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His father has been missing for years, and hes trying to protect his mother from mysterious goons.
He ends up slipping through a portal into the strange Mediterranean town where he finds Lyra.
Wills a pretty crucial character in this whole story.
What was it like to have to keep your casting a secret?It was hard.
My filming of that episode of season one was separate from everyone elses.
I did mine a month before we started filming season two.
That was when they were all doing the press and stuff before the release of season one.
Once episode five came out, it was a nice release.
What was the response like once you could actually tell people about the part?It was cool.
I got recognized for the first time, actually.
It was really weird.
She actually used to translate the books back in the day, working with the publisher.
That makes me feel so old when you say the books are old!
I read those when I was a kid!Yeah … [laughs].
Have you gotten to meet Philip Pullman himself?Not yet.
That was nice to hear the writer of the books saying he liked what I was doing.
It meant a lot.
They flew me out to Madrid for the weekend.
Dafnes family took me to a flamenco show, which was cool.
Then we came to Cardiff and filmed my bit, and then we started filming season two.
The version of Will we see in the show is a little different than the one in the book.
He boxes instead of playing the piano, for instance.
It was fun to get into a boxing ring.
I was like, Whats going on?
What am I doing?
After, I got to go to boxing lessons.
That was really fun.
How did you and Dafne approach them?We were lucky.
Me and Dafne got along really well.
We went rock climbing with a lot of the crew members.
When you meet Lyra, you also have to interact with her daemon.
It was cool to finally see it in the end, because on set it was so different.
It was very funny.
Unless, obviously, if its scripted.
What was it like playing that dynamic?Nina and I really got along on set.
We sat down in the green room and just chilled and had fun.
Shes really good at playing the mental aspect of her [Elaine Parry has unspecified mental-health issues].
She really helped me at that.
I think thats even better, because I dont think it should have been.
Will is searching for his father,played by Andrew Scott, for a lot of the season.
Did you interact much with him?The first time I met him was on set.
We had a couple of days shooting and had a really good time then.
He has a really real and authentic presence around him.
His Dark Materialshas a very stacked cast throughout its world.
Lee Scorsby and Will dont cross paths in the book, but I got to meet him off-set.
I went into the costume trailer one time, and I picked up his hat.
But I started out in theater and stuff, and I like the musical aspect of it.
Well youve gotta work that relationship now!Exactly, exactly.
From the books, we know that Will gets to wield the Subtle Knife to cut between worlds.
How did you all film that on set?The knife looked really cool.
I worked with Russell Dodgson, the head of VFX, on how it was going to move.
You basically slot the knife between them, and twist it to the side.
The ideas that the portal sort of folds open.
Id never experienced anything like it before.
Nothing 100 percent confirmed, but its looking likely, and Im excited.
