Michael Grant Terry stars in The Archer, a new film about a young girl (Bailey Noble) who is sent away to a reform camp, that turns out to be more of a prison. Terry plays Michael, the son of the camp warden, who finds himself stuck in this militaristic world.

“I like to think of Michael as being as much of a prisoner as everybody else is there,” Terry, the long-time Bones co-star, told uInterview exclusively of his character. “His father has essentially kept him there since he was a child and made him choose between going off with his mother, being divorced, or staying with his father and kind of falling in line, militaristically, with him. And I think he just wants to do right by his dad, whether that means going after girls and chasing them through the woods, or falling in line with him and winning him back. But I think it’s sad. He’s a child. He’s a 20-something-year-old man stuck in a 14-year-old’s body. He’s never been with another person, never been outside of this camp, he’s a prisoner himself as well.”

On working with this specific director (Valerie Weiss) and cast, Terry says the experience was unique to this project. “We were really lucky to have a director and a cast that wanted to rehearse before shooting this film, which is so rare to have that time. We spent a lot of time talking about that and discussing and tracking our own arc as it pertains to real-life stories as well.”

Despite taking the time to rehearse before filming, Terry says the entire shoot only took about two weeks. “Don’t quote me on this, but I think it was 14 days of actual shoot dates. So it was really fast, really tight-knit,” he explained. “The rehearsal process was something we were so fortunate to have, and immediately, the four of us, the four main leads, really just connected and wanted this to be a good film and wanted to work together. The cast and crew was unlike anything I’ve ever worked on. Everybody just wanted to make a good film and being immersed in Idlewild, which is north of Los Angeles in the mountains, and being in an almost camp-like atmosphere I think really helped create this intimate film.”

The Archer is now available on demand.

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