Neverland

The film “Wendy,” a reimagining of J.M. Barrie’s play, “Peter Pan,” is set for release on Feb. 28; and two of the film’s supporting roles are played by local twin brothers, Gage and Gavin Naquin.
The brothers Naquin live in Franklin with their mother, Danielle Dupre, and attend Centerville High School.
They recently returned from a trip to the 2020 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, where they watched a screening of “Wendy” for the first time.
Gage said, “Sundance was fun. I thought the red carpet was going to be red, but it wasn’t. It was gray. I was a little disappointed by that, but the movie was great. I loved it.”
Gavin described his first experience doing press for the film as, “awkward.”
“Every single time I went to speak, he (the reporter) was speaking, and every time he tried to speak, I was speaking. So, it was a lot of stuttering,” he said.
When they weren’t at work promoting the film, Gage said they went snow tubing, built snowmen and ate plenty of pizza.
Despite the experience at Sundance and having thoroughly enjoyed the movie, only Gavin said he wants to actively pursue a career in acting. Gage said, “I would do it again. But, I wouldn’t be looking everywhere for an audition.”
Dupre recalled that the brothers were hesitant about seeing the movie before attending Sundance.
“They weren’t sure if they were ever going to do it again (act in a movie), but once they finally saw the movie, they were proud of themselves,” she said.
Gage likened the feeling to having worked really hard on a school project and receiving an “A+.”
“It’s like, ‘I did that,’” he said.
Gavin expressed feeling weird watching himself on the silver screen, but added as a caveat, “Everything I did in the movie, I was proud of, and I wouldn’t change it.”
Dupre explained that the process of filming the movie took five years from start to finish.
“Two years of it was a lot of auditioning with other members of the cast,” she said. “They (the twins) had to go to other people’s callbacks, to see how other people would work with them, because they were cast first. So, it was two years of going back and forth to New Orleans, a lot. Then, two years was actual filming.”
She reported that the three of them lived in the Caribbean Islands for four months, in Montserrat for three months, and Antigua for one month.
She called Montserrat “the best place on Earth,” adding, “It’s a very remote island, a volcanic island. Most of the movie was shot there. So, Neverland is a volcanic island. It was amazing. We can’t wait to go back.”
Gavin described the place as “relaxing,” saying, “There was no crime. You were comfortable. You could sleep with the windows open and not worry about anything.”
Gage, however, said he preferred not to sleep with the windows open, citing privacy issues, and said, “That was not my thing. But, we did have a rooster every morning on our windowsill.”
The brothers confided that the rooster had “girls,” hens, and that they managed to catch one and bake it for dinner.
They also had a chance to kill and cook iguanas on the island via help from an islander who showed them how to make an iguana curry, which they reportedly enjoyed.
This April will have seen the trio three years back from the islands, with reshoots having called them to New Orleans from time to time, only recently having finished all work on the film.
They said they also filmed in Mexico, in underwater caves.
Gage recalled, “The water was ice-cold and there were stalactites so close to the water, that if you jumped up, you would hurt your head.”
When asked what the most arduous part of filming the movie was, the brothers said that it was the long hours of filming, with Gage adding, “The hardest part of leaving Monsterrat Island was leaving your friends. Because you make a whole bunch of new friends, and you don’t know if you’re ever going to see them again.”
Of the rigors of the filming schedule, Gavin said, “We had quite a few work nights when we didn’t go to set until late at night, and then you’d get tired on set. It got to me a little.”
The story is that one night, while filming on a beach, the twins got “fussed at” because they fell asleep. Gavin said he was told to go back to sleep because he was so tired that he was “drowsy in the scene.”
Gage added that filming ran so long on some days, he would go straight to bed upon coming through the door to their home.
He said he became a little “disrespectful” on one particular occasion when filming in a river in Louisiana where the current was so strong that he was having a hard time performing as expected. He said there was a cable stretched underneath the water, “and it was just hard to hold on and to swim straight with the current pulling you sideways, and they (filmmakers) would say, ‘It’s easy, just do it like this,’ and I didn’t want to disrespect them, but I got a little disrespectful that day.”
Gage said he wished he had more time at the exotic filming sites, “because I’m curious, and I’d wander off and get in trouble. So, I wish we’d had a little more free time to do stuff and look around.”
Of the relationships that the family made during the five year experience, Gavin said, “The whole filming crew is like a family, and everybody knows who everybody else is. And the stunt people, we would cut up on lunch breaks, turning flips on mats, and when they left, I took it the hardest out of all of us.”
Gage said that the girl who plays Wendy, Devin France, their “sister” in the movie, was as close to being a literal sister to them off the set, as someone can be without being related.
He said they would go out to restaurants together and would be mistaken for siblings due to their comfortable interactions.
“They’ve really gotten close to her,” said Dupre, “having been together throughout the process for five years. They aren’t just siblings on screen. They are siblings off screen, just about.”
And of the process as a whole, Dupre said, “It’s been a long road with difficult times, some happy times, and some sad times. Lots of sacrifices were made, as a mom. Jobs were lost, lots of sacrifices. But, after seeing the film on Sunday, it was all worth it. All of it.”