Peter Pan and Wendy actor is also 'daunted' by growing up

Watch: Peter Pan and Wendy stars discuss growing up

With new Disney+ film Peter Pan and Wendy, life imitates art, as the teenage actor playing the boy who wouldn’t grow up has admitted to also having mixed feelings about becoming an adult.

Alexander Molony, 17, who plays Pan in this new live action remake, says that his acting career on TV — and working on this latest version of the J.M. Barrie favourite — makes him feel he doesn’t “want to leave this adventure and fun behind.”

“It’s slightly daunting,” he tells Yahoo UK.

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“When you’re a grown up, you have expectations of not having as much fun as you do when you’re a kid, which is something we definitely embraced while filming – the amount of fun we had.”

The film is directed by David Lowery, who also helmed 2016's Pete’s Dragon, one of the first of Disney’s live action remakes of their animated classics. The studio’s original Peter Pan celebrates its 70th anniversary this year.

And while Moloney’s feelings about growing up are similar to Peter Pan’s, those of his co-star Ever Anderson, who plays Wendy, are close to those of her character.

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“I’m really excited to grow up – in true Wendy fashion!” she said. “I’ve accepted that my childhood is there in a little box and now I’m ready to open a new one and start on that journey.”

Lowery’s new interpretation of the story follows the much-loved story of Wendy and her little brothers flying off to Neverland with Peter, where they encounter the Lost Boys, mischievous fairy Tinkerbell and the villainous Captain Hook, who is played in the film by Jude Law. But the film also reveals how Peter and Hook first met.

As Anderson explained, “I think fans will immediately recognise the characters that they’ve grown up knowing and loving, but this time their back stories are fleshed out for a new generation to enjoy.”

The film follows tradition in showing Peter and Wendy taking to the skies, something that excited both young actors, even though they never left the set for those scenes.

“Flying on set with the massive fans blowing the wind in your face felt so realistic,” Molony recalled. “I’d love to be able to fly on my own,” added Anderson. “But if this is the closest I get to it, then that’s OK.”

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The daughter of actor Milla Jovovich and director Paul W.S. Anderson, 15-year-old Ever Anderson was previously seen as the young Natasha Romanoff in Black Widow (2021). Alexander Molony was a regular in sitcom, The Reluctant Landlord, where he starred alongside Romesh Ranganathan, and he also worked with Mckenna Grace last year in TV movie The Bad Seed Returns.

Peter Pan And Wendy is 2023’s first Disney live action re-working of an animated classic and is followed at the end of May by director Rob Marshall’s version of The Little Mermaid, which will be shown in cinemas. Other films in the series have included Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella (2015), Jon Favreau’s The Jungle Book (2016), Guy Ritchie’s Aladdin (2019) and last year’s Pinocchio, directed by Robert Zemeckis.

Peter Pan & Wendy begins streaming April 28, 2023, only on Disney+.