Granger Smith is making his acting debut in the upcoming movie, Moonrise. The singer portrays Will Brown, a country singer who struggles with both his career and his family, following the death of his wife. Smith has been offered other acting opportunities in the past, but it wasn’t until Moonrise that he felt like it was the perfect time, and a story he wanted to tell.
“It was just the script,” Smith tells Everything Nash. “I really liked it. I really liked the story, and I just thought, ‘You know what? I might not be good at this, but I’d like to give it a shot because the story is really good. I like it.'”
The father of three has had plenty of experience balancing time with his family with his busy career, so having him on another project, this time a movie set, and playing a widower, wasn’t much of a stretch for his daughter and sons.
“My kids are just so used to me doing strange things that nothing surprises them,” Smith says with a laugh. “It’s like, ‘Daddy’s gonna be hosting this show, or is gonna be on this interview.’ They’re just like, ‘Okay.’ That’s just what I do to them.'”
In fact, it was Smith’s children who got to see Moonrise first, long before anyone else, and became instant fans of the feel-good film.
“I showed them around probably the month of June or so, after I finished the soundtrack to it,” Smith says. “I showed them a rough, uncolored, no effects, very rough [version]. The audio wasn’t edited, and so I just thought it was hideous. And they saw it, and they just loved it. They couldn’t wait to finish it. We had to watch it in pieces, because of scheduling and things were going on. And so, we would walk away from the movie, and then they would just talk about when they could finish Moonrise. I was honestly shocked. That was the first bump of confidence I had in the film, from my kids.”
The Moonrise soundtrack was released in November, and features all songs written by Smith for the film.
“We didn’t plan on that to happen, but I read the script and I accepted the role,” Smith recalls. “When I started diving into the character and who he was, Will Brown, and what his life was like, I noticed in the script there were two songs, and one of them was very important. It’s at the end of the movie, and the character writes this song about redemption, and just kind of wraps up his whole journey through the film. It’s called ‘Forever Forward.'”
Smith reached out to the director of Moonrise to ask for a copy of the song, and found out it didn’t exist, so he decided to write it himself. The song not only made it onto the movie, but recently became the second most-added song at radio, behind Carrie Underwood‘s “Hate My Heart.”
“I said, ‘Let me just write it, and we’ll go from there,'” Smith shares. “So I wrote that song, ‘Forever Forward.’ And then there was a second song that he performs with his band right in the middle of the movie. So I said, ‘Do you have that one?’ And she said, ‘I don’t have any songs. I was just planning on finding them later.’ That’s difficult to do. So I wrote that one and then, and I ended up just writing all of them at that point.”
Moonrise will premiere on Pure Flix on December 15. Watch the trailer below. More information on the movie is available here. Find all of Smith’s music and upcoming shows by visiting his website.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Pure Publicity
