Ayla Ruby
Earlier this month, the eight-episode show The Spiderwick Chronicles finally made its streaming television debut. The hit for Roku seems to be striking a chord with fans of the books by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi and people new to the children’s fantasy world as well. We recently talked with actors Lyon Daniels, Noah Cottrell, and Mychala Lee about bringing the book adaptation to life, and especially speaking the language of faeries. In the show, the trio plays siblings, with Lyon and Noah as fraternal twins Jared and Simon, and Mychala Lee as their sister Mallory. They are the heart of the story and why we care so much about the ole’ Spiderwick estate.
Lyon Daniels is Jared Grace and, really, our hero of the series. Our show kicks off when Jared is expelled from school in Brooklyn and the family has to return to Michigan for a change of pace and fresh start. Jared has oppositional defiance disorder, and his mom, Helen (Joy Bryant), wants him to get treatment from Dr. Brauer (Christian Slater), the psychologist with a monster-sized secret. Jared doesn’t feel understood by his family or peers, and all that gets magnified when he starts seeing things like the boggart Thimbletack (played by Jack Dylan Grazer) from the Invisible World. For Daniels, an avid fantasy fan, playing Jared was a natural fit.
Noah Cottrell, as Simon, is Jared’s fraternal twin. He’s also the golden child in that everything that Jared does is compared to Simon. (There’s some serious Marsha, Marsha, Marsha vibes.) Cottrell was a fan of the series before he even auditioned. Mychala Lee, as Mallory, is their older sister and a fencer. The actress, who has also been on 9-1-1: Lone Star was excited to watch the series even if she didn’t get to be on it.
Although our Zoom conversation was short, the trio had much to share, including what it was like to learn how to speak the language of fairies that doesn’t exist outside the show. Watch or read our full interview below.
Ayla Ruby: Hi, I am Ayla Ruby from Awards Radar, and I’m happy to be here.
Mychala Lee: Hi.
Lyon Daniels: Nice to meet you.
Noah Cottrell: Hi. How you doing?
Ayla Ruby: Good. So I’m so excited to talk. I have a question for all of you, and I’d love to know what made you each want to do Spiderwick and what kind of grabbed you about your characters?
Lyon Daniels: Well, I’ve always been into fantasy and I’ve always had such a vivid imagination. I mean, I love Dungeons & Dragons and Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, you name it. And I love the books and movies too. I mean movie. And just being able to play the character of Jared and portray all these complexities when it comes to mental health and also just the kind of heroic side of him, it was a dream come true. I’m so grateful, I’m so lucky.
Noah Cottrell: Yeah. Definitely. I mean, growing up I had watched the movie and read a couple of the books already, so I kind of had an understanding of it. And once I got the call that I had gotten the job and everything like that I had even related to Simon, even in the audition process when me and Lyon were auditioning with each other. I mean, even back then, I really related to Simon and loved the show and thankfully we’re here and we portrayed it as best as we could and did our jobs.
Mychala Lee: Yeah. For me, I got the audition and I loved the movies and I was so, so, so excited. And I remember the audition scene was one from a couple of episodes in. I won’t spoil too much, but there’s this big monologue where Mallory’s talking about the importance of her hair. And I remember I related so much to that and I just fell in love with the character. And it was one of those scripts that I was like, “Even if I don’t get this, I’m going to watch this show because it’s going to be so good.” And now I am, I’m in it.
Ayla Ruby: That’s awesome. For Mychala, Mallory has a ton of growth this season, and I’m avoiding spoilers, but what can you tell us about what that was like for you as an actress and just what that was like filming?
Mychala Lee: Yeah. Honestly, it was very healing personally for me to kind of see myself because I relate to her so much as an overachiever, golden child, type A, all of those things. So I was really able to go back to my teenage self and just take care of her. And Mallory really grows so much throughout this season and it was a really fun journey to portray and to live through.
Ayla Ruby: Awesome. For Lyon and Noah, there’s this twin language that we find out, it’s this faerie pidgin language, what was that like? How do you learn to speak a language that doesn’t exist?
Noah Cottrell: I mean, it is definitely very interesting like you said, it doesn’t exist at all. So we had a linguistics coach who actually helped us pronounce-
Lyon Daniels: She made the language.
Noah Cottrell: … the language correctly. And she helped us a lot because I mean, the weird thing about the language is you can hear somebody say it and you kind of understand what they’re saying, but once you look at it on a piece of paper, you go blank and it’s really hard to understand. And I know me and Lyon we filmed, we had to do a lot of scenes with it and it gets pretty difficult.
Lyon Daniels: Yeah. It can because you have to find a natural cadence to it and a natural flow. You have to sound like you’re fluent in it. You can’t just sound like, oh, you learned it yesterday. Took a few faerie classes. But no, it was so fun to play around with.
Ayla Ruby: Awesome. Well, thank you all so much and I am really excited we got to chat.
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