The opening scene of The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, has a particular personal resonance for the actor William Moseley, who this month reprises the role of Peter in the latest film adaptation of C.S. Lewis’s beloved literary classics. In the new film, released here next week, Peter’s punch-up follows his struggle to adjust normality after a taste of the high life as King of Narnia. Not so long ago, Moseley found himself in a similar spat, coming to blows with fellow pupils after returning to school straight from the film set of one of the most successful film franchises of all time.
Moseley looks sheepish as he recalls the incident. "I didn’t have the easiest time at school," he shrugs. "People didn’t like the fact that I was away a lot auditioning for and then playing the part - they thought I was arrogant and up myself for believing that I might just get it. Every time I went back to school, it got worse.
"It all exploded at my leavers ball when I ended up getting into a huge fight with another boy, and I really punched him. Everyone was uptight about me coming back, and I had a lot of energy in me and it was just unleashed. I knew I couldn’t leave school without doing something stupid, but I wished I’d been more controlled. I didn’t behave like a gentleman at all, I behaved like a savage."
Like the character he plays in the Narnia films, Moseley, 21, has done much of his growing up on screen. Cast for the role of Peter Pevensie at 15, he was very much a young boy in the first film, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but appears on the brink of manhood as a 17-year-old Peter in Prince Caspian.
It is a transition Moseley is aware of: "When Peter steps through the wardrobe, he’s a boy. But when he steps back out of the wardrobe, as the story finishes, he’s a man," says Moseley, who is still both the boy who keeps a toy badger on his bed, but a gentleman who insists on paying for lunch. "I like to think I also became a man throughout the making of this film."
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