Jack Dylan Grazer is “literally” Thimbletack IRL, according to his Spiderwick Chronicles costar, Alyvia Alyn Lind!
The It actor plays the hilariously, exasperated and wonderfully wordy boggart named Thimbletack in the live-action adaptation of the beloved children’s books — and after our interview with him and Alyvia, we completely understand what she means.
ICYMI, The Spiderwick Chronicles premiered on Roku in April 19, and tells the story of the Grace family as they move into their great aunt’s home and discover a world of fairies that exists parallel to their own. While Alyvia takes on a more villainous role in Calliope, Jack voices Thimbletack — a boggart who lives in the Grace family attic and begrudgingly helps our protagonists.
The Shazam! actor has gotten pretty comfortable in the voice acting chair in the past few years, as he’s worked on Luca and Ron’s Gone Wrong. While he admits that it’s nice “not having to memorize lines” in the booth, he tackles voice acting with a “counterclockwise” approach than he does live-action acting, which is a challenge in itself.
“It sort of feels like I can just do the voice and put that on, and that’s sort of an on-and-off switch sort of flip,” he explains, before expressing what a “blast” it was to play Thimbletack. “I loved every minute of it.”
As for Alyvia — who plays quite the villainess — the actress revealed “that playing evil is better than playing nice because it’s just so much more fun.”
“I had a long conversation with [showrunner] Aron [Eli Coleite] at the beginning of what Calliope is, what she encapsulates, what is her true form, and it really helped me realize, realize the beast within her and to realize how much fun I could have with her,” she revealed. “Also, just getting to figure out all the little details of her, how she walks, how she talks, all the little weird things she does, what her star sign is — I think she’s a Capricorn. It’s just so much fun when you step into a new role to kind of figure out all the different things that encapsulates the role.”
And it also helps that the two are huge fans of the fantasy genre.
“Big time fantasy fan — love fantasy things, love to fantasize about stuff, love Thimbletack, great guy,” Jack says. “He is — what I like to call a — well, a quick-witted son of a twist, some would say,” he continues, “I also think that he’s definitely serving saucerful full of secrets and he’s sitting from the goblet of cosmic gumbo.”
After comparing his character to several other equally entertaining and percussive turns of phrase, Jack proclaims: “I couldn’t say anything else, I think, because I ran out of words in the world.”
“He literally is Thimbleack,” Alyvia declares, before lamenting her own love of fantasy.
“Huge fan of fantasy, huge fan of Spiderwick. Fantasy is my favorite genre, definitely,” she admitted. “Getting to be in the show and getting to be a part of it and now be a new character in the lore was just such an honor and such an honor that they wanted me to portray this new character that has so much depth and so much going on.”
She then takes a page out of Thimbletack’s book, gushing — “It was just like the perfect peppercorn on top of a perfectly seared steak.”
“Wow,” Jack laughs.
Wow, indeed.
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