CTM Interviews Anna Popplewell

Anna as Susan Pevensie

Mice and Lions
by Mark Moring, Christianity Today Movies

Sixteen-year-old Anna Popplewell is, in many ways, the perfect choice to play Susan, the older Pevensie sister in Disney’s upcoming film adaptation of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Like the Susan of C. S. Lewis’s beloved Chronicles of Narnia, Anna actually is an older sister, she’s studious, she’s pragmatic and logical—and thus an unlikely candidate to fall for such a far-fetched fairy tale. But like Susan, once she meets Aslan face-to-face, all of that pragmatism and skepticism falls aside, and she embraces the magic.

But for Anna, there was one little problem: Mice. In the story, when the great lion Aslan is killed, he is bound by ropes to a huge slab called the Stone Table. Before his resurrection, tiny mice come to his rescue, gnawing away at the ropes to set him free. When it came time to shoot that scene for the movie, Anna freaked out: She’s terrified of mice.

In this interview, which Anna granted to us via telephone from her London home, we learn how she ultimately dealt with the little critters, what she thinks of the Narnia books, how she perceives Susan’s character, what she makes of Aslan, and other thoughts on the movie, which arrives in theaters December 9.

To read the entire interview, please click here to visit Christianity Today Movies.