Let’s not beat around the bush here; odds are, you’re very familiar withTom Feltonfrom theHarry Potterfilm franchise and you know ofTammin Sursok’s work in the hit seriesPretty Little Liars. Both are great, but if you’re not aware of what they’re up to beyond those claims to fame, you’re missing out.
Sursok has kept especially busy behind the lens, developing projects with her writer-director husband,Sean McEwen, and their latest collaboration was recently made available to watch on VOD, a movie calledBraking for Whales. Sursok stars alongside Felton as Star and Brandon, respectively. They’re siblings who couldn’t be more different, but when their mom passes, they’re forced to come together to fulfill her dying wish - to put her ashes inside her favorite animal, a whale.
It’s a unique story loaded with production challenges like an especially short shooting schedule, a wide range of tone, the need to film with real otters, and more. How’d they manage to get it all done? For Felton, it made all the difference feeling like he was part of a team:
“It worked so well because, you know, in certain scenarios - and I’m sure, T, you may attest to this working onPretty Little Liarsfor so long - it’s like you’re needed for this moment and then you’ve got a certain amount of hours, a certain amount of scenes and then you’re gone. You’re not really kind of part of a team in the sense that we were on this film because, it was like, if you go an extra hour or you have to drive another extra mile or you have to do something different to try and change … everyone felt like a very cohesive [team]. It’s kind of one of the first experiences I’ve had on a project like that because it had such limited time and a limited crew. But it made all the difference. I think that’s what shone through in the performances in a way, is that we were kind of a band of pirates really trying to make a very ambitious movie in not a lot of time.”
If you’d like to hear more about Felton and Sursok’s experience makingBraking for Whales, we’ve got you covered in the video at the top of this article! Check it out to hear about what inspired the story, what wound up being some of the most challenging scenes to shoot, how makingBraking for Whalesinfluenced Sursok’s personal goals as a budding director, and more!
Tammi Sursok and Tom Felton:
