Big Miracle (opening in theaters on February 3rd) is inspired by the incredible true story of a family of royal grey whales trapped by rapidly forming ice in the Arctic Circle, and how an entire Alaskan community fought to save them, with the assistance of rival globe superpowers. For the film, Ted Danson, who is a existent-life advocate for cleans oceans and safety water practices worldwide, took on the role of stanch anti-environment businessman J.W. McGraw, while Dermot Mulroney took the honor of portraying Alaska National Guard commander Col. Scott Boyer, based on real-life hero Tom Carroll.

At the film's press twenty-four hour period, the co-stars talked about how playing characters based on real people inspired their performances, that whale meat doesn't actually gustatory modality like chicken, how they dealt with spending then much time in such cold temperatures, and how impressed they both were with the challenges that director Ken Kwapis took on with this motion picture. Bank check out what they had to say after the jump:

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Question: In playing real people, did you lot want to really meet them?

TED DANSON: Well, sadly, [Dermot's] character passed away. My character was in jail. So, nosotros didn't come across them.

DERMOT MULRONEY: I had the fortune, withal, of working closely with Bonnie Carroll, who's the woman that Vinessa Shaw plays. Through her, I got a lot of invaluable information on the man I was playing and their relationship and how information technology began. Across a continent and over time, it was an epic romance.

Did that inform how you and Vinessa Shaw worked together?

MULRONEY: It did, very much. I was working with a great, practiced thespian, which is the first thing you need. Only, there was an intensity to that love that we were seeing firsthand, working with Bonnie. So, information technology began to experience more than and more similar a privilege to be portraying this man. In fact, I came to know some people in the community around Anchorage, and [Tom Carroll] was well known, socially. He was the begetter of that wing of the Air National Baby-sit, and then he was the premiere pilot, in that era, in Alaska and trained a lot of the guys that were really up in those sequences, especially effectually the military machine equipment. He's still a potent presence in Alaska.

DANSON: We went up to the Air National Baby-sit to give something back and entertain the troops. We got there and nosotros outnumbered the troops because they were off on maneuvers.

Ted, what was it like to play an oil visitor executive when you accept your own ecology arrangement?

DANSON: I started doing the environmental ocean advocacy work well-nigh 25 years agone, and what I started merged into what is now Oceana, which is the largest international ocean advocacy group. I started off fighting off-shore drilling. Shell was wanting to open upwards the Beaufort Body of water to offshore oil drilling, when we were shooting upwardly there. I became friends with a lot of the people in the oil business because you bump into them, and you lot may be on unlike sides of the fence, only they're really overnice people, doing jobs we're basically asking them to practise, as a order. Then, it wasn't and so difficult for me to play this role, at all. My guy actually ended up in jail for doing some not-and then-nice things, so I felt like I had carte blanche to make him as silly every bit I wanted.

Accept you seen progress, in the 25 years that you lot've been doing ecology work?

DANSON: You will always have the fight for the need for more energy, with dwindling resources and trying to balance the environment. I call back more than people are educated about it.

Did you ever talk to Drew about her animal advancement?

MULRONEY: All that did for Drew was prevent her from eating the whale meat that Ted and I went ahead and had.

DANSON: A little goes a long mode!

What'south it gustatory modality like?

MULRONEY: Information technology tastes terrible!

DANSON: It tastes, over and over over again.

MULRONEY: You know how they say that it all tastes like craven? This would, if you lot took a chicken and held it nether the h2o in the ocean, for several decades, near an oil spill, and you let it rot, and then you cutting off some of its flesh. It comes in these cubes that are black on one side, which is the flesh, and white on the other, which is the fatty. They just pop it [in their mouths], and it's actually foul. Information technology was provided fresh for united states, from the Native Americans that were working on the movie. They had it shipped in and it was like this delicacy had arrived on the set. Drew was a piddling scarce, at that moment, with her puppies and the whales.

How did you bargain with spending so much time in those temperatures and environments, during filming?

MULRONEY: It'due south and so funny, I retrieve cold is one of those things that y'all tin't really remember, and so y'all can't actually grasp that sensation when you're reflecting on information technology. I actually did another movie in betwixt The Grey and Large Miracle, so when Big Miracle wrapped, I stayed in Anchorage and did a picture show with Jon Voight, called Across, which is still being worked on. I finished that right later Thanksgiving, and so started The Grey on January iind. They were literally dorsum-to-back, strung together, all in Alaska and all shot in sub-zero temperatures. But, I don't recall existence common cold, ever. I know I must've been, but I was never miserable or huddled, hoping to go off the set or out of the weather condition. You're mentally prepared. Actually, the stuff we did in [British Columbia] on The Grey was the coldest I've always been. If you ever found yourself in those circumstances, you would either die or go within.

DANSON: I, on the other hand, had it on the call sheet and in my contract that, if information technology's below 32, you don't call me.

Did you guys spend any time hanging out together, during your downtime?

DANSON: We did because we were each other'southward extras. I would accept iii lines on Monday and wouldn't speak once again until Wednesday, just I was still standing side by side to Dermot, or somebody. In that location was 30 or forty of united states of america out on the ice, at the end of the flick, all playing background atmosphere to whoever'southward scene it was that mean solar day.

MULRONEY: The style they scheduled the film, logistically, was that we would do more or less the bulk of one storyline and then movement to another story, depending on the club of the locations. Towards the end of the shoot, we all wound upward working together. A lot of times on a motion picture, you lot don't even meet the other people that are in that cast. You're just in the movie together, only your scenes don't cross. This was one of those rare occasions where everybody was working, so nosotros bonded over the take chances nosotros were having, and over the conditions, and over the food, like you would in ane of those situations where really dissimilar people are thrown into a mutual circumstance.

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What was Ken Kwapis like, as managing director, especially with all of the various challenges on this film?

MULRONEY: I never saw Ken have whatsoever trouble. He has this amazing sense of calm that he brings to the fix, and then everybody'due south confident and warm with one another.

DANSON: He's the most prepared person I've always met.

MULRONEY: I was so impressed, just with the logistics alone. He was dealing with that many people in the cast, and with temperature conditions and outdoor sets.

DANSON: We had ii football fields' length of water ice that he built, and then y'all could cut holes and in that location would be water underneath, and then that you could put the whales underneath that. And then, he had to stick those 2 football fields in a plate of Barrow, Alaska. It was really complicated, figuring out how to blend the real with what would be computerized later. He was so prepared and so calm, and he likewise knew what he wanted so much that he allowed you to play and explore. It was a really relaxed set, thanks to him.

How did the Alaskan locals react to you filming there?

MULRONEY: It was actually interesting. Anchorage is a great place, and the Alaskans are as fiercely loyal to their urban center every bit anyone I've met in this country, so hats off to them. Some of it was shot right in downtown Anchorage, so that was front page news in Anchorage, every bit it would be wherever. They not only enjoyed having us there, they merely literally opened their doors to us. I knew someone who knew someone whose mother was then inviting me over for dinner at their firm. I retrieve that's but how they do it, up at that place. At that dinner, I learned that they knew the guy that I was playing, so that was a coincidence. In the flick, they telephone call the whales Fred, Wilma and Bam-Bam. At the time, from the Iñupiat betoken-of-view, the joke was that they were calling the whales Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. So, y'all learn a petty more backstory. People remember that story, in that part of the world, similar it was yesterday. It's all crystal clear to where they were when they first saw that footage.

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Is playing a real person more than of a challenge than playing a fictional character?

MULRONEY: I think this was more of a claiming considering I wanted to honor him. He was really – not only in this circumstance, but in others that I'd heard of – truly a hero. I had gotten to know his widow, and then it took on greater meaning for me, in terms of that. And, I had the privilege of working with Vinessa, in that storyline, then I think nosotros did him correct. In fact, the fur-lined parka that Vinessa wears in the moving picture is Bonnie's. She wore it that coat during the time when she finally left D.C. and went to Alaska. That'southward the coat she brought with her. She still had it, and she gave it to Vinessa as a piece of the wardrobe.

DANSON: I'grand about tempted, when I'm playing a real person, non to see them. Later, maybe. But, the job is the same. Yous however take to show upwardly on screen and exist alive and real, and all that stuff. It's a swell story considering it really is an Alaskan story, too. The dazzler is just astounding at that place. And you accept oil there, and virtually everybody and their uncle works for the oil company. Then, y'all take the Iñupiat Indians, who get to harvest whales. There are religious and spiritual cultures based on whaling. And then, you have Beat wanting to drill off-shore. Information technology'south the whole circuitous question of, "How do nosotros live today with our ecology resources dwindling? How exercise we sustain ourselves with free energy?" All of those questions were being faced and dealt with in this motion-picture show, in such a light-hearted, non-preachy way. It's a peachy film for exactly what nosotros're going through today, even though it took identify in '88.

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