Xavier Samuel on The Twilight Sage: Eclipse

Fans of the Twilight books have been looking forward to the appearance of Riley, the newborn vampire who helps Victoria assemble an army. XavierSamuel plays Riley in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. 

Xavier Samuel Talks The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

“I guess playing a bad guy and kind of an outsider and a foreigner I guess to an already established family you kind of work up feeling perhaps a bit intimidated,” Samuel said. “But I’m so grateful to be accepted so warmly into the whole family. Everyone’s extremely down to earth. And also Bryce [Dallas Howard], who I’ve become very good friends with, we kind of locked eyes at the airport and we went, ‘Okay, there’s someone here that can hang out.’ But no stunts, no initiation or anything like that. Just a lot of fun and great to hang out with those guys.”

Once Samuel became part of the cast, the Twilight phenomenon engulfed him. “My mother has made it her personal mission to monitor all the information about me on the Internet. I’ve had a few strange requests, like, if you could bring back a plastic cup that Rob sipped on or maybe if you could sneak up to him quickly and take a lock of his hair.” 

Samuel got the role the old fashioned way, putting his audition on tape for the filmmakers. “I’ve kind of been dividing my time pretty evenly between Los Angeles and Sydney. I think they only let me stay here for 90 days or something, so I’d rush back at 89. But yeah, I auditioned online, well did a tape in Sidney and I’ve been doing that for American projects for quite a while, sort of sending them off into the ether and not knowing anyway even watched them or whose desk they land on. So to hear a response was kind of out of the blue.”

If Riley seems especially fleshed out, it may be because Samuel got his hands on Stephenie Meyer’s book, The Second Life of Bree Tanner, for research. “I was given a secret copy, that was handed to me by DavidSlade himself. I kind of felt like I had been given this really valuable document. It was amazing because really like you say, it fleshes out those characters and gives an insight into, particularly, the Riley/Victoria relationship that’s not necessarily present in the kind of saga. I just kind of treated it like some secret information. It really kind of informed a lot of the choices as well and it’s kind of exciting to read.” ”

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse will open to theaters on June 30.
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Carrie