David Henrie

Actor David Henrie talks new movie 'This is The Year' and more!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're on with Mario Lopez. It's up war with Mario
Lopez joining me now on zoom from the new movie
This Is the Year, Actor David Henry, Welcome to the
show Man. How are you good to be on man?
Thank you for having me A big fan, love, love
everything that you're doing. Man, So excited to talk here.
Appreciate that. Appreciate that. Uh, congratulations on the new film.

(00:21):
What about thank you Man? It's a coming of age
high school film, kind of classic throwback. John Hughes ask
about a group of kids going to see their favorite band.
Lovely the band um Selena Gomez was on the producing
team with me, so it was good to team up
with her to bring a feel good movie to the people.
I think her and I agree right now. People want
to feel good, people want to smile. The film's got
a great message for young people. So if you're a

(00:43):
family out there and you want something to feel good,
watch this movie This Is the Year, and smile good
for you. I like the premise. So you're on the
way to see your favorite band and what hi Jensen,
Sue or oh all the fun stuff that even that
you could think happens, you know, and that that the
film deals with eeper themes like a lot of those
classic John Hughes movies. Um, I think young people especially

(01:05):
deal with the theme nowadays of expectation versus reality. We're
so inundated at each each and every moment with social media. Movies,
TV shows just were hit from so many other different
angles that you can expect love to be one thing,
but in reality that's not always the case, and things
like friendship can be the most beautiful forms of love
out there. So classic Love Triangle ensues all the high

(01:25):
drinks that happened along the way and some deeper themes.
So it leaves you thinking with things that, um, thinking
about things that hopefully we'll stick with you after the film.
That is very John. Good for you. You you directed
this as well as produced or correct. Yeah. Yeah, it
was my directorial debut and it was awesome. It was
It was amazing. I mean, any film that gets made

(01:47):
is a minor miracle, especially especially the independent films. So
we learned so much. Um. But I learned so much
about the course of my career growing up a child
actor and a young actor. I'm sure you could relate, Mario.
You just learn a lot being in the thick of
it all the time. So I always ask questions to
directors like why are you putting the camera here? What's
this about? You know, what's the meaning behind this? Why

(02:09):
do you use this color or that color? And just
learned so much over the years. So I tried to
bring the best experiences I had possible to This film
created great. I'm a family guy, so I tried to
create a family experience on set. My wife was there,
you know, my kid like, just creating a family atmosphere
on set. So it gave everyone, I think, freedom to
be the best they could be. And um, thankfully it

(02:31):
worked out. It worked out, man, I'm excited. I like
your style. I'm the same way to try to incorporate
the family, get them all in on the act, have
them all pull their weight. That my daughter is stolen
my Instagram. She she's taking over my two year old. Uh,
it's it's fun stuff. Good for you. Um, you're also
part of this Reagan film as young Reagan playing my

(02:54):
all time favorite president right there? What are are we
talking about? Well, I play Reagan when he was a
bit younger, and please tell me to talk like that?
Did he talk like that? Even as a kid a
little bit. I play him from when he was a
teenage boys, seventeen, when he was a lifeguard, up until
he was you know, broadcasting, dealing with sports. So I

(03:14):
played him from seventeen till late twenties, and then Dennis
Quaid takes over from there and he Dennis Quid was awesome.
He crushed the role. He was my wife's crush growing
up as well, and I was like, all right, I
get points that I turned into your crush. And I
told Dennis this live on camera without missing a beat.
He goes parent travel. I love Dennis Quaid. Funny, quick

(03:38):
Dennis Quaid story. He's the only dude I've ever seen.
We're at a golf course. Homie has cigarettes in each hand.
What he's kicking it like this with cigarettes in each
I've never seen double smoking, double smoking. I've seen double
fisted with drinks. My guy had two lit cigarettes like
this chilling, and I just thought that was so player,
It's so funny. At the same time, and he was

(03:58):
going like this, Yeah, I love damn two cigarettes lit.
That's Dennis Quite. That's always questions. Yeah, yeah, he was
just that feenie, I guess. But he's a man. Another
one of your projects, A Tail, Dark and Grim on Netflix,
little different take on Hansel and grenn right, oh yeah,
oh yeah. We were putting back in I think the

(04:20):
Grimm brothers original thought process. So it's grim stories authentically told,
so putting a lot of the scary stuff that was
stripped out, so they're not empty scares, but they're not
scarring either. So it's a little scarier, but there's nothing
scarring in it for families. Um, because we're putting a
lot of the authentic psychology and symbolism back into the
stories that were stripped out over the centuries and over decades.

(04:42):
And um, it's a fun it's a great story. Starts
Adam Lambert and Jonathan Banks, um, Ranny Rodriguez. It's a
really really great cast and I had the privilege of
being able to executive produce and write it. My company,
Novo Media Group produced it. So, um, we're really really
excited about that. October eighth, A Tale, Dark and Grim
were open open to everyone enjoys it. It'll be it'll

(05:02):
be a different ride, but a fun ride. Um that
we're excited to to embark on what was something that
was stripped out of it. So over the years, a
lot of people if you look at a lot of
the original Grim stuff, just a lot of things that
people thought were too scary for children. So um, for instance,
seems with you know, someone cuts off a certain thing

(05:23):
or a limb or something, right, you would think, oh, whoa,
that's like kids cannot handle that, But actually it symbolized
the loss of agency, or it symbolized the loss of
something dear, or the the necessity of sacrifice. So it
symbolized some greater psychological truth that a lot of people
were just like, oh no, it's too scary, but actually
it meant something really, really kind of deep. So we

(05:43):
put certain things back in, but did it in a
very tasteful and careful way, cutting different animation mediums, cutting
away from things. So we we tried to keep the
original intent but do it in a way that was
accessible for a family audience. But they kept in the
witch eating the children. Oh yeah, that's it, that's key.
You can't can't, you can't change that. David also saw

(06:05):
you were reading some Bible stories for the Hallo app
I I happen to do that myself. To what passage
did you read? You remember? Yeah, I read from I
read from the prophet day, I read from the Book
of David, and um, I'm trying to remember it was.
It was a lot and there's a lot of pronunciation issues.
Did you have to correct your pronunciation a couple of times?
A couple of times blessed? I can say blessed and

(06:26):
they said blessed. I remember you, like I blessed. That's cool, man.
And you have I know you mentioned you have three kids, right,
I have two here. We had some miscarriages, so we
got some in heaven, but we got to here. Yeah,
my my daughters to my son was born on Christmas Day,
so literally sticking the prime rib in the oven ready

(06:47):
to go marinated for you know, I think it was
like a two day marinade. I was like ready to rock.
And then my wife was like, nope, you're leaving that
thing in there and we're going to the hospital. And
uh yeah, man, definitely did he osy James. I was
gonna say up with some sort of biblical well, I
was gonna So his name is James Thomas Augustine Henry,

(07:07):
and I'm like, we love all the middle names. I'm
Italian and we do a lot of middle names. And
very Catholic. Yeah, I'm Catholic. So we had Emmanuel in
there too. And my wife saw that. I posted on
my Instagram and it got like a million likes the
next day, and she's like, we never discussed the manual.
The manual come from. He's already got too many middle names.

(07:28):
She's Irish, and I'm like, no, man, he was born Christmas.
It should be a manual. But she she won that argument.
You know, happy wife, happy life. That's awesome. That's awesome. Well,
congratulations everything going on, both professionally and personally. This is
the Year is available on Amazon and on demand. David,
thanks for hanging out, man, hope to appreciated. Mario, thank you, man.

(07:49):
All Right, you got invide take care with Mario a
little bit.