Spiderwick Estate. However, this time, the storyline has been helmed a bit differently to make it all the more interesting and exciting in the eight-episode miniseries from the mastermind creator, Aron Eli Coleite.
Yet, even with the twists and turns setting all the more intriguing climacterics for the story, this series wanted to repeat one key element from the original film as well: Have one actor play the role of the twins just like the 2008 masterpiece did. But things had to unfold differently this time for the casting process, and the showrunner felt it all eventually turned out to be a win-win situation for them.
The Spiderwick Chronicles Show Wanted to Copy This One Thing from the Film
The Spiderwick Chronicles series has only just made its way to the viewers, and fans already seem to be loving it. But this show has one major element different from the movie from 2008. While the original film had one person (Freddie Highmore) play the role of the twins Jared and Simon, this one opted differently, even though it initially wanted to do the same as well.
During a recent interview with ScreenRant, the show’s creator, Aron Eli Coleite, shared the same while explaining how hard the casting process was. He said:
“I wish we had all the money in the universe, and we could have pulled a Freddie Highmore and cast one actor to play both roles. But, I’ve done that before, it’s really hard to do. […] It is just time-consuming and difficult.”
Continuing, he explained how, had they approached the twins the same way as in the movie, it would have been incredibly complicated because “you have to shoot one side, then they have to go change, then you have to shoot the other side, then you have to merge together.” Thus, they decided to take a different approach.
Instead of using one actor for the twins of finding identical twins (which notably wasn’t working), they decided to find “two brothers that fit.” Needless to mention, this wasn’t an easy task either, considering how it “took not only a nationwide search, it was a global search.” As Coleite said:
“We had our casting directors reaching out to the UK, to Australia, all over the world to find these kids and to see if they could match and merge.”
Fortunately for them, their decision to find two different people who could fit in the roles actually ended up working as Lyon Daniels and Noah Cottrell got cast into the roles of Jared and Simon, respectively. In fact, even the creator couldn’t help but admit how they were such accurate castings that they perfectly fit right into the roles!
Aron Eli Coleite Feels Lyon x Noah Collab for the Show is “Perfect”
Although it must have taken a lot of time and effort for them to find this iconic duo to play twin brothers, Aron Eli Coleite seems to be okay with it after looking at how everything turned out. If anything, he considers himself fortunate for this different turn of events for the series, which resulted in him coming across Daniels and Cottrell.
As the showrunner expressed during the same interview:
“I feel very fortunate that we got Lyon and Noah, who not only play perfect twins and brothers, but they also are completely their roles. Lyon is a little bit of a rebel rouser, Noah is a little bit more conservative. So, seeing them inhabit these roles was like, ‘Oh, we did it perfect. We’d nailed it. Fantastic.'”
Plus, with the lead characters being cast so immaculately, they were able to eventually “build out the family from there” with the rest of the cast, which included Joy Bryant, Mychala Lee, and Jack Dylan Grazer in prominent roles as Helen Grace, Mallory Grace, and Thimbletack respectively. And of course, how could the show not be exceptional with a cast like this?
You can stream The Spiderwick Chronicles movie on Prime Video and the series on The Roku Channel.
