14 DAY TRIAL // Jasper Hale Whitlock is a 166-year-old Civil War veteran who has settled with Alice and the Cullens in Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilight” books. As the author says in the first novel, he always looks as if he’s afraid, but that’s only because he can control his urges with some difficulty. Actor and musician Jackson Rathbone plays him in the film and he’s ready to dish out to MTV on what happens with Jasper in the third film in the series.
As fans already know, “Eclipse” has already gone into production, but Jackson is just now getting ready to join the rest of the cast. MTV caught up with him right before he did that and asked him all sorts of questions, starting with whether he had problems doing the scenes where he influenced people’s moods and concluding with the impressive battle scene that “Eclipse” ended with. In the same interview, Rathbone also reveals that fans will actually get to see scenes with Jasper as a fighter, which means the third film will have more action than the second – or first, for that matter.
“Yes, I get to shoot some Civil War stuff, and I’m also going to shoot a lot of fighting scenes. It’s interesting; there’s a lot of cool scenes where Jasper trains the Cullen family on how to fight the newborns. He gets to train Emmett – and Emmett is a born fighter – so he’s telling Emmett all these techniques, and Emmett thinks he could just best Jasper [during their sparring]. Jasper ends up getting the best of him, because it’s a war mentality, not just a street brawl. It’s about thinking ahead; it’s a chess game.” Jackson says of how he prepared for the part in the third film.
Also on the topic of preparation, the actor reveals he was asked if he could ride a horse and perhaps even do some tricks while up in the saddle in the view of shedding more light on Jasper’s story. Luckily, he can do all that, even if he is a bit rusty from several years’ worth of lack of practice, but, hopefully, it’s nothing a few sessions with a professional can’t fix.
“I’ve been studying up a lot on the Civil War and that era. It really was a crazy time. It was all-out war on our own turf and between countrymen. That’s terrible. It’s an interesting time to see when Jasper was actually human and what his human form was and, when he gets turned, how intense and how dark he is. Then [we’ll see] his realization of what he’s become, him finding Alice and being redeemed by love.” Jackson further says of the scenes that will show a pre-vampire and then pre-Alice Jasper.