Arjay Smith Talks About 'The Day After Tomorrow'




About.com had the chance to speak with actor Arjay Smith about his role in The Day After Tomorrow at the premiere of Love Don't Cost a Thing. The movie is set to be the summer blockbuster starring Dennis Quaid and Jake Gyllenhaal.

Has filming finished on The Day After Tomorrow?
We actually got back in March. We shot in Montreal, Canada for six months. It was a wonderful time, I had a great time. Jake Gyllenhaal was also starring in the film, with Dennis Quaid. It’s going to be a big one. It’s going to have a lot of effects. They are actually still in production right now getting some of the shots together. I should be going in pretty soon to do some looping.

Was there a lot of acting with blue screens in this movie?
Actually, we did have a few scenes in front of the blue screens. They actually had a set and inside this studio – I mean this studio was just unbelievable. They had like New York streets built with cars, flooding with water to the top. We did a lot of stuff in the studio. We only did a couple of days outside in the actual snow. It was –40 when we were out there, so our stunt doubles really had to do the hard stuff outside. Everything was done inside and a lot of the scenes take place in this library.

Did you have to do a lot of stunt work?
Not too much. We’re running through this fake snow. I can’t remember what type of material they were using, but we’re just really running through the snow. Jake had to do a couple of stunts. They had to put him on a wire because he’s walking across a boat – a ship, actually – and so he was about 20’ high. He had to just get wired up, just for safety reasons. Not too much in the way of stunts, and we had our doubles just in case anything got a little hectic where they wanted us to run through very narrow spots. But we were running through the rain. I said I wanted to do a lot of it myself, running through the rain. It was just fun for me.

When you look back on filming, is there one day of filming that sticks out in your mind?
Wow. There’s one day that sticks out in mind but it wasn’t a filming day. The whole shoot was just awesome, everybody was just pleasant. But one day one of our actor’s trailers blew up and that was a frantic day. Thank God they weren’t in there.

Read the full interview by heading over to About.

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