I’ll admit, my anticipation about meeting Zac Efron during the Charlie St. Cloud junket was so high that my hands were sweaty, my heartbeat was rapid and I had a hard time sitting still. But, the nerves were unwarranted because as it turns out, he had his own anticipation about meeting us! Who knew that a group of eight mommybloggers could make a movie star nervous?

In fact, in each of our interviews, the talent from the movie expressed their interest and eagerness to meet with us! We caused quite a stir at the junket! Also, we were the only group that had pictures taken with each interviewee. Despite what you may think of the moniker, being a “mommyblogger” definitely has its privileges.

Interviewing the brothers: Charlie Tahan and Zac Efron

The interviews were set up as a round table discussion, small, intimate press conference style of us throwing out questions. Our first interview was with Zac Efron (Charlie St. Cloud) and Charlie Tahan (Sam St. Cloud). Zac treated the interview like the co-interview it was, not an interview with him and a sidekick. There was definitely a brotherly bond between Zac and Charlie and Zac was quite protective of Charlie. He was highly complementary of Charlie and Charlie’s talents, abilities and personality. Charlie was very much a typical young/tween boy (I noticed scabs & bruises on his elbow) but also had a wonderful, mature presence during the interview. He laughed and joked with Zac and was very good at answering our questions.

We talked about everything from sailing to baseball to ghosts. At one point, Zac was asked about what it was like to shoot scenes in a graveyard. Much of the movie, including the one “love scene” between Charlie & Tess (Amanda Crew) was filmed in a cemetery.  This prompted me to share with Zac one of the thoughts I had during the movie, “I never knew graveyards could be so sexy, hadn’t really considered that a romantic spot, but you made it work!” My statement quite obviously took Zac by surprise but what really tickled me was Charlie’s reaction, he covered his face and shook his head when heard me say sexy. Too cute!

Amanda Crew: Charlie St. Cloud’s Leading Lady

Our interview with Amanda Crew (Tess Carroll) was delightful! She is a sweet and beautiful young woman with a bright future. Amanda is nothing like her character, Tess. Not only did she look a lot different in person than in the film but her personality is quite different as well. And she is a good actress. The entire twenty minutes we were with her, I could not find one thing that reminded me of Tess. She was truly able to immerse herself in her character and become someone else for this film.

Right out the box, the ladies wanted to know what it was like to kiss Zac Efon. I sensed some resistance to the question, I’m sure she’d been asked that hundreds of times by then and she had a fairly decent answer in her repertoire. But at the same time, I got the feeling that maybe there’s an underlying resentment to being asked that question all the time. There is a lot more to the movie and to the relationship between Charlie and Tess that just sex appeal.

I wanted to know about Amanda’s pursuits as a photographer, since I am interested in photography. She told us about the book of pictures she created for the cast and crew as a post-production gift. It was comprised of photos she had taken while they were filming the movie. Now I guess what I really want to know is, how do I get a copy of that?

Up next – The Making of Charlie St. Cloud: How do you make sailing look easy?

I was the guest of Universal Studios for the press junket for the movie Charlie St. Cloud.